Bitching about the age of Democrats

 The age of Democratic elected officials is a symptom, not the disease itself. It's a troublesome symptom, a side effect of inconvenient truths about the party itself and the psychology of American voters.

Jeet Heer in the New Republic wrote: "The party is a heterogeneous coalition of centrists and progressives that has failed to define a core goal." This is and has been a simple truth since the party shifted to the left in the 1960s, as the Republican Party became the party of business over individuals, property rights over civil rights, and truculent conservatism in general. Those are some great core goals. Their evolution has led to the current authoritarian regime.

Heer pointed out that three House Democrats have died this year, all from states that Trump won or that have a Republican governor. This implied that more youthful presence of Democrats in those states might have improved the party's standing overall, but I think it says more about the states themselves, and voter psychology. 

Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona died at age 77, from cancer. He had represented his seat to the satisfaction of the majority of voters in his district for more than 20 years. Seventy-seven seems old when you're 35 or younger, but wait until you're in your upper 60s, still working and feeling pretty energetic, and have some respect for the value of experience. If someone has been doing an acceptable job, gets the votes, and contributes to the party's national presence, why not keep sending them? Arizona is full of old people. It takes a particularly persuasive whippersnapper to get old farts to switch their allegiance. Grijalva was a reliable Democratic seat in the House. Maybe the district is drawn to keep it that way. But if a fresh-faced newbie hops in there and makes a mess, all of those calculations fall apart.

Gerry Connolly drew ire earlier this year when the party chose him as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee instead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Then he up and died of esophageal cancer, which he knew he had. He was 75. He had been an effective legislator for more than 16 years. 

The current occupant of the Oval Office will turn 79 on June 14, and is a babbling wreck. His backers will keep pushing him along as long as they can, because he is a reliable brand for them.

Most voters hate to think. I'm with you. My life is a testimony to my lack of mental discipline. Also, when you're busy busy busy, either scraping out a living or trying to have enough fun in your time off to feel ready to go back to scraping, you don't want to dig through the dense language of policy analysis. You want someone to tell you that everything will be okay if you put them in office. Public prominence brings with it an automatic assumption of some level of competence. Look at how Joe Biden was alternately a drooling bumbler and the evil mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy. Anyone who makes it to the top has to have done something right. Right?

Hardworking, solid, prosperous citizens who put aside the artistic dreams of youth and became corporate lawyers are just as pressed for time as dishwashers, shop clerks, and bicycle mechanics.

An analysis of Kamala Harris's loss in 2024 stated that her voters were mostly "super voters" -- people who are more attentive and engaged in politics than average voters. We spent more time reading and absorbing analysis of the threat presented by another go-round with MAGA at the helm, and did what we could to prevent it. Added to that would be habitual party voters. But her race and gender were too much even for some of the regular partisans. Those regulars who sat it out did not believe that the current regime would be bad enough to warrant setting aside their core prejudices to elect a woman, especially a non-white woman whose voice they might not like.

Democrats re-elect old farts because they keep being electable. I've dunked on electable Democrats before, but even a dead weight like Joe Manchin at least held a seat that added to the technical majority. Yes, it's a coalition party. It always will be, because it collects all of the people and sub-groups that don't move in lockstep: the true exemplars of individual freedom of thought. We are the reason that the Constitution was written and amended as it is. The lesser of two evils is still less fucking evil.

The elements gathered into the Democratic Party have been fighting to defend their lives since the 1970s. Even as the work to expand civil rights and full citizenship to women and minorities has gone on, public perception has morphed and modified under the influence of changing media and economic pressures. And public perception is the foundation of electoral politics. Facts matter, but opinions get you into office.

The young have vision. The old have experience. The old also have the memory of their younger visions, many of which might match surprisingly well to those of the young today. 

If I'm still alive at 75 or 77, I fully expect still to be working, because I was too much of a dumbass to secure a lucrative retirement package. Or maybe AI will have set up a robot army to cull out the slower members of the herd. We can be processed into any number of useful things. A lot of us out there expect still to be working if we haven't been forcibly removed by some ageist purge.

Burdened by the bullshit of Thomas Jefferson

 "When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty." 

Snappy, right? Punchy. Memorable. And so true. What a genius.

The first premise is true. A government that rules by fear must back it up with violence and repression. But the second part oversimplifies the relationship and validates anarchy and lawlessness in which the people end up fearing each other. Unity is lost. Democracy is lost. Faith in government is lost. The nation defaults to tyranny as the void is filled by ambitious, opportunistic leaders.

The mess we are in now is the direct result of the 1980 Reagan campaign undermining the legitimacy of government. Generations since have been trained to be contemptuous of government.

The Reagan administration was full of shit, using their anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric to round up voters disillusioned by the mistakes of the Vietnam era and constantly paranoid from decades of the Cold War. All they really wanted was to make rich people richer. And they had no strong objection to racism and homophobia as long as those sentiments continued to bring them a reliable voting base. But the main objective was always wealth concentration.

Government that served the people broadly cost too much money that the rich could spend more wisely on more real estate, and whatever gratified them personally. This includes high profile philanthropy as well as gaudy, shameful ostentation like gold toilets. The underlying premise was that rich people were the elite. They deserved all the money they could attract and were free to spend it as they wished. Their expenditures would magically create jobs and prosperity as the money dripped from their fingers with every wave of the hand.

Every young person who gets their first job learns about taxes. They sign on for X-amount per hour, and then their check is a lot smaller than the product of simple multiplication. Stuff gets taken out. Once a year, you have to take a math test to get some or all of what was withheld refunded to you. Often, they get this first job while they're still in school, perhaps struggling with math, as I did. It doesn't seem fair, especially when you learn that the more you earn, the higher percentage of your income goes to taxes. Whaaat? The more I make the more you get? Fuck you! The concept of progressive taxation takes too many words. What do you mean when you say that the businesses that generate income also burden the public and should pay for services? Huh?

Then there are the other deductions. To a young worker, Social Security seems remote. The money deducted for that doesn't get refunded the way overpaid taxes do. The return on it sits too far off to seem justifiable when you could use that money now. It's easy to believe various charlatans who assure you that you could make far more playing the market with private retirement investments. Forget volatility and untimely market corrections. Don't ask how the brokerages make their cut. You'll do great! Just keep the government off of everyone's back. The great Thomas Jefferson said that the government is supposed to fear the people. Keep them on the back foot! They're the enemy.

Bumper sticker philosophy rules public opinion. A popular one says, "Become ungovernable." This glorification of immature oppositional defiance strikes at the foundation of our constitutional system, but it sounds so damn cool. Yeah! Ungovernable! Don't tread on me! I'm a badass!

Jefferson is also credited with saying that the roots of the Tree of Liberty need to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time. This was written at a time when the meat on your plate at supper might have been walking around your farm that morning, and you might have slit its throat yourself. Human history is drenched in blood. At least the cause of liberty is a worthy use of the violent death in conflict that you might face anyway at the whim of a king or emperor. It was also written when war on a global scale was held back by the transportation and weapon technology of the time.

After World War II, the survivors of that conflict all seemed to agree that we didn't want to do that again. We've had almost constant warfare since then, but on a smaller scale. Hard to say how the score sits between the tyrants and the patriots. But we do know a lot more about post traumatic stress disorder and how to reconstruct physically maimed people. So there's that.

Regardless of the political labels, elected representatives have to deal with the details when they enact policies that will affect the entire operation of the country. They put lives at risk in the military and intelligence services. They kill or save millions inside and outside of our borders. Every two years, the voters kick the table and open the door to strong winds that blow the papers around. They base their decisions on whatever they can hold in mind about the people they're voting for and the beliefs they represent. A lot of them skip it altogether and hope for the best.

If fear is valued, fear will be cultivated. If the choice is only between a government fearing its people or a people fearing their government, we will only live in a constant climate of fear. That doesn't lead to good decisions.