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This is the opportunity for democrats running in the mid-terms to start their own town halls.
Bold of you to assume we’ll be allowed to have mid-terms
Edit: that’s just me being snarky. Keep fighting the good fight. Vote in every fucking election that you can, at every level you can - federal, state, and local (and, if you’re an investor, shareholder - that, I think, is an under emphasized vector here). Be an activist in every way you can, through every path available to you.
Good. Yell at them, too
We need people telling at them, and we need people politely approaching them with the same policies.
A game of good constituent/bad constituent, if you will.
People probably won't need to yell at them if the Democrats actually are listening to and engaging with the voters.
If democrats think that auction paddles are gonna solve this, they still need to be yelled at.
If they engaged with their voters, we wouldn’t have any democratic representatives over age of 65. Anything past that is just posturing and self enrichment
Edit: wow I left a generally agreeable comment and fucked off for the day and apparently a lot of people want representatives older than 65? Yet no one can say why that’s a good thing they only bring up Bernie who’s an independent and not a democrat. Some of you don’t know what you want other than to shit on people online and it’s laughable
What's with the ageism? I want Democratic representatives of any age, as long as they have the right policies and they are of sound mind. People over the age of 65 will be just fine with me, thanks.
You gotta draw the line somewhere. Retirement age seems like as good a place as any.
Why do you have to draw the line somewhere?
I feel like a broken record here, but the huge uptick in ageism I see in relation to politics seems like it's not going to, ahem, age well given the amount of things I keep seeing about slowing down/reversing aging...
I mean, yeah, it sounds kind of silly until it doesn't. I remember reading about/thinking about things like AI (even if it's not AGI - things like LLMs are here and disrupting the shit out of things). Same with self-driving cars. And yeah, neither of these things are perfect, but they are having an effect on society - people I know mostly got very smug and dismissive about these notions just 20 years ago. They are rather quiet about them now. I think the same thing is true about aging. Even if the breakthroughs are extremely mild and stay that way for decades, maybe even forever, suppose average healthspan is increased even 5 years. That will make (upper) age limits look very myopic and dated.
It's not about how long you live so much as getting stuck in your ways. Old people don't learn new things and adapt the way young people do. Humans solidify the way they do things in their 20s, make some fine tuning in their 30s/40s, and then pretty much stick to those habits for the rest of their life. With the way technology is progressing we can't have stagnant people leading an evolving society.
There are exceptions to every rule but that doesn't mean statistics aren't valuable information to base decisions on. Do you want people stuck in the past making laws about the future?
I just don't understand this line of thinking at all. I don't want people to have their moral fiber evolve. Bernie has been right for decades now, as a for instance. I wouldn't want him cut out of politics based on some stupid and myopic ageist rule.
Also, this line of thinking is what I'm pointing out is what is stuck in the past, by the way - I'm saying if we put into place some arbitrary age limits based on looking backwards, just as technology upends all this, that would be the fixed mode of thinking about humans, their capabilities as they age, and proper stewardship of the country.
If people start having longer healthspans, I most definitely want people with the broader view to be running things, and that would mean people far older than they are right now, even. In that scenario, the older the better, in my view. In some cases, you have "old souls" among very young people who have the intelligence to talk to people that are older than them, or glean lessons from the past in other ways. This is often quite rare, unfortunately.
Now, I would be in favor of having tests for capabilities, much like we have for older drivers in at least some states.
Bernie is a great guy but that's an example proving the point I'm making. He's saying the same things he's said for decades. He's not wrong about most things but his stance isn't really evolving either. He's pretty revolutionary for someone in his age bracket but if you look at his peers he's pretty much the only one that you could say has a relatively modern view of politics, and even that is mostly because the US is so far behind the rest of the western world that his moderate positions seem more extreme by comparison. All the other old politicians saying the same things they've said for decades sound like living fossils, and that's not going to get better if they start living longer, it's going to get worse.
Because mentally incompetent people shouldn't be in charge of steering the government. Mental competency drops fast at higher ages.
Because I only want people who have a bested interest in the future to be the ones crafting it.
You shouldn't be allowed to vote or drive after a specific age because you become a danger to people around you.
Sure but age limits are in place in a million different institutions. If it’s not ageism that you can’t run for office when you’re 16 then it’s not ageism when you have an age limit for representatives. My point is representatives should represent the general population and should be able to at least understand the issues of the current age. Meanwhile the aging congress struggles with basic internet understanding so we don’t have regulations that should have been standard since the fucking 90s. It’s 2025 a person who can’t comprehend internet basics like email encryption has 0 chance of making an informed choice on crypto currency or government backdoors and their implications.
Avoiding constituents is peak cowardice—if you can't face voters, you shouldn't hold office.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
I guess I'm an ignorant fuck because I thought that these town halls were required by law in some way. It's insane they can just be like "nah, not gonna show up". It should be an instant impeachment by law.
yeah the law should just automatically depose cowards who don't face their constituents.
unfortunately we sort of have a "who watches the watchers" situation here. expecting lawmakers to make laws to police themselves is ridiculous. idk what can be done for that honestly. the French had some ideas back in the day though.
The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution, hopefully the French Revolution can inspire an American Revolution.
Nice! Where was the turnout during the nationals?
I'm tired of these news, of we follow what's shared here we would have destroyed the Republicans, and they are useless and everybody hates them...
But here we are.
This is good to highlight how the cons are hiding out from their constituents.
My Democratic rep has had two town halls, huge feisty crowds for both.
All the Republican bravado and they are all whiny insecure cowards
OTOH I'd want to know which dema sat it out as a virtue signalling exercise, and now act all indignant blended into the crowd now the rest are up in arms (figuratively, of course). It's like oh yeah, back then it wasn't such a big deal to take control of your govt, blame the system blah blah blah.
I bet the Democrats are using the momentum to send a stern message. And the press will proudly feature articles of how the Democrats SLAMMED the white house!! And the White house will barely notice, and go on doing what they are doing.
@Sunshine Hopefully they will turn out as much at the voting booth
Hopefully they'll have something worth turning out for. Let's see if you become hostile to the suggestion that democrats need to become better in order to appeal to voters.
Everyone is like "where were you!", but I'm just happy that people are becoming more politically active. I don't think we can win overnight, but if people can push their communities in a better direction then they deserve some credit.
Great. Now the Democrats can have everything lined up to take over during the midterms and...change nothing.
Implying we'll have a midterm
I worry about this too
We will. It will not matter. Congress will likely be powerless by that point. Or a large portion of the Democratic party will align with the fascist policies by then as their donors place more pressure on them. We know how much democrats love to "reach across the isle".
Keeping up the illusion of democracy is the one of the most important things for the bourgeoisie to maintain. They will go through the charades for sure.
It's more important that people see through the charades of our system. I'm hoping that starts happening more.
I feel like everyone is waiting for a "moment" to get them off their couch. By the time that moment happens it's already too late.
I dont give a fuck about democrat shows.
I give a shit about them stopping voting with republicans to enable trumps fuckawful shit.
I see a room full of people looking to find someone else to blame. They are fools who voted against their own interests again. Now they are mad at the GOP -THEY voted into office AGAIN. A room of fools