2020 Democratic presidential primary

ah, fair enough. no senate race in 2020 is a pretty good argument

Beto feels like a dress rehearsal for the next generation of politicians raised in the internet years

Opportunist? I thought people were using that for Gillibrand or Warren or <insert any other woman>.

― Yerac, Monday, March 18, 2019 3:16 PM (forty-nine minutes ago)

right, warren...

xpost ugh yes

beto will need more favourable material conditions for (what I presume are) his politics to come back into play

Worth reading.

Of the 45 U.S presidents to date, only three were older than 65 when taking office. These three instances aren’t exactly an advertisement for the advisability of electing someone in his late 70s. (Sanders would be 79 when inaugurated, and Biden would be 78).

William Henry Harrison was 68, and famously dropped dead within a month. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but...

Ronald Reagan was 69 (a full decade younger than Sanders/Biden would be on taking office). Reagan was clearly suffering some serious mental decline during his second term: so much so that there was talk among his aides about potentially invoking the 25th amendment.

Donald Trump was 70. Trump has always been an utterly loathsome grifter without a single redeeming characteristic, but if you watch interview with him from 20 or even 10 years ago, his present mental decline is striking.

...

A word about ageism. To be a coherent concept, ageism means taking someone’s age into account in an inappropriate way, not merely taking it into account at all. There are all sorts of reasons to be highly skeptical of electing very old people to the presidency.

First, the risk for dementia doubles every five years from age 65 on. It is very low at first, but by 80 it’s getting quite significant, and by 85 it’s a big risk.

Second, electing an 80ish president means electing someone whose initial and therefore in many ways most important formative political experiences were literally two generations ago, i.e., in the 1950s, aka a radically different world.

Third, leaving aside more drastic forms of cognitive decline, really old people are generally not as good at learning things/changing their minds when doing so is warranted than they were when they were younger.

some of the stuff in there is ageist, especially the last sentence \_(ツ)_/¯

If you say so, grandpa.

That last sentence, as the key adverb stresses, is "generally" true.

This is why I support a Sanders/young Trotsky ticket.

Bernie / HOOS (with fake ID)

i think hoos should run for tx senate

sorted yet lads

everybody seems to love Beto, lock thread

judge him by the strength of his haterz

not great

We need a Mad Men "Not Great, Beto" gif ASAP.

this thread is really something

we should vet every presidential candidate but digging up their tweets from 2009 is a low blow. every tweet from 2009 is bad.

— Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019

Idk, Trump is a brainless lump of human(-like) flesh. Booker may seem like a human, too, but his compulsive tweeting about "breaking up with coffee" seems perfectly in sync with the sheer deadness of USA 2019.

this thread is really something

i take it back, twitter is good

really old people are generally not as good at learning things/changing their minds when doing so is warranted than they were when they were younger.

some of the stuff in there is ageist, especially the last sentence

It is a generalization and, if taken simply as such, not as being applied to any individual, it is almost certainly true. There are noteworthy exceptions, as there are with any generalizations. Old people who are demonstrating a continuing ability to learn things and adapt their thinking accordingly are obviously not to be judged by those who are not demonstrating those abilities. Sanders seems still quite adaptable and engaged.

As for presidents Harrison, Reagan and Trump, they are too limited of a data set to draw strong conclusions from. And while the 'doubling of dementia risk for every five years above 65' is a demonstrable fact, it is another general statement about statistical patterns in large groups, not a reliable predictor about individuals.

It is fine to take those observations into account when evaluating one's choice for president and I don't think it is certifiably ageist to do so. The difficulty is assigning a correct weight to them. That weight is very easy to misjudge, except in comparison to all the other factors that must be weighed, like the possible effect of his policies on yourself and the nation.

let's wait and see if any of the candidates under 70 don't suck

ftr, I've come to think that, all else being roughly equal, the ideal age for a first term president is probably in the range of 49-57. iow, definitely younger than me. In reality, there are a lot of more important qualifications than age. It's just that it's such a killer job in terms of hours and stress.

I know myself and I won’t be ready till im at least 80

Morbs otm

Cory Booker is a nice guy who should leave politics and become like the headmaster of my prep school or something. He’d be beloved in that position.

I am more and more impressed by Buttigieg the more I find out about him. I doubt he has a chance but I think his presence and platform in the race would be a good thing.

XP If Booker likes coffee so much, he should marry her/him...

Mayor of South Bend to the White House does seem a jump but not as much as infamous reality tv scumbag to president so who knows

He just seems too smart and talented to appeal to most americans.

Chris Hayes at town hall with Gillibrand.

I would like for more mayors of smallish cities to run for President.

America’s best and worst politicians are mayors

I’m reading about him now. He seems like a nice guy whose left of harris. If America fell in love with him it would be a great thing.

Maybe not left of harris based on the policies I read. Just meant he’s not Beto.

It seems like he is also a much better musician than Beto.

Gillibrand is really sharp in this format, and Hayes has a nice mostly out of frame approach.

For the first ten minutes she was breathless. Her mind, I could tell, was running through a PowerPoint (EDUCATION, MEDICARE, NRA).

Buttigieg should really just start pronouncing his name the way everyone wants to say it. "I'm Pete Butt Gag, I'm a vet, I'm smart, I'm gay, vote for me!" Alright!

If booker wins the presidency he should tweet three times a day the same fucking tweet about hot coffee for four years.

NEW — Andrew Yang, upstart Democratic presidential candidate, has come out against circumcision

Via @willsommer https://t.co/ryps15rv7P

— Sam Stein (@samstein) March 19, 2019

i have decided to come out against andrew yang

lol that fits

speaking as a circumsized jew (tmi? sorry.) -- there's no real justification for circumcision and we should probably be thinking of it in the same category as female genital mutilation, at least in terms of unwarranted, dangerous, painful things done to children in the name of religion.

also, "Andrew Yang: Don't Cut Their Wang" is a good headline

speaking as a circumcised non-jew I can't imagine giving a fuck about male circumcision but I'm also not gonna have any kids, so *shrug*

so what you're saying is this issue won't win wisconsin for the dems?

idk it might just put him a cut above the rest

i like gillibrand more today than i did yesterday but i guess that's what these town hall things are for

Yang's alright, let's not make a mountain out of a mohel

This is a bad look for him