Politicians who refuse to retire is a huge, bipartisan problem in the US affecting both genders. Putting an age limit on the president or members of congress would probably have to be done via a constitutional amendment, because the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that states cannot add eligibility requirements that are not in the constitution. One reform that would help in Congress would be to modify the seniority system. Right now, members of Congress gain seniority as long as they keep being re-elected, so you end up with a situation where all the most powerful committees are headed by ancient legislators teetering at death's door. Since those committee chairs are very powerful, they get lots of campaign donations which help keep them in office until God calls them home. I think modulo arithmetic should be used to calculate seniority. A member of the House should have their seniority set to their time in office modulo 10 - after five terms they are reset to seniority zero. For senators, maybe modulo 18 could be used.
We have a built-in filter for this already, which are the primary and general elections. The problem is not politicians refusing to retire, but voters refusing to vote them out.
The Democrat/Republican party system is what gives incumbents such a lead over challengers. I don't think term limits are the fix, I think we need to change how campaigns are financed - because right now, the parties pick who gets money in downticket races, and incumbents have their own war chests. That leads to challengers being outspent.
I just keep thinking about how the national party rolled over for Dianne Feinstein in the 2018 senate election, even though she lost the support of the state party. No big democrats were willing to drop their support of her, and the national party wasn't going to spend money on a primary/general challenge to a seat that would stay blue.
Maybe not even modulo but something like seniority increases monotonically for five terms but decreases monotonically for each subsequent term after the fifth term.
Senate: 1 Term. 6 years. Not able to then serve in the House.
House: 2 Terms. 4 years. Not able to then serve in the Senate.
1 Term House + 1 Term Senate. 8 years total.
A whole generation is unwilling to acknowledge their mortality, step aside and make room (although unlike politicians many aren’t because they can’t afford to)
The president has a large support staff to keep the lights on most of the time. Unless the nation is physically under attack, the president's day-to-day job is probably physically less demanding than that of pilots. They have plenty of time for golf.
I heard just last night that domestically it’s now 68 years (or somebody is trying to make it 68), but this sucks for pilots who’ve been flying for a long time and are now doing mostly international flights, because the intl age is still 65. The upshot is they have to fly only domestically from 65-68 (and this can require retraining on smaller planes they don’t have currency with).
It's measurable biological certainty that reaction times as measured in milliseconds and fine motor control degrade with age. Vision and hearing also degrade. The nature of hands on control of flying a plane means there are no ways to compensate for this.
None of this applies to a politician making decision in a time span of hours, days or months and who can delegate tasks as they wish.
A counter argument for no, or better a higher age, limit is experience. I'm talking President. But some kind of limit, maybe 80 or 75, with some kind of fitness check up at Walter read Military hospital required for any over 40, 50, there are cases or 'early dementia'.
With a better voting system (e.g. Approval or Condorcet) and nothing preventing a dozen candidates from running, that would be much more feasible.
These go hand in hand: our current voting system breaks down if multiple candidates draw votes from each other, but a better voting system would be immune to that failure mode and could give people a free choice of several reasonable candidates without having some of them withdraw and throw their support to others.
The distinguishing and necessary result of democracy, practically unique when compared to any other form of government, is that it provides a nonviolent means to remove aggressively incompetent people from office.
This is flawed. How are is a voter supposed to be able to pick the best, with inaccurate/no information? It's impractical. Like a laws passed to protect a person by name would be impractical. It doesn't scale.
The US has suffered for the lack of information. How can this be addressed, in the next 20 years, is a much more interesting question.
Like a lot of things never codified into law or the constitution — 250 years ago it seemed obvious that the voters wouldn’t do things that seem utterly insane, and that surely nobody who’s very openly, shamelessly corrupt would be elected and still maintain that support even when exposed. So here we are.
So the Framers figured nobody on the cusp of senility would run, and if he did, he wouldn’t get the votes. Because both would be ridiculous.
Especially considering that the only democracy they envisioned was the House, since everybody else was to be picked by nondemocratic means (essentially then, by an aristocracy, who would surely be wise enough to make a good decision).
> it seemed obvious that the voters wouldn’t do things that seem utterly insane, and that surely nobody who’s very openly, shamelessly corrupt would be elected
Credit where credit is due, it actually seemed obvious to Benjamin Franklin that such a thing was inevitable .. hence the need for close attention to the machinery of government and regularly updating the constitution.
See:
I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well-administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it,
I'm all for it. But when the average senator is over 60 and rising, and the majority voter base themselves are generally 60+, it'll be a hard law to pass from both fronts.
And as others mentioned, this is a bipartisan stance, so it's not a matter of political leanings. Old people represent most of our voter-base and thus most of our represenatives.
> But when the average senator is over 60 and rising, and the majority voter base themselves are generally 60+, it'll be a hard law to pass from both fronts.
I have less problems with boomers in general than a lot of people do, but honestly this is one of those things that's going to improve as time goes on and boomers die off.
> Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)?
Because age is no indication of fitness for any kind of activity or role. It sure would be nice, if persons with high responsibilities would periodically undergo a fitness test. I'd think the founding fathers saw the election process as such fitness test and the electoral college as the judge of fitness of the presidential candidate.
> age is no indication of fitness for any kind of activity or role.
This is a generalization that overlooks the nuanced reality of human aging. Physical and cognitive functions become more pronounced in advanced age, such as above 70 or 80. Sure, age alone does not universally determine fitness for activities or roles, but it is a very important factor to consider. I am fine with fitness tests.
Because the Founders didn't think of it, and though it would obviously be a good idea now, it's no longer possible to get enough consensus on literally anything to amend the constitution.
This mess has shown that you don't need an age limit for the presidency? He was going to lose the election exactly because of his perceived cognitive decline related to his age.
The DNC is at fault for selected him as the candidate.
I've made that argument. Someone that agrees with it is Jimmy Carter.
My opinion is if the voters are happy to send a geriatric congressman to Washington to sleep through meetings that's fine. But he shouldn't be chairing committees and other offices.
That said Reagan was suffering the beginnings of dementia during the last year or two of his presidency and the world didn't end.
That's not to say it couldn't have. The Constitution and its new SCOTUS interpretation places such a heavy emphasis on the executive branch that even with safeguards and a 25th amendment, maybe protecting the electorate from itself is warranted.
The same reason we don't have a race or sex limit on the Presidency. We should only have competency limits regardless of any other factors. My grandfather died at 101. He was extremely sharp until he was 98 and on no medication. I'd vote for that 95 year-old over either of our current choices without hesitation.
“Competency” is hard to evaluate, especially objectively, and that raises a whole host of other issues because it can’t be resolved expediently. Who raises a competency question? Who decides on it? When can the question be raised? What happens if we don’t have an answer by the time of the election, because it’s tied up in appeals?
Objective qualifications are much simpler. We could argue for months about whether a president is competent, but it takes like 7 seconds to decide whether they’re older than some arbitrary bar.
And at 98 did your Grandfather lead a country? How about a company? Manage a store? A team of employees?
All these anecdotal superhuman tales fail the smell test.
There is this hyped longitudinal study, but it doesn't say what roles these "superagers" were in, only that they had slightly better cognitive outcomes than their peers.
No one has cognitive capacity or neuronal volume of a 35 year old at 65, not to speak of 95.
It is delusional to think anyone can escape the effects of aging at this point in time.
There's a constitutional requirement that the candidate must be at least 35[1], which seems arbitrary to me. That was decided in 1787. I wonder what age they would have picked as a maximum age back then. I say that because (at least these days) it seems almost impossible to change, and people live a lot longer. Like we might be stuck with "Any age between 35 and 57" because people died young in 1787 relative to now.
It's worth noting that the age requirements selected then were less about wisdom and experience, and more about residency in the US. The chief fear at the time was a European power manipulating the country to put a puppet in charge, so to avoid this they wanted to limit power to those who had resided in the US for a long time, but they also didn't want to preclude themselves from holding offices in the future. These numbers (35 for president, 30 for senator, and 25 for house representative) represent a compromise - note that the constitution's primary authors were 36 and 31 at the time it was signed, and the youngest signer was 26.
There is an argument that in a well functioning democracy voters should be able to decide who is qualified to lead them. It shouldn't matter if the person is 20 or 80 if they are able to fulfill their obligations and win the support of voters. With a well informed population and an electoral system that fairly represents voter preferences there should be no need for arbitrary rules.
Setting aside the argument if any electorate is really capable of making that decision - the world has elected many questionable leaders - the big question is "what if the conditions change halfway through".
That likelihood increases with age, and even the most well-informed population does not have the ability to withdraw their consent if it does.
Bear in mind that your life expectancy is higher as you get older. E.g. the life expectancy for a 72 yr old is not 73, its higher. But I agree with the general point about an age cap.
Hey, I resemble that remark! (Even if I am younger than Biden or Trump.)
But all seriousness aside, what makes you think that matters? I'm not going to vote for someone because they're old, in fact to some extent the opposite--I'd rather have a 50 or so year old as president. Are there polls that say old people vote for old people just because they're old?
Put simply: it would require a constitutional amendment, and those are hard to come by. The Constitution only sets a minimum age for offices — no maximum ages.
the glib answer is that every election is a decision on that politician’s age or term limit, which is almost certainly the position SCOTUS would take here.
in reality, the advantages of the incumbent in an era of safe districts, where the real election is a primary with poor turnout composed mostly of older voters, are almost insurmountable.
and we are currently witnessing what happens when someone hits an age limit the national electorate is unwilling to accept.
Because it's ultimately a distrust of people. You do not trust people to realize that the candidate is old ? Where would you draw the line on limits? Age, IQ, gender, weight, height ?
Of course, we should find the balance between all these limits and "intellect of the crowd".
> Why don’t they have an age limit on the president
In fact there is an age limit for an American president. They should be >= 35 y.o. We need to augment it with an upper limit. My choice would be <= 75 y.o.
If there's to be an age limit, I think it should be tied to the average retirement age plus 7 years. This accounts for changes in life expectancy while also allowing representation for retirees.
IMO, on evidence for when the brain starts to age in a significant way, and supplemented individually based on a robust battery of tests that represent cognitive fitness (something more demanding than n-back and stroop tests).
Unfortunately, I think fantasies about living forever and politics around ageism will prevent this from ever being implemented in our lifetimes.
I see little reason to believe "democracy" is in any way designed to be optimal (for citizens anyways), and lots to believe it is not (and it would seem intentionally not).
Because it doesn't solve a real problem. If you try to articulate why it is that a particular old person is president and then dig in a little bit, it quickly becomes apparent that the real problem is something else. For example, in this case, the problem isn't the Biden is old. The problem is probably somewhere in how the Democrat party of the US is picking candidates.
> Putting politics aside …
I admire your optimism in saying that then putting a political question to the room.
> Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)?
In a democracy we let the pleb decide if they want a 81 year old as president (or a 18 year old). It works as intended. Putting age limits on fixed-term elected officials would go against the spirit of free elections.
> you must be younger than
> the average life expectancy
> (currently 73yo) - while in
> office.
As an aside, it's a common error to think that overall life expectancy is relevant to this sort of thing, it's not. That number includes those who die in infancy, etc.
If you wanted to limit it by "life expectancy" you'd want to limit it by the statistical expected remaining years of life at the candidate's current age.
For example, while the overall life expectancy in the US is around 73, for an individual at age 50 it's around 80[1].
Edit: Even if you pick the "right" life expectancy it's still pretty weird. You want the candidate to "only" have a hypothetical 50% chance of dying due to old age before their last day in office?
Then imagine something like COVID-19 happens again. Now a candidate on the cusp of being ineligible is suddenly ineligible because the latest life expectancy statistics shifted?
There's a reason political systems tend to prefer boring and predictable arbitrary limits.
> For example, while the overall life expectancy in the US is around 73, for an individual at age 50 it's around 80
Small but important note, you picked life expectancy for males, not all individuals. For females the life expectancy at birth is over 79 years. The average life expectancy for someone in the US without specifying their sex at birth is north of 76 years. And life expectancy is trending upwards and has for a long time as we eliminate more early mortalities.
Still, people age very differently. Some octogenarians are completing triathlons. Medicine also seems likely to increase longevity.
Think of the many who through their 80s were cogent, even masterful. Examples include Warren Buffett, John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus, George Soros, Henry Kissinger, Clint Eastwood, and with women it’s probably even more common, and we can look to Nancy Pelosi, or indeed my own grandmother. Whatever memory slowdown there may be is compensated for by depth of experience.
Then there are those who lose it in their sixties.
In many ways it seems that ageism is one of the last acceptable prejudices.
In Biden’s case, I was struck by the difference in him before and after his son Beau’s death. It seemed like he never recovered. Charisma gone. Eyes turned beady and body stiff. Despite that he was an active and successful president (should be admitted no matter one’s politics), though unpopular.
There is a lower limit but not an upper limit. Who knows how old we can be in the future, there are coherent smart people over 80 today. But hey, it’s a democracy and if you want to change it you can try…!
Agree that there are plenty of coherent smart people but you also have to think about the workload, my dad is in his 80s and is perfectly sharp on any issues you care to discuss but he also stays in bed until after 9 and enjoys a few naps during the day.
Read as "who knows how much more entrenched future politicians will be able to be? who knows how many more favors they will owe, how many more donors will have their ear?"
Putting politics aside? Ironic that the link you gave is a .gov site. So that would turn "life expectancy" into something political, and lobbyist would all over it.
This is wild. It seems super late in the game but okay. I'm super interested to see what will become of his chips act etc. The push he has tried to do to remove dependencies on TSMC is very forward thinking. Hopefully the next candidate takes up the momentum.
Why does the US in specific have such drawn-out campaigns? Earlier this week, I saw a pundit commenting that 4 months before the election is too short notice to pick a new candidate. But there's countries in Europe that announce elections, pick candidates, do the campaigns, go to the pools, do the counts, and have the electees take office, all in less than 4 months (see e.g. Great Britain recently).
Because elections here aren't "announced". They're on a fixed 4-year schedule. Everyone knows they're coming, and if they start just a little sooner than the other guy this time, that may give them an advantage. Over time, it creeps earlier and earlier. Like retail stores putting out Christmas stuff in mid-october.
Obviously, in great Britain's recent election, nobody knew there was going to be an election until it was announced, so there was no way to jump the gun.
The way primaries are explicitly drawn out across every state is a big factor. The earlier a given state runs its primary, the more influence that state has by setting the momentum.
The UK always has a Leader of the Opposition ready to make the case that they could be the next Prime Minister.
Technically we only vote for the representative in our local constituency, but who is going to end up PM is a big factor. We know what the options are before the election is announced: the current PM and the Leader of the Opposition (although in theory the leader of one of the smaller parties is also possible). Therefore no need for a primary process.
It's because America has three elections for President:
1. Republican primaries
2. Democratic primaries
3. General election
The drawn-out part is the primaries, part of which are parties trying to get their candidates in the news for a while. Once the parties officially pick a candidate — July this year for the Republicans, August for Democrats — the election proceeds on a pretty quick timetable.
The UK doesn't do primary elections to the same extent, nor do most parliamentary democracies. So they're faster, since there's just a general election.
The concern about Kamala's "short" time to make a case for electing her to the presidency is that she didn't get to make use of the ~year+ news cycles of the primaries, and will only have the general election to convince voters. (There's also a specter of it being "undemocratic" since party nominees are typically elected by the party's voters, rather than chosen by officials, but since she was Biden's VP in 2020, and he won the election, IMO this is overblown: the entire point of a VP is to take over if the president is unable to function, which is what happened in this case. Her claim to democratic election is that voters chose the Biden/Harris ticket in a general election, which is pretty reasonable.)
That's because everyone including Europeans spend plenty of their time watching the US election dramas so obviously it starts as early as possible because there's strong demand for it. It's a big business for everyone: the politicians, media, tech companies, the long line of hangers on, etc.
In Canada we know who the next 2 primary candidates were a year ago and elections not until next yr. That's almost always how it works, whether it's formalized or not.
Trump has really turned our system on its head. He's basically been campaigning since 2015 and never stopped. It's exhausting for everyone except, apparently, him.
Great Britain has a parliamentary system. In the US, the presidential election is drawn out but the campaigns for congress only heat up in the last months.
It’s weird to me that even after his debate performance people are still ascribing things to him directly. Clearly he’s just been stamping his name on the DNC agenda, though I definitely think the chips act is good in theory. We’ll see how it plays out in practice.
Most other countries have much shorter election periods. I for one would love if ours was shorter. Our politicians spend more time campaigning and raising money than they do governing
He tried a to push a lot of things in the positive direction. Democrats usually do. In addition to the chips act, there's infrastructure - saw a HN comment linking to database of where the infrastructure money went; insulin cost, public transportation, electric vehicles, climate in general, student loans. He tweeted imposing 25% tax on billionaires, which ultimately became his undoing.
> He tweeted imposing 25% tax on billionaires, which ultimately became his undoing.
Unless you’re suggesting the billionaires made him senile that wasn’t his undoing. He was a decent president, and accomplished some nice things, but his undoing is the fact that he can no longer speak in full sentences without folks holding their breath.
> Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ?
I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this.
> Has it ever been done?
Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the VP came from the opposing party[1]. This didn't work particularly well in practice, which is why nobody remembers the 12th Amendment :-)
> liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party)
?
I thought the core of the party is establishment centrist gerontophiles. If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.
The number of voters aligned with old school Reagan/Bush era Republicanism has all but disappeared. The majority of GOP voters consider Romney to be part of 'the swamp'. Politics in America is increasingly driven by hatred of the out-group, so it is hard to imagine a mixed ticket doing well in 2024.
Technically prior to that wasn't the VP always the runner up? Practically we had two parties thanks to Hamilton and Jefferson, but the rules weren't specific to that unless I missed something important there.
Larry Hogan would make an interesting VP candidate on Harris's ticket. He's a Republican, but was a two term governor in the blue state of Maryland. (Maryland has a two term limit on the governor, so he's now running for Senator.) To the extent that the candidate for VP pulls in votes, I think he'd do an awesome job.
But there’s no one else to vote for, they’d still vote for her with Romney as the VP. With that vs Trump as the other option, she’d still get the votes from the progressive base and potentially bring over a few more independent voters.
This is an interesting thought experiment. What would the US be like with a completely impossible ticket? Would we flourish under a Lenny Bruce-Knuckles the Echidna ticket? What if Misty and Brock were the respective RNC and DNC chairs? These are the sorts of questions the status quo politicians don’t want us to be asking
I read something a few years ago that said moderates/non-affiliated make up the majority of voters with only a smaller percentage on left and right tied to the parties (somewhere maybe in 15% to 20% range on each side, can't remember exactly).
So it seems like a good mix of moderate could possibly win, especially when the other candidate is so polarizing.
Most of the folks who say they’re unaffiliated or moderates or open to voting for either party in fact vote exactly like a self-reported partisan. They just don’t like the label.
Lots of crappy reporting doesn’t differentiate between self-reported swing/moderates and true swing.
GOTV matters more. Do your people show up at the polls?
Yeah partisans arent good at winning friends and influencing people in their pathetic partisan power struggles
They’ve spent nearly a decade isolating themselves in an algorithm fueled mirror room, while disassociating from everyone that doesn't already agree with them 100%
instead of any color coded “wave” occurring despite their recurring delusions, there’s gridlock in the senate, no filibuster proof majority, they’ve lost affiliation and independents are the largest political affiliation in the country now with almost zero representation
The only example I could think of that sort of fits that bill:
"National Union Party was a wartime coalition of Republicans, War Democrats, and border state Unconditional Unionists that supported the Lincoln Administration during the American Civil War. It held the 1864 National Union Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for president and Andrew Johnson for vice president in the 1864 United States presidential election." (wikipedia)
Great success as an electoral pairing, not so much afterwards with Johnson's reconstruction policies resulting in all former Republicans leaving the National Union Party and an impeachment.
It used to be (like, early 1800s) that the VP wasn't elected directly; whoever lost the election became VP. Jefferson and Adams were political adversaries, but when Adams won the election in 1796, Jefferson became VP
I had a similar thought. It would be bold to pluck a republican of the old order as a gesture to the many republicans who now feel like men without a party.
Romney would be an interesting choice. I remember this[0] article in the globe where a columnist who dragged him during his presidential run apologized after seeing how bad things could be.
Like you say though, hard to imagine any party conjuring the courage to do something like that even if they thought it was wise.
> hard to imagine any party conjuring the courage to do something like that even if they thought it was wise.
They would if they sincerely believed that losing this election would doom democracy. If they nominate a straight polarized political ticket instead of one that can actually unify everyone who doesn't want to see a second Trump term then we know that they don't actually believe their own apocalyptic rhetoric.
Or actually radical: switch from our terrible first-past-the-post voting system to - say - ranked choice (or one of many alternatives; they're almost all better than fptp) and then primaries won't be so important and parties won't have so much power over our kinda-democratic-but-actually-oligarchic political system.
This sometimes turns out very badly - in the UK it led to "faster than a lettuce goes bad" Liz Truss for example. Conservative party members are an odd bunch.
Labour also picked Jeremy Corbyn an election back. Ultimately the rest of the country didn't want to vote for him.
No. The staunch Republicans will still vote for Trump and the only way to beat that is for there to be an incredibly cohesive force among a population that isn't very cohesive in the first place. The Republicans actually have it easy, they align and bond on lots of things. The center and left align on very few things and fight amongst themselves.
> The Republicans actually have it easy, they align and bond on lots of things.
I have seen some videos of Trump voters who are claiming that JD Vance is a traitor to the white race for marrying a non-white. And their kids have non-white names.
They are quite upset about this. Some of them are so disgusted by this that they might not vote at all. One can only hope.
I’m curious: what do the Republicans align on, besides “Win at all cost” and “Liberals are bad”?
Trump doesn’t care about the budget, doesn’t care about protecting our allies, doesn’t care about abortion. I’d wager he doesn’t care about immigration, either, except as a way to get votes.
In principle, if you got everyone to agree to it (and this would be a big if), this would probably be an interesting enough ticket that it might just win. Maybe.
In practice, Romney is 77 years old and is ready to retire - and think how often age has come up as a factor in the presidential race recently. Romney isn't running for reelection, but if he had wanted his senate seat for another 6 years, I am quite certain it would have been his. So ultimately, I don't think Romney would go for it, simply because he wants to spend more time with his (large) family.
Moderate Republicans who won't just vote for Trump are a dying breed. I don't think they are worth courting over just convincing young people and women to turn out to vote, purely on demographics. I could be ideologically blinded by this though.
You'd have to get Romney on board with it. You'd be electing a Democrat administration with a Republican VP. It's not split, it's just a blue ticket with a red VP.
If you want to bolster the ticket, get someone that people already like. Hell, get Obama or Sanders to come back as the VP.
Obama can't be VP either as the rules are that anyone ineligible to be president can't be elected as VP (there's apparently some debate over whether they could become VP via being promoted from lower down in the succession in the event of a presidential vacancy).
Sanders could, but I think he has the double issue of his two prior failed campaigns - a lot of his more motivated voters from previous times might have a "boy who cried wolf" reaction a third campaign. He also doesn't really disarm the "too old" criticism, even if all evidence points to him aging a lot better than either Biden or Trump so far - Biden 2020 vs Biden 2024 would give a lot of people pause even if Sanders gave the world's best debate performance at this point.
There's also the fact that Sanders has been actually pretty influential in Biden's presidency, which I think is why he came out so strongly in favour of Biden a few days ago.
It would be more politically palatable to pick a Senator Joe Manchin or Governor Andy Beshear. In other words, a Democrat so moderate that they can win in the reddest of states
It happens in EU countries, where it's not unusual for a right-leaning President to elect a left-leaning Prime Minister. Worth noting that a Prime Minister in the EU often has more power than the VP in the US.
Was thinking that too and it might be a brilliant way to get the folks on the right that don't want to vote Trump but also not necessarily a dem. Also it could be a great marketing tactic to be like 'we're bringing unity back' or something to that.
And theoretically no reason it couldn't happen other than both parties definitely not being on board with it.
I think the problem is that both parties have moved, the democrats shifting left and the republicans shifting right (and to put the cards on the table, I think the republicans have shifted a lot more rightward than democrats have leftwards). This leaves people pretty unwilling to go for a split the difference approach. Like if you ask people in favour of a centrist position, they're probably picturing someone in the middle of Bill Clinton and George W Bush, and thinking " I could manage with that". But for a lot of the core democratic vote, they see a Romney as the result of drawing a line down the middle and they already decided he was too right wing for them. Or similar, the republicans are worried that splitting that line down the middle ends up at Hilary, who they already didn't like. So while a lot of people express support for compromise and consquently centrism, you'll get into a lot of infighting when you try to decide what the centrist position actually is..
Romney appeals to the sort of people who own multiple houses. Most Trump supporters are working class concerned about the price of groceries, who would probably be better served by a left-wing pro-labor politician but won't vote for one because they abhor the progressive social policies that get bundled with that in America. So they vote for the guy who plays lip service to their problems while talking smack about progressive social stuff.
Romney is politically obsolete. He serves no further purpose in American politics.
Also needed to have Trump announce a VP pick first. Because otherwise Trump would have picked a black man without question (Tim Scott probably although maybe Ben Carson)
He was dropping out no matter what, and Kamala losing is objectively worse for his legacy than Kamala winning. Anything he could do to help her is good for his legacy, and he took a ton of bullets for her the past few months in order to give her the best shot at beating Trump.
One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term.
Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.
I laughed out loud when I read this, but maybe if you reword it "effective presidencies" you could be right.
I imagine those around him were doing all the presidenting, and perhaps they're more effective without a functioning president to get in their way.
Some might then point out things like the border were signs of ineffectiveness, but actually, if you reasonably assume it was intentional, then they were exceptionally effective.
A single term was a prominent part of the discussion around his electability[1]. I'm not sure whether he campaigned on it per se, but it was certainly something that I (and other people I know) factored into my vote in 2020.
His campaign HEAVILY implied this, but no, he never said it.
It’s definitely one of those thing that make people like me, who want good faith honesty in politics angry, because “he didn’t actually say it” politics is why gotcha politics exists.
"Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said. "There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country."
I never could find a direct quote of Biden himself saying he would be a single term president, but his campaign team said it regularly in public interviews.
It's a very tough thing to objectively measure, but one metric we can point to is his ability to push a surprising amount of bipartisan legislation through an incredibly divided congress in just 4 years.
Simplest may not be best here. Is Harris the person who is most likely to get people to the polls and vote Dem? Is she someone who can convert independent/undecided voters? etc. IMO those are not easy "yes, absolutely" answers. Does the Democratic party have anyone in the wings who is more likely to win than Harris?
Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to think of a nationally known candidate with super-strong positives that would be a viable alternative. (That's also true for the GOP IMO if somehow Trump was out.)
It's a disgrace that the party that was able to turn Obama from an unknown junior Senior speaking at the 2004 DNC to winning the Presidency 4 years later, now has done zero to promote more candidates over the last 4 years when Biden ran on being a single term President.
Basically, the DNC's options are the people who failed to get through the primaries in 2020 against Biden and maybe Whitmer or Newsom.
I just do not see Harris getting the middle/undecided, and it's 2016 all over again, if not worse, because SCOTUS has the deck stacked if it's even close.
The fundamental problem is that nobody but Biden won the primary. The time to debate over and vote on an alternate has come and gone, and this (along with his decision to run at the last minute in 2020) are things I don’t know I can ever forgive him for.
At this point the VP has the most legitimacy as a successor and given the situation we’re forced into she’s unambiguously the option. That doesn’t make it good, but it makes it better than all the other terrible options that involve a free-for-all between candidates with no opportunity for voters to weigh in.
The best possible outcome at this point is for the establishment to quickly and unanimously get behind Harris. Again, it’s not necessarily a good outcome. But it’s the best available to us thanks to Biden waiting for the last possible moment (again) to come to this realization.
Harris at least has legitimacy as having received votes as the vp, and extra scrutiny given Biden's age. The optics of pushing her out would be tragic.
Not according to Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz [1], Chamath Palihapitiya & David Sacks [2], possibly Zuckerberg [3], and others. And of course Elon, Thiel. Many such cases.
These videos would fit very nicely into an undergraduate course segment on motivated reasoning. As viewers, it's incumbent upon us to determine whether the Musks and the Thiels of the world have our best interests in mind and, if not, whether their support for any particular candidate might reflect that.
Ah, yes, just the people I ask for a sensible objective view on the world.
Like “well, this collection of the weirdest Silicon Valley people available took some time out of their busy schedule of hawking bitcoin or metaverses or magic robots or whatever to give a Very Important Opinion” is _not_ the world’s strongest argument.
> Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.
On the contrary, the processes that anointed Hillary in 2016 and Biden round 2 in 2024 were exactly the kind of "well, it's this person's turn now" decisions that were bad, anti-democratic (lower-case d) choices previously. I'm not looking for a "circular firing squad" but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either.
> ...but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either.
Regardless of what people want (and FWIW I agree that Hilary getting rammed down our throats was highly anti-democratic) at this stage of the game, Harris is the only person who can benefit from Biden's warchest. Barring somebody like Dwayne Johnson deciding to enter politics and stealing the show, Harris is the solitary candidate who is poised to hit the ground running with an adequate campaign today. And with so little time before the election, I think the only choice Democrats have today is to hold their noses and vote.
Part of it is a numbers game. She would get an incumbent bump over other potential candidates. There is hope, and I believe some data showing, she could energize the POC base. This is especially important now because polling was suggesting Trump was growing that area. Fundamentally though, name recognition ends up being meaningful in elections. I’m not advocating one way or another, just sharing why it seems to be an obvious choice for the party. If it helps, who I prefer isn’t being considered, probably because it’s not “their turn”.
They'd rather lose the election than let someone with less seniority; and god forbid let any outsider into the circle. This happened with Hillary and will happen with Harris. It's the worst candidate to pick and a guaranteed loss against Trump.
The Democrats have got it all going for them; both in absolute numbers of votes and also of financial support. Life is interesting...
> the processes that anointed [...] Biden round 2 in 2024
You think it's notably corrupt that... an incumbent president gets to run for re-election? You might argue this was a bad idea. You could argue it's counter to the way the campaign was presented in 2020. But it's hardly surprising; it's literally the way we've done things for hundreds of years!
I liked James Carville's idea of picking maybe eight contenders and having town hall type events to choose the most popular. Game show element to take publicity from Trump and also kind of democratic rather than anointing a connected insider, which of course Trump would then go on about endlessly.
Anything a washed up hack like Carville suggests should be viewed with suspicion. At this point, it has to be Harris. She is also the only person who can use the money from Joe Biden's campaign fund.
> One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman.
In what way? I don't live in the US, so what did I miss? I don't remember Biden doing anything of note (good or bad).
> But he did campaign on a single term.
Biden said that he was running for only a single term, and during this entire second election campaign nobody called him out on that, not even outspoken Trump?
And probably the wrong answer. I don’t see her winning over swing voters. Gretchen Whitmer seems like the best option to me. I’d enjoy watching her debate Trump.
Whitmer far and away best. But she’s had every opportunity to throw her hat in the ring and unfortunately the window for doing so is all but closed by now. She seems genuinely not to want it / lacks the courage to proactively make it happen.
The 2 parties' bases will vote for whoever their candidate is, and their work is just to convince the undecideds. An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. I feel like to win them over, the candidates have to rely on the halo effect, ie. sadly even just on looks. The young and fit-looking Whitmer, or Newsom, seem to be the best candidates. It's shallow, but consider the voters.
Obama's charisma and youth surely helped a lot. Trump is tall and he was a good-looking young man, and his swagger has let him get away with being a total POS for 77-78 years.
Or, hell, Elizabeth Warren. She could beat the shit out of Trump in a debate, and has a list as long as you like of actually fighting for the middle class.
CHIPS act, IR act (infrastructure, jobs...), student loans effort, better social nets for seniors, millions of jobs, much better handling of inflation than the rest of the world, pushing for democracy and freedom.
We can't go back to misogyny, racism, removing freedoms from women, teachers, different people, giving money only to the rich and connected, non-sense diplomacy...
By not stepping down as president, he is totally RBG-ing Harris.
Maybe a resignation will be announced later for maximum impact and tie into some thing ready for Harris to announce presidentially, like some camp david peacing or another 3 states ratifying the ERA.
Dannnnnng. I think it's definitely for the best (probably never should've come to this, reminds me of RBG). And that said I really, really liked his presidency, but, he is undeniably really old.
The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental. I know people in their 90s who are able to speak clearly at any hour of the day...
Speaking clearly has nothing to do with mental fortitude. Tons of things can affect the fluency of speech. We really need to move past the days where we judge people's intelligence and competence based on how well the connections of their brain are able to influence the movement of the vocal cords and the tongue the lips and the jaw.
> The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental.
"When Biden stumbles over words, we question his state of mind; when Trump acts like a deranged street preacher, it’s … well, Tuesday. If Biden had suggested setting up migrants in a fight club,[1] he’d be out of the race already; Trump does it, and the country (as well as many in the media) shrugs. "
> “Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “… I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win; that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
Biden was never the quickest guy (or tongue) in the room. During Obama's term, he was legendary for putting rooms to sleep with plodding, off-topic monologues where he set up irrelevant straw-men and then knocked them down. Obama was, by far, the quicker of the two. Time has probably not improved matters, but it's going a bit far to say Biden's declining sharply. Even in his prime, Biden might have stuttered and stumbled through a debate with somebody as consistently unpredictable and utterly unhinged as Trump.
Is a younger leader better? Possibly. Speaking as a non-American, I have to note that, when Americans vote for a President, they're not just voting for one guy. They're voting for a guy who will select the entire white house staff. Biden surrounded himself with highly competent people with good ideas and they're why he's been an effective President. Obama could have easily done worse if he'd been less lucky with his staff selection. An old president who selects good staff can be effective.
Trump did worse during his previous term and would be objectively worse in his next precisely because he'll surround himself with family and yes-men. When staffing, a good leader tries to make himself the dumbest person in the room. Biden did that. Trump never will.
Case in point: The VP. In a Biden vs Trump contest, it was a very real possibility that either of their VP's would have to take over during their terms. Biden had Harris as his VP, and she's clearly ready to do the job. Trump chose a rookie senator yes-man with a profound lack of principles for his VP. The thought of Vance becoming President in 2026 or 2027 should terrify people.
if decrepitude had anything to do with voter confidence, we would have booted both candidates out after that charade that we called the "presidential debate"
I say this as someone that agrees that Biden should have stepped down earlier (for the 2nd election I mean).
But please, people, do not compare the average person in their 80's to what this man has to do daily.
Just alone entering a war room and giving an order to bomb a place, or watching the raw videos of war (which we luckily don't get access to) is something you don't come back from. This is not an average person, and he was doing OK after all.
However, he objectively got older. That's it. No coming back from that either...
It’s weird that an incoherent Trump never gets called out for his ramblings that run on and on in circles. Yet Biden’s gaffes are blown out of proportion. I wish someone just called out Trump directly and told him to stop the ramblings. But nobody in his circle could do it when he was president, nobody could get him off twitter and so on.
Am I wrong to think that whoever is appointed to Presidency is just a figurehead of the actual administration, and that it really doesn't matter how functional he actually is? I'm not defending or endorsing Biden, but from my eyes we vote for the administration, not for the person.
There was never any risk of me voting for Trump, but when I watched the debate it became abundantly clear that Biden could not win an election. He came off as an extremely frail old man and I had my doubts that he would survive the entire debate, let alone another four years in office.
I'm a pretty left-leaning person and I find Trump to be an overwhelmingly unappealing idiot in general, but even I had to admit that Trump "won" the debate. He was still the moronic walking Markov Chain that he always is, but he at least looked alive.
Love Joe, but 2 minutes into the debate it was clear he couldn't win an election. He was behind, and he needed to come out strong, and somehow he made it worse. Whether or not Kamala can remains to be seen, but at least there's still _potential_ there.
>He was still the moronic walking Markov Chain that he always is, but he at least looked alive.
Off topic but I find this insult(?) a bit funny. Is it supposed to be an insult as in his action / speech are as predictable/determined by current state only, as is Markov chain?
It's an interesting case study in that people's perception of "who won" determines "who won".
However, if you change the criteria to "who had the most favorable impact on undecided voters" then apparently he lost? The news was Trump lost undecided voters from that debate..
So Trump won because everyone thinks he won(including me haha). But what did he win?
That’s just how you do it. It would have been far, far more damaging for him to spend a few weeks going “ah, well, maybe I won’t run”. It always looks a bit silly in retrospect, but total confidence right up until you change direction is just how you have to do politics, in general.
There is no message his campaign could give other than "Biden is running" and have Biden still run - any other message would damage him.
Saying you are considering dropping out would be immediately pounced on, and effectively mean you'd have to drop out. So I don't think there is any signal in the messaging there except that he was probably still seriously considering running.
Readit News
Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)?
E.g., you must be younger than the average life expectancy (currently men: 73yo / female: 79) - while in office.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
The Democrat/Republican party system is what gives incumbents such a lead over challengers. I don't think term limits are the fix, I think we need to change how campaigns are financed - because right now, the parties pick who gets money in downticket races, and incumbents have their own war chests. That leads to challengers being outspent.
I just keep thinking about how the national party rolled over for Dianne Feinstein in the 2018 senate election, even though she lost the support of the state party. No big democrats were willing to drop their support of her, and the national party wasn't going to spend money on a primary/general challenge to a seat that would stay blue.
Senate: 1 Term. 6 years. Not able to then serve in the House. House: 2 Terms. 4 years. Not able to then serve in the Senate. 1 Term House + 1 Term Senate. 8 years total.
Elect any LEGAL Citizen regardless of age.
A whole generation is unwilling to acknowledge their mortality, step aside and make room (although unlike politicians many aren’t because they can’t afford to)
That can't stop an elderly candidate from running third party to spite the eligibility rules, but that's already the case.
It's measurable biological certainty that reaction times as measured in milliseconds and fine motor control degrade with age. Vision and hearing also degrade. The nature of hands on control of flying a plane means there are no ways to compensate for this.
None of this applies to a politician making decision in a time span of hours, days or months and who can delegate tasks as they wish.
the president has entire staffs, including highly qualified generals, bureaucrats, line workers, etc. to drive the ship.
That's a silly argument.
These go hand in hand: our current voting system breaks down if multiple candidates draw votes from each other, but a better voting system would be immune to that failure mode and could give people a free choice of several reasonable candidates without having some of them withdraw and throw their support to others.
The distinguishing and necessary result of democracy, practically unique when compared to any other form of government, is that it provides a nonviolent means to remove aggressively incompetent people from office.
The US has suffered for the lack of information. How can this be addressed, in the next 20 years, is a much more interesting question.
I meant that if the voters don't want an 82 year old president, they can just not vote for him.
I did not talk about primaries.
https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/03/20/chair-nikki-fried-defe...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-democratic-challenger...
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/12/08/dean-ph...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate
Max age should be retirement age - max duration of the term.
In my opinion career politicians should be ended altogether but that's another matter.
So why can't I pick a candidate that is under 30, or born overseas?
The rules make no logical sense and need updating.
Democrats didnt get a chance to do that with Biden this time, there was no primary.
So the Framers figured nobody on the cusp of senility would run, and if he did, he wouldn’t get the votes. Because both would be ridiculous.
Especially considering that the only democracy they envisioned was the House, since everybody else was to be picked by nondemocratic means (essentially then, by an aristocracy, who would surely be wise enough to make a good decision).
Credit where credit is due, it actually seemed obvious to Benjamin Franklin that such a thing was inevitable .. hence the need for close attention to the machinery of government and regularly updating the constitution.
See:
"and can only end in despotism". Hmmm.And as others mentioned, this is a bipartisan stance, so it's not a matter of political leanings. Old people represent most of our voter-base and thus most of our represenatives.
I have less problems with boomers in general than a lot of people do, but honestly this is one of those things that's going to improve as time goes on and boomers die off.
age does not measure mental proficiency.
Because age is no indication of fitness for any kind of activity or role. It sure would be nice, if persons with high responsibilities would periodically undergo a fitness test. I'd think the founding fathers saw the election process as such fitness test and the electoral college as the judge of fitness of the presidential candidate.
This is a generalization that overlooks the nuanced reality of human aging. Physical and cognitive functions become more pronounced in advanced age, such as above 70 or 80. Sure, age alone does not universally determine fitness for activities or roles, but it is a very important factor to consider. I am fine with fitness tests.
Do we live on different planets. Most young people are able, most people over 80 will have mobility and/or cognition issues.
The DNC is at fault for selected him as the candidate.
My opinion is if the voters are happy to send a geriatric congressman to Washington to sleep through meetings that's fine. But he shouldn't be chairing committees and other offices.
That said Reagan was suffering the beginnings of dementia during the last year or two of his presidency and the world didn't end.
Objective qualifications are much simpler. We could argue for months about whether a president is competent, but it takes like 7 seconds to decide whether they’re older than some arbitrary bar.
All these anecdotal superhuman tales fail the smell test.
There is this hyped longitudinal study, but it doesn't say what roles these "superagers" were in, only that they had slightly better cognitive outcomes than their peers.
No one has cognitive capacity or neuronal volume of a 35 year old at 65, not to speak of 95.
It is delusional to think anyone can escape the effects of aging at this point in time.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/44/25/e2059232024
[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-does-a-presidential-...
That'd be a good way to force the government into caring about improving health and extending life expectancy.
I always recommend folks read George Washington's farewell address and it's discussion of political parties.
That likelihood increases with age, and even the most well-informed population does not have the ability to withdraw their consent if it does.
But all seriousness aside, what makes you think that matters? I'm not going to vote for someone because they're old, in fact to some extent the opposite--I'd rather have a 50 or so year old as president. Are there polls that say old people vote for old people just because they're old?
in reality, the advantages of the incumbent in an era of safe districts, where the real election is a primary with poor turnout composed mostly of older voters, are almost insurmountable.
and we are currently witnessing what happens when someone hits an age limit the national electorate is unwilling to accept.
Deleted Comment
In fact there is an age limit for an American president. They should be >= 35 y.o. We need to augment it with an upper limit. My choice would be <= 75 y.o.
IMO, on evidence for when the brain starts to age in a significant way, and supplemented individually based on a robust battery of tests that represent cognitive fitness (something more demanding than n-back and stroop tests).
Unfortunately, I think fantasies about living forever and politics around ageism will prevent this from ever being implemented in our lifetimes.
Life expectancy is also an irrelevant measurement for this
Deleted Comment
> Putting politics aside …
I admire your optimism in saying that then putting a political question to the room.
In a democracy we let the pleb decide if they want a 81 year old as president (or a 18 year old). It works as intended. Putting age limits on fixed-term elected officials would go against the spirit of free elections.
The "pleb" had no say whatsoever in having only Trump or Biden as a choice.
Party elitists chose the horses in the race.
Further, there are many more democracies than just the USofA, rules vary and you don't see the same lack of choice in some of these other democracies.
If you wanted to limit it by "life expectancy" you'd want to limit it by the statistical expected remaining years of life at the candidate's current age.
For example, while the overall life expectancy in the US is around 73, for an individual at age 50 it's around 80[1].
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/
Edit: Even if you pick the "right" life expectancy it's still pretty weird. You want the candidate to "only" have a hypothetical 50% chance of dying due to old age before their last day in office?
Then imagine something like COVID-19 happens again. Now a candidate on the cusp of being ineligible is suddenly ineligible because the latest life expectancy statistics shifted?
There's a reason political systems tend to prefer boring and predictable arbitrary limits.
Small but important note, you picked life expectancy for males, not all individuals. For females the life expectancy at birth is over 79 years. The average life expectancy for someone in the US without specifying their sex at birth is north of 76 years. And life expectancy is trending upwards and has for a long time as we eliminate more early mortalities.
Think of the many who through their 80s were cogent, even masterful. Examples include Warren Buffett, John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus, George Soros, Henry Kissinger, Clint Eastwood, and with women it’s probably even more common, and we can look to Nancy Pelosi, or indeed my own grandmother. Whatever memory slowdown there may be is compensated for by depth of experience.
Then there are those who lose it in their sixties.
In many ways it seems that ageism is one of the last acceptable prejudices.
In Biden’s case, I was struck by the difference in him before and after his son Beau’s death. It seemed like he never recovered. Charisma gone. Eyes turned beady and body stiff. Despite that he was an active and successful president (should be admitted no matter one’s politics), though unpopular.
That’s why I purposely linked to the official US government Actuarial Table.
Biden is 81.
The statistics state that an 81yo will only live 7-more-years.
When a presidential term (4-years) is more than half of your remaining life, the margin of error to die while in office is extreme high.
—-
Another way to look at it is …
The min age for POTUS is 35yo.
The Actuarial Table state that a 35yo will live 40-more-years (to age 75).
Then set age 75 to be the max age
I would want to limit it by social security retirement age. I don’t really know any 70 year olds who are “all there.”
Dead Comment
Read as "who knows how much more entrenched future politicians will be able to be? who knows how many more favors they will owe, how many more donors will have their ear?"
Edit : Typo in TSMC
Why does the US in specific have such drawn-out campaigns? Earlier this week, I saw a pundit commenting that 4 months before the election is too short notice to pick a new candidate. But there's countries in Europe that announce elections, pick candidates, do the campaigns, go to the pools, do the counts, and have the electees take office, all in less than 4 months (see e.g. Great Britain recently).
Obviously, in great Britain's recent election, nobody knew there was going to be an election until it was announced, so there was no way to jump the gun.
Technically we only vote for the representative in our local constituency, but who is going to end up PM is a big factor. We know what the options are before the election is announced: the current PM and the Leader of the Opposition (although in theory the leader of one of the smaller parties is also possible). Therefore no need for a primary process.
1. Republican primaries
2. Democratic primaries
3. General election
The drawn-out part is the primaries, part of which are parties trying to get their candidates in the news for a while. Once the parties officially pick a candidate — July this year for the Republicans, August for Democrats — the election proceeds on a pretty quick timetable.
The UK doesn't do primary elections to the same extent, nor do most parliamentary democracies. So they're faster, since there's just a general election.
The concern about Kamala's "short" time to make a case for electing her to the presidency is that she didn't get to make use of the ~year+ news cycles of the primaries, and will only have the general election to convince voters. (There's also a specter of it being "undemocratic" since party nominees are typically elected by the party's voters, rather than chosen by officials, but since she was Biden's VP in 2020, and he won the election, IMO this is overblown: the entire point of a VP is to take over if the president is unable to function, which is what happened in this case. Her claim to democratic election is that voters chose the Biden/Harris ticket in a general election, which is pretty reasonable.)
In Canada we know who the next 2 primary candidates were a year ago and elections not until next yr. That's almost always how it works, whether it's formalized or not.
Dead Comment
Most other countries have much shorter election periods. I for one would love if ours was shorter. Our politicians spend more time campaigning and raising money than they do governing
Unless you’re suggesting the billionaires made him senile that wasn’t his undoing. He was a decent president, and accomplished some nice things, but his undoing is the fact that he can no longer speak in full sentences without folks holding their breath.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Has it ever been done?
Would it work to attract the center/swing vote, or more likely to be a negative?
I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this.
> Has it ever been done?
Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the VP came from the opposing party[1]. This didn't work particularly well in practice, which is why nobody remembers the 12th Amendment :-)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_Unite...
?
I thought the core of the party is establishment centrist gerontophiles. If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.
I am quite liberal. I'd vote for this a million times before I'd consider Trump as a president.
Deleted Comment
I read something a few years ago that said moderates/non-affiliated make up the majority of voters with only a smaller percentage on left and right tied to the parties (somewhere maybe in 15% to 20% range on each side, can't remember exactly).
So it seems like a good mix of moderate could possibly win, especially when the other candidate is so polarizing.
Most of the folks who say they’re unaffiliated or moderates or open to voting for either party in fact vote exactly like a self-reported partisan. They just don’t like the label.
Lots of crappy reporting doesn’t differentiate between self-reported swing/moderates and true swing.
GOTV matters more. Do your people show up at the polls?
It's just the label and tribalism I reject, not their stances or some desire for a mythical "middle path".
I have no idea how common this is in the "unaffiliated base" but I'd be willing to wager it's fairly common.
They’ve spent nearly a decade isolating themselves in an algorithm fueled mirror room, while disassociating from everyone that doesn't already agree with them 100%
instead of any color coded “wave” occurring despite their recurring delusions, there’s gridlock in the senate, no filibuster proof majority, they’ve lost affiliation and independents are the largest political affiliation in the country now with almost zero representation
Yes Lincoln’s re-election was a unity ticket that included Lincoln (Republican) and Johnson (pro-war Democrat)
Romney would be an interesting choice. I remember this[0] article in the globe where a columnist who dragged him during his presidential run apologized after seeing how bad things could be.
Like you say though, hard to imagine any party conjuring the courage to do something like that even if they thought it was wise.
[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/07/20/sorry-mitt-romn...
They would if they sincerely believed that losing this election would doom democracy. If they nominate a straight polarized political ticket instead of one that can actually unify everyone who doesn't want to see a second Trump term then we know that they don't actually believe their own apocalyptic rhetoric.
Labour also picked Jeremy Corbyn an election back. Ultimately the rest of the country didn't want to vote for him.
A mixed ticket isn't going to align them better.
I have seen some videos of Trump voters who are claiming that JD Vance is a traitor to the white race for marrying a non-white. And their kids have non-white names.
They are quite upset about this. Some of them are so disgusted by this that they might not vote at all. One can only hope.
Trump doesn’t care about the budget, doesn’t care about protecting our allies, doesn’t care about abortion. I’d wager he doesn’t care about immigration, either, except as a way to get votes.
In practice, Romney is 77 years old and is ready to retire - and think how often age has come up as a factor in the presidential race recently. Romney isn't running for reelection, but if he had wanted his senate seat for another 6 years, I am quite certain it would have been his. So ultimately, I don't think Romney would go for it, simply because he wants to spend more time with his (large) family.
McCain/Lieberman almost happened in 2008.
If my only two choices were McCain/Lieberman vs McCain/Palin, I would hold my nose and vote for the second.
If you want to bolster the ticket, get someone that people already like. Hell, get Obama or Sanders to come back as the VP.
Sanders could, but I think he has the double issue of his two prior failed campaigns - a lot of his more motivated voters from previous times might have a "boy who cried wolf" reaction a third campaign. He also doesn't really disarm the "too old" criticism, even if all evidence points to him aging a lot better than either Biden or Trump so far - Biden 2020 vs Biden 2024 would give a lot of people pause even if Sanders gave the world's best debate performance at this point.
There's also the fact that Sanders has been actually pretty influential in Biden's presidency, which I think is why he came out so strongly in favour of Biden a few days ago.
None are likely, maybe Liz Cheney the most though (imagine if her father campaigned for her).
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/opinion/biden-west-wing-a...
McCain considered Lieberman
And theoretically no reason it couldn't happen other than both parties definitely not being on board with it.
Romney is politically obsolete. He serves no further purpose in American politics.
E.g. the current administration would be Biden and Trump.
I couldn’t imagine that working today, as divided as the parties have become (especially in the last 20 years).
[1] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/s...
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.
I imagine those around him were doing all the presidenting, and perhaps they're more effective without a functioning president to get in their way.
Some might then point out things like the border were signs of ineffectiveness, but actually, if you reasonably assume it was intentional, then they were exceptionally effective.
He did not really do this.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-0...
It’s definitely one of those thing that make people like me, who want good faith honesty in politics angry, because “he didn’t actually say it” politics is why gotcha politics exists.
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Blue=good Red=bad
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Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to think of a nationally known candidate with super-strong positives that would be a viable alternative. (That's also true for the GOP IMO if somehow Trump was out.)
Basically, the DNC's options are the people who failed to get through the primaries in 2020 against Biden and maybe Whitmer or Newsom.
I just do not see Harris getting the middle/undecided, and it's 2016 all over again, if not worse, because SCOTUS has the deck stacked if it's even close.
No idea if he’d be interested but Mark Kelly would be a great candidate to try and win independents.
At this point the VP has the most legitimacy as a successor and given the situation we’re forced into she’s unambiguously the option. That doesn’t make it good, but it makes it better than all the other terrible options that involve a free-for-all between candidates with no opportunity for voters to weigh in.
The best possible outcome at this point is for the establishment to quickly and unanimously get behind Harris. Again, it’s not necessarily a good outcome. But it’s the best available to us thanks to Biden waiting for the last possible moment (again) to come to this realization.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqIZGXWUpU
[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgWFwVRGcf4
Like “well, this collection of the weirdest Silicon Valley people available took some time out of their busy schedule of hawking bitcoin or metaverses or magic robots or whatever to give a Very Important Opinion” is _not_ the world’s strongest argument.
On the contrary, the processes that anointed Hillary in 2016 and Biden round 2 in 2024 were exactly the kind of "well, it's this person's turn now" decisions that were bad, anti-democratic (lower-case d) choices previously. I'm not looking for a "circular firing squad" but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either.
Regardless of what people want (and FWIW I agree that Hilary getting rammed down our throats was highly anti-democratic) at this stage of the game, Harris is the only person who can benefit from Biden's warchest. Barring somebody like Dwayne Johnson deciding to enter politics and stealing the show, Harris is the solitary candidate who is poised to hit the ground running with an adequate campaign today. And with so little time before the election, I think the only choice Democrats have today is to hold their noses and vote.
The Democrats have got it all going for them; both in absolute numbers of votes and also of financial support. Life is interesting...
You think it's notably corrupt that... an incumbent president gets to run for re-election? You might argue this was a bad idea. You could argue it's counter to the way the campaign was presented in 2020. But it's hardly surprising; it's literally the way we've done things for hundreds of years!
2) republican candidate considered a crook
3) it's in Chicago
Whatever they do, don't do what the DNC did in 1968 again, lets try to at least make new mistakes this time I guess?
Also, I just read that Harris has money pouring in. The donors may effectively decide this before anyone else can get traction.
> But he did campaign on a single term.
Biden said that he was running for only a single term, and during this entire second election campaign nobody called him out on that, not even outspoken Trump?
There's more; that's just the first two years.
And probably the wrong answer. I don’t see her winning over swing voters. Gretchen Whitmer seems like the best option to me. I’d enjoy watching her debate Trump.
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Obama's charisma and youth surely helped a lot. Trump is tall and he was a good-looking young man, and his swagger has let him get away with being a total POS for 77-78 years.
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Seems like America has been going backwards for a long time.
Maybe a resignation will be announced later for maximum impact and tie into some thing ready for Harris to announce presidentially, like some camp david peacing or another 3 states ratifying the ERA.
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"When Biden stumbles over words, we question his state of mind; when Trump acts like a deranged street preacher, it’s … well, Tuesday. If Biden had suggested setting up migrants in a fight club,[1] he’d be out of the race already; Trump does it, and the country (as well as many in the media) shrugs. "
* Tom Nichols, https://archive.ph/XcMbP / https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/07/the-...
> “Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “… I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win; that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
* https://archive.ph/cQ4KA / https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/22/trump-chr...
And it's not like Trump is that much younger than Biden.
Is a younger leader better? Possibly. Speaking as a non-American, I have to note that, when Americans vote for a President, they're not just voting for one guy. They're voting for a guy who will select the entire white house staff. Biden surrounded himself with highly competent people with good ideas and they're why he's been an effective President. Obama could have easily done worse if he'd been less lucky with his staff selection. An old president who selects good staff can be effective.
Trump did worse during his previous term and would be objectively worse in his next precisely because he'll surround himself with family and yes-men. When staffing, a good leader tries to make himself the dumbest person in the room. Biden did that. Trump never will.
Case in point: The VP. In a Biden vs Trump contest, it was a very real possibility that either of their VP's would have to take over during their terms. Biden had Harris as his VP, and she's clearly ready to do the job. Trump chose a rookie senator yes-man with a profound lack of principles for his VP. The thought of Vance becoming President in 2026 or 2027 should terrify people.
Exactly zero of them have the demanding job of a president.
But please, people, do not compare the average person in their 80's to what this man has to do daily.
Just alone entering a war room and giving an order to bomb a place, or watching the raw videos of war (which we luckily don't get access to) is something you don't come back from. This is not an average person, and he was doing OK after all.
However, he objectively got older. That's it. No coming back from that either...
What a word, TIL
At least now we’ll likely not have both major party candidates be too old for office.
I'm a pretty left-leaning person and I find Trump to be an overwhelmingly unappealing idiot in general, but even I had to admit that Trump "won" the debate. He was still the moronic walking Markov Chain that he always is, but he at least looked alive.
Off topic but I find this insult(?) a bit funny. Is it supposed to be an insult as in his action / speech are as predictable/determined by current state only, as is Markov chain?
However, if you change the criteria to "who had the most favorable impact on undecided voters" then apparently he lost? The news was Trump lost undecided voters from that debate..
So Trump won because everyone thinks he won(including me haha). But what did he win?
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Even Manifold politics had him at 20% two weeks ago. And 10% for the past week.
Saying you are considering dropping out would be immediately pounced on, and effectively mean you'd have to drop out. So I don't think there is any signal in the messaging there except that he was probably still seriously considering running.
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