Age and term limits, please.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
225 points (96.7% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7220 readers
235 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
No "please." Just do. The People have spoken.
Sane people have spoken. I'm sure way too many people would be willing to keep him in office even after this.
I disagree about age limits, but I absolutely agree with term limits. I think the latter will fix the former.
Could you explain your age limit issue? The man clearly has an age related medical problem, potentially dementia. And let's also look at Dianne Feinstein.
I've met 70+ yos that are perfectly capable of running large organizations, and with medicine getting better, we may see more older people that are still capable of governing.
Instead of testing for age, we should test for mental acuity. I think both Biden and McConnell would fail that test, and probably more.
I don’t like the man’s politics, and I think it’s terrible that he’s been allowed to hold office this long with his deteriorating health.
That said, I also find it so sad to see any person reaching a point where their cognitive abilities are this unpredictably impaired. Sudden freeze-ups and clear moments of detachment remind me too much of my father in-law and conversations I’ve had with him as his dementia develops.
I agree, aging is fucked up. My objection, not just about McConnell himself but elderly people in politics in general, is there's this cool thing called retirement. It's the perfect way to enjoy your older years. Perhaps he could have tried that before now.
Everyone: You're malfunctioning, please take a break from fucking people over.
Turtle: Newp.
I think that the issue is two fold here. He won't retire, and people keep voting for him.
Sure, people in KY like having a powerful member of the Senate be from their state and evidently he likes being a powerful member of the Senate.
That was a really satisfying video, in a morbid kind of staring at a car accident kind of way.
Who keeps restarting him? Goddamnit. Stop it!
Damn, he looks old in that video. It strikes me as kind of cruel that our political system so strongly incentivizes seniority, both for the young fresh politicians who're just getting started and the career politicians who feel like they can't retire because they need to justify dumping the best decades of their lives slowly shimmying up that totem-pole.
FWIW: I do think that connections and experience really do matter for good governance, but no other industry pushes things this far. It's messed up and it's messing everything else up, too.
IDK, I don't think connections are that important, we should instead be reducing barriers to collaboration. If politicians had term limits, they'd need to figure out a different way of selecting leaders and getting information they need from other parts of government.
The main benefit I see from longer term government workers is that they ought to know the law better, but at a certain point, they seem to learn more ways around it.
I feel that's a reasonable perspective to have and I'm receptive to it. My main thinking against it is that coercing collaboration is really hard at a systems level -- I'm reminded of that one time Steve Jobs tried to make it so that the new Pixar building would have just one bathroom facility because he felt like that would lead to more people spontaneously bumping into each other.
That's just a flowery way of saying that I don't have any fundamentally better ideas, though. Traditional political greases like trading favors & porkbarreling are something I'm willing to settle for so long as they don't remain the exclusive domain of geriatrics. With that being said, I am by no means an expert and I'd love to hear more talk about alternatives
My preferred approach is to break the two-party system, which can happen in a couple ways:
- end FPTP voting - implement something like STAR or Approval voting instead
- proportional representation in the House - i.e. no more House districts, your chosen party would instead get X seats based on percent of votes; who gets elected would be chosen by a primary vote (i.e. Approval voting statewide, top X get House seats)
If no party has a majority, parties would be forced to form coalitions, which could lead to more collaboration instead of the constant push/pull we have now where parties often wait until they have control again so they don't need to compromise.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Senator Mitch McConnell froze up for more than 30 seconds on Wednesday during a public appearance before he was escorted away, the second such incident in a little more than a month, a clip from an NBC News affiliate showed.
McConnell, 81, was responding to questions from reporters after an event with the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in Covington when he froze up, staring into space and not responding to reporters and others nearby.
After being approached by a second person, McConnell began talking again but needed reporters' questions repeated to him by an aide and gave minimal answer in response.
Representatives for McConnell were not immediately available for comment.
The incident was eerily similar to one that took place in the Senate at the end of July, when McConnell also froze in the middle of a press conference and had to be led away, returning several minutes later to finish taking questions.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Richard Cowan in Washington; editing by Scott Malone, Caitlin Webber and Susan Heavey)
The original article contains 174 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 1%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
thanks for saving 2 words I guess
I am wondering what words it saved and why we did not need those words, but, apparently, we needed all the other ones.
Also, saying that it saved 2 words took more than 2 words. So, it actually added words.
Now that I read both of your comments, the bot actually cost me a lot more time than it saved me.
I kinda want to go find the two elusive words.. 😂
I checked, it's literally the first two words "[Republican US] Senator..."
AI wordsearch
Still a good boy <3
Everybody looking forward to this man's departure don't realize what joy the great state of Kentucky has waiting in the wings. As bad as he is, he's actually put a stop to some of the MAGA world's worst nonsense. I'm not entirely confident that crazy is better than evil.
People already out here white washing Mitch McConnell, and the dude isn't even dead yet...
He is the head of the legislative branch of the GOP. He is the literal leader of the party. That means he's responsible for the direction of that party.
And no, he isn't doing anything meaningful to stop MAGA from infecting (again, that's literally his job) the GOP. He played a direct part in creating this beast, I couldn't really care less if he's lost control, or now pretends he bears no responsibility.
And that's not even including how he poisoned the Supreme Court for at least a generation.
If objective evil exists, this man is it. Do yourself a favor and just stop trying to excuse this man's words, actions, and behavior.
I hope he suffers even a fraction of the pain he has caused others before he does us all a favor and fucking dies.
I'm not sure what part of me calling this guy "evil" is excusing his behavior. I'm just saying it could be worse and soon will be. Don't go looking for drama.
I'm not looking for drama. You defended Mitch McConnell, and said that he's actually "put a stop" to some MAGA shit and that's just laughably absurd
At this point, we all know anything the GOP puts forward will be worse than the last. The nice thing about ol'Turtle kicking-it is that his replacement will be a freshman without the power to control the Senate that turtle did.
They're not going to replace the Senate Minority/Majority Leader with a freshman. Why would they do that?
The senator from Kentucky that will take his place, will probably be a freshman, but it's not like there is some rule that the Senator of Kentucky is the party leade on the national scale.
They will replace him with another old white dude that's been in politics for 60+ years.
I guess I should clarify what I meant. His SEAT will be occupied by a freshman, which means that Kentucky will now be represented by a freshman Senator with no power as opposed to a Senate leader with way too much power. In other words, Kentucky is fucked as soon as he croaks.
Lizardman accidentally dropped the controller...again.
Sorry for afk guys I had to let the dog out
Signal 11 Segmentation Fault often indicates failing hardware.
circling the drain
Get the buckets of piss ready. Mitch is soon for the ditch.