Even though Mamdani is turning out to be much better than I had expected (he seems to largely satisfy his base with symbolic victories and fights with the rich and powerful in nyc, while moderating on actual policy), I remain skeptical of Platner. Platner seems like an actual stupid person in a way that Mamdani wasn’t. I always thought Mamdani was a smart, high IQ but naive and inexperienced person, who could learn on the job. I’m not so sure about Platner.
As a moderate, if leftists want me to overlook their ideology, at least put up a decent candidate so I don’t have to swallow both ideological and personalistic flaws. Candidate quality matters.
For what it's worth, I had never heard of the skull nazi symbol before the Platner story broke. That doesn't mean that HE didn't know, but it is at least plausible.
That being said, I would never get a tattoo of something that I did not research first.
If I were to guess, he probably didn’t know when he got it but found out later and never bothered to get rid of it. I don’t buy the story that he just found out. But again that supports my claim that he’s an irresponsible idiot, not an actual Nazi.
That's understandable, because you didn't spend 18 years seeing the symbol on a daily basis. Anyone in that circumstance who's minimally observant - to popular movies, books, news, etc. - would eventually recognize it, and indeed, his comments on multiple threads proved that he knew the symbol's precise meaning by 2019 at the latest. So the primary issue isn't the initial act (though I agree it's pretty foolish to not research it, either before or immediately after). The primary issue is he's lying about his awareness, and he spent many years not caring enough to bother getting it removed until he was forced.
I will say though a senator basically doesn’t do anything besides vote on bills and Platner is going to probably vote party line. I would have much greater concerns if he was running for an executive position (mayor, governor, president) where he’s responsible for day to day stuff and directly responsible delivering outcomes. I don’t blame Dems who either choose to vote for him or against him, they’re both understandable positions imo
Even boiling the role down to its most bare-minimum duty (which I think leaves out an awful lot), I'm not so sure how much confidence we can have in even that; the guy has virtually no track record on which to judge. We're basically being asked to trust him for six years based on... speeches.
Well I’m a moderate so if leftists want me to overlook the ideology, at least put up a decent candidate so I don’t have to swallow both ideological and personalistic flaws. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, I voted for Mamdani and so far, besides minor complaints, I’m okay with him. Platner hasn’t even tried to reassure his skeptics.
Saying things like “Platner hasn’t even tried to reassure his skeptics”, and repeatedly calling him an idiot shows me you are far more interested in straw man arguments than actually engaging with his beliefs and policy ideas (which are very easy to find with even the slightest bit of effort). This is the same tactic you will see MAGA employing until November because their worst case scenario is actually having to address these issues head on.
Entering a US Senate race knowing for years that he had a giant SS tattoo (comments on multiple 2019 threads prove this), then further waiting to get it covered until it inevitably became public, makes him a massive political idiot. We shouldn't need to get into policies; he's an unqualified and tactless vehicle for policy from the outset.
I'd also categorize the majority of what I've heard as pretty simplistic feel-good sentiments bording on platitudes. I've yet to hear a deep point that made me go "wow, what a surprisingly wise observation, or clever, nuanced response." It seems to me as though he (alongside the team that recruited him mere weeks ahead of his campaign launch) is just reading the room for what Democrats want to hear... which makes me doubt how genuine his stances are. Normally, we could use a candidate's extensive prior record to judge for a position as consequential as a six-year term in a national body of just 100 members. With Platner, there's virtually nothing to go on.
And yes, he has repeatedly met good-faith skepticism of his tattoo lies and problematic posts with obfuscation, following hollow apologies with much louder dismissals of us as bad-faith Mills / Schumer / DNC establishment supporters.
He didn't get it removed; he got it covered by additional ink. Which, of course he did... once the public reveal forced him. But no, that's not reassuring his skeptics; reassuring would be owning up to the fact that he knew the tattoo's meaning for years prior, and not following his hollow apologies by dismissing critics as bad-faith Mills supporters.
It's very odd to see, within my lifetime, Nazis going from the stock villains in movies and TV shows to their fans and apologists becoming mainstream political actors. I doubt that anybody would have predicted that circa 1980, but maybe somebody did.
Its not just the shadow of Joe Biden. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (not a 'Democratic politician' but still) and Ted Kennedy are further examples of septuagenarians and octogenarians that refused to retire and ended up costing the party and, I would argue, the country dearly. It likely extends past elected officials too as 'Boomers' in do many aspects of society remain firmly in place and crowd out the generations behind them.
In 1980, 5% of Congress was aged 70 or older. Today it's 25%. This is why people hate boomers. In the job market exists a glut boomers that lived paycheck to paycheck on a high salary that can't afford to retire, and stay in their roles way longer than expected. While young people are priced out of homes.
Right. On the other side, a problem is Clarence Thomas, whom we badly need to retire and let Trump appoint someone younger --- say, 35. (Kidding. 45 would be okay.)
You're not wrong. But Alito is over 80 as well. If Dems win the Senate in Nov, the right could be down two SCOTUS seats before the end of Trump's term unless one of them retires at the end of this term (which would be smart)
Amen. I hope Alito thinks seriously about this and does the right thing! What, 80??? Darn. He seems to be doing fine mentally, but you can't fight Mother Nature and he should think of our future, IMO, which is not going to include him. I don't suppose Clarence Thomas is up to that kind of thinking, but Alito could properly withdraw before November. And he may. They all must have noticed how annoyed the left was with Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she supposed she would live forever despite the cancer and recurring hospitalization, and correctly so.
For god’s sake, get the fuck out of the way you old geezers! I am 72 and I loathe the ‘energy’ of Chuck “Mildly Miffed Max” Schumer and Hakeem “Oh, my, we must do something someday” Jeffries. Gimme Talarico or Plantner or of course AOC! Old people need to step down. Grassley looks like he died two years ago and arguably Mitch McConnell did die several months ago.
Chuck Grassley is sort of 92 ------ but I think he is peppy and able and in great shape. It DOES happen, and seems to have in this case; I hope both of us (and all of us here) are as lucky in age as he has been.
Henry Kissinger was still writing books (2, IIRC) at 99 and 100. Maybe not great books ---- but there are a lot of not great books; he might have done that anyway.
Still, you could be right. I hate to be ageist, however. People should keep being who they are as long as they can.
To some degree, demographics is destiny, so as a GenX-er, it doesn't surprise me too much that the age of a majority of candidates is undergoing a shift from Boomers to Millennials (originally called "Echo Boomers").
The number of Baby Boomers far exceeded those of GenX, and their children substantially outnumbered GenX, as well. So basically, the Boomers held office until their advanced age became a public issue, and then the next-most-populous generation took over (or is about to).
Been saying this since the 90s; Generation X (my cohort) was too small to shove aside the Boomers hard enough. We've had to wait til they were literally dying off and that means policy over the last 40 years didn't shift to meet the needs of the incoming generations. We can see the downsides of that now as younger groups have fewer or no children since the economy and infrastructure failed us. Things we've been talking about last 10 years we should have noticed since the early 2000's but since GenX was too small nobody cared to notice.
I am born ‘87, so a Millennial, but always loved the Gen X though because they were the cooler older classmen, siblings, and cousins of my generation.
Blaming everything on Boomer rhetoric is overplayed, and that’s not what you and Nate are doing. However, listening to my Boomer parents/aunts/uncles and the disconnect between how they see the world and political issues than my generation is stark.
Also, there was a stereotype during the Obama admin of the senior citizens of that generation being brain washed by Fox News. It feels like now instead of the stereotype of having an out of touch conservative grandparent, we have out of touch liberal parents/grandparents (depending on your age). To me they are a bit too self righteous.
Of course your personal "out of touch" slice of relatives might not overlap those voters, but the Faux News is still strong enough to swing an election.
Gen-Xers have been the strongest Republican voting bloc, especially the older half of Gen X. They came of age with Reagan so the preferences were baked in.
You have no clue what you are talking about; I'm GenX and when I was in college there were frequent demonstrations against Reagan era policy. Your comment is offensive and reductive.
No one said that EVERY SINGLE Gen-X person is a Republican. I know such protests existed.
But polling bears out that as a whole people in the Gen-X age cohort have been the most Republican group. Very specifically, it's the older X voters who are most heavily Republican; younger Gen-X votes a little more Democratic (probably because they came of age with Clinton).
I'd be happy to round up some of my GenX peers and run a quiz show against any of the younger crowd. We all know colleges and high schools have dumbed down requirements and that happened more under Obama than anyone else in my lifetime. I voted for the guy twice, but it's just a measurable fact. A degree today is worth less than one earned 25 years ago.
Your belief that kids that grew up in the 80s under Reagan must be stupider and 'therefore they vote Republican' is a better indicator of your lack of education than anyone who went to school back then.
Boomers parents saw this one coming. Probably worse than they Imagined. Used to work when greatest and Gen x could outvote boomers but now we just gotta wait and then clean up their "legacy."
Would love to see a similar graph for the GOP. I think the most telling thing about this graph is how tightly boomer Democrats are holding onto power instead of mentoring the next generation.
…as the graph explicitly states, the age shift is happening because of younger Dems challenging older Dems in the primaries, not because older Dems are retiring and passing the torch.
Forget age: Platner is not fit to be in the Senate. I think this says a LOT more about how Democratic voters are becoming more populist, more like Republicans, than it does about age
Funny that this is happening just as corporate America moves the other way. The average age at S&P 500 CEO appointment has risen from about 48 in 2000 to 55 today (NBER working paper by Kecht, Lizzeri, and Saidi). Boards say they need generalists with longer career paths. Voters apparently disagree about politicians. One of these groups is going to look wrong in ten years.
The closest historical parallel is the Watergate Babies of 1974—87 House freshmen under 40, knocking off committee chairmen they considered too old and too entrenched. Tom Downey was 25. The class shaved roughly two decades off the average age of House Democrats. Platner fits the archetype: outsider, anti-establishment, replacing a 78-year-old.
The irony is that the Boomers and near-Boomers who rode that wave into power then pulled the ladder up behind them. Pat Leahy stayed until 2023—48 years. Waxman and Miller did 40. They got their generational turnover in their 30s and then spent half a century making sure no one else got one. That's exactly why it has to happen again now, and why it has to be this disruptive to happen at all.
The NFL went through the same shift on a compressed timeline. The Sean McVay effect dropped the average head coach age from 53.4 in 2015 to 47.7 by 2024. The logic was the same too: better to be a year early on the next McVay than a year late. The catch is that nobody has actually shown a correlation between coach age and team performance. The youth movement was a bet on pattern-matching that may or may not pay out.
Even the Vatican is sort of in on it. Leo XIV at 69 was treated as the youthful choice after Francis (76 at election) and Benedict (78). But the long-run trend in papal age is still upward—average age at death has risen about seven years since the 18th century. Global gerontocracy is broadly winning; the Democratic primary electorate is one of the few constituencies actively pushing back.
It's the greatly increased lifespans, I think. 70 now is hardly 70 in 1950! Now, 70 is just getting started. However, if people are showing age-related problems they should be a lot easier to remove from office than they are. These congressional offices are just corporations, that hire a LOT of young people who don't want their principal to retire. Congress: best nursing home in the country, I read once.
As a younger Gen-X Dem voter all i can say is thank fucking god. The boomers have had way more than their fair share of political power, to say the least
The statement about platner’s “poor tattoo choice” make me question the writers partisanship or judgement. Lets see, platner also wondered if blacks are good tippers, said women who get drunk shouldn’t complain about being raped, that he learned to understand gays by listening to them sing show tunes and posted a number of other non-progressive- maybe even reactionary - comments. It’s so odd he’s beloved by progressives. Reminds me of another senate candidate - John fetterman.
Fetterman is great. He's pro-Israel, not afraid to disagree with the Dems when they're wrong, speaks out against wokeness, and is totally authentic.
Most of Platner's other comments were fine or taken out of context - you've completedly misquoted or misinterpreted many of them.
That said, none of his comments matter when the guy **has a Nazi tattoo.** That should be disqualifying.
He'll always be the guy with the Nazi tattoo. Whatever he says, whatever he does, wherever he goes. He's the guy with the Nazi tattoo. It'll be in his obituary.
Fetterman might be great for Israel but he's a terrible Senator for the Commonwealth of PA. This mofo cheering on a pointless war of choice with Iran while gas in the Philly suburbs just hit $4.40. We're all concerned about skyrocketing cost of living and he's using terms like TDS to describle opposing spending $400M in taxpayer dollars on Trump's ridiculous ballroom. Authentic my ass he's as phony as his hero in the WH.
Can't WAIT to vote against him in the '28 primary if he hasn't switched parties by then.
I think he's a great senator. The war against Iran is necessary, and if the US Navy exists for any reason it is there for freedom of navigation. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is an act of war that the world cannot allow.
It's not worth anything - he only removed it after he was forced. His comments to multiple threads proved he knew the symbol's precise meaning by 2019 at the latest. And of course he did; he lived with it for 18 years. You're gonna notice eventually. So he spent many years not caring, then lied about his awareness. You don't get partial credit at that point.
Fetterman disagrees with the Democrats on basically everything. Authenticity is overrated. I personally care more about how a Senator votes than whether he’s real or phony. Progressives undoubtedly gained too much power within the party, but any power within the party for Fetterman, who is basically a mainstream Republican, is too much.
But he isn't, at all. He's a moderate Democrat. He joins with the Democratic party on essential votes. He's just moderate on some issues, while staying fairly progressive on anything genuinely economic.
"We've secretly replaced Generation X with Folger's Crystals. Let's see if anybody notices..."
As a GenXer the thing that worries me the most is a political environment that pivots from old-people priorities to young-people priorities...just as my cohort gets old.
We will have gone our entire life looking askance at a government that has always had someone else's best interests at heart.
I've read my Strauss-Howe, and I think our GenZ kids will also get screwed.
BOHICA. At least have the decency to write us a thank-you note.
As another Gen Xer, I also noticed how this shift managed to skip almost entirely over our generation. In 2018, I was younger than all of the listed senators except Sinema and O'Rourke. In 2026, I'm older than all of the listed senators except for Cooper and Brown.
It's interesting how this generational skip applies to politicians, but not CEOs and founders in the corporate world. If you look at founders and CEOs of the Magnificent Seven companies that hold 33% of the value of the entire S&P 500, you have Xers Elon Musk (Tesla), Larry Page (Google), Sergey Brin (Google), Sundar Pichai (Google/Alphabet), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Andy Jassey (Amazon), and John Ternus (Apple). Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) are barely Boomers, both being born in 1964. While Microsoft and Apple were founded by Boomers, only two of the Seven -- Nvidia and Meta -- currently lack a Gen X CEO.
I wonder whether this generational divide between the political world and the business world will have any consequences.
I read Strauss & Howe's book when it first came out, and I found it interesting, but I've always been very skeptical about the idea of predictable multi-generational cycles.
That said, I do see some similarities between Gen X and the Lost Generation that they mention. I also think the idea that "After 80 years, almost everyone who remembers what happened 80 years ago will be dead," does present the opportunity of some "repeating of the past."
Also, there's this point, which I attribute more to luck than foresight: I remember thinking back when 9/11 happened that S&H's prediction of a "Crisis in 2020" was obviously wrong. "After all, what are the odds that the US and the world will face a bigger crisis than 9/11 in the year 2020?"
Maybe this is a hot take, but I think 9/11 was a much bigger crisis than Covid. We're over Covid in a way that we still aren't over 9/11. 9/11 changed virtually everything. Still, we certainly did have a crisis in 2020.
IMO there is some broad truth in the Strauss-Howe generational theory: I think the "mood" of the country does tend to move in roughly the historical cycles they laid out.
Taking that and trying to predict specific events and outcomes won't work, though, a fact that the authors themselves would admit.
If you're referring to disgust over wearing a giant SS tattoo for 18 years, aware of its precise meaning since at least 2019 based on his own comments, and then lying about that awareness when inevitably caught... then they have a point.
Boy, you blithely insult an entire generation; the anti-Vietnam, free peace, space-exploring, tech-founding, pro-JFK, RFK and Humphries, among others, gay-liberating generation? Boomers fought against rabidly conservative members of the "greatest generation" to create room for progressives to flourish. Boomers pushed and died for voting rights. They fought for feminism and the right for women to have credit cards, for Gods sake. That didn't happen in a vacuum, you know. Boomers did that. Go to any No Kings/anti-Trump march, and you'll see a wave of gray Boomer heads. Senator Bernie is a Boomer. A little, just the tiniest bit, of respect and maybe a "thank you" is indicated. I say all of the above with love and a some humor, but, seriously, put the tarring brush away.
In that long diatribe, there wasn't a single mention of anything boomers did to make things affordable for younger generations. How grateful we are to the boomers that starter homes no longer exist, bachelors required but masters preferred, social security is depleted, and the birth rate has plummeted because nobody can afford to live. A truly terrific generation.
Younger people didn't steal enough wealth from their children and grandchildren to be able to have that much time to virtue signal about their own self-aggrandizement. That's why there's so many gray haired Fs at these rallies. Those are the only people that aren't struggling in this society because they pillaged everything from future generations.
I agree that Nancy Pelosi is a very impressive politician, but she is 86, and even she will feel her age at some point. SF is going to need a new representative sooner rather than later regardless of whether they are as good as Nancy Pelosi.
I will concede that some people perform well at advanced age, and she does seem to be one of them. If she had been elected president in 2020 rather than Biden we would not be in the mess we are in right now.
Read the opinion piece in the NYT by Ben Rhodes. It paints Platner as a strongly anti-war candidate. Support for forever wars by people like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have tripped up the Democratic party for decades. Obama beat Clinton in the 2008 primary in part because he wasn't tainted by supporting the Iraq war. Not for nothing, but Trump won twice in part on an anti-war platform. So don't write Platner off so fast. In Downeast Maine, we're lovin' it!
And Nixon won in '68 in part because of his secret plan to end the war. (And the anti-war riots)
But Hillary would not have spent years jawboning Republicans and probably would have been willing to campaign for a D in Massachusetts, so Obama was a net loss.
And Biden's numbers turned negative when he withdrew from Afghanistan. Not clear where you get him as a supporter of "forever wars", but whatever.
It isn't clear that the single issue anti-war voters actually have a clue.
Well, Biden's Afghan withdrawal was so poorly managed, not to mention all the related lies and broken promises, that the decline it caused has nothing to do with supporting wars or being anti-war, just his incompetence.
I'm not sure what you mean about Obama being a net loss - what about jawboning the GOP and campaigning in Mass?
Biden left on Trump's negotiated schedule after delaying it as long as possible. It isn't at all clear what he could legally have done differently. But my point was that saying Biden was in favor of a "forever war" is clearly hyperbole.
Obama had a filibuster proof Senate and got nothing out of it. He spent a year trying to get Republicans to support his policies, and as a result we had an anemic recovery and a bunch of gaps in the ACA.
As for Massachusetts, Obama did literally nothing to get a Dem elected to replace Teddy Kennedy, resulting in losing the critical 60th vote in the Senate.
The end result was a Democratic blood bath in 2010 and almost no meaningful legislation.
The anemic recovery helped Trump in 2016, and the 2010 election locked in Republican gerrymandering that still hasn't been fixed, and thanks to Trump's Supreme Court may last until 2040.
Obama was a nice guy and great campaigner, but a disaster for the country.
The only thing Hillary could have done to elect Martha Coakley was clone herself a million times and have them all vote. Ditto for Obama. Coakley had terrible political instincts and its laughable that you are blaming her loss on anybody but Martha Coakley.
Even though Mamdani is turning out to be much better than I had expected (he seems to largely satisfy his base with symbolic victories and fights with the rich and powerful in nyc, while moderating on actual policy), I remain skeptical of Platner. Platner seems like an actual stupid person in a way that Mamdani wasn’t. I always thought Mamdani was a smart, high IQ but naive and inexperienced person, who could learn on the job. I’m not so sure about Platner.
As a moderate, if leftists want me to overlook their ideology, at least put up a decent candidate so I don’t have to swallow both ideological and personalistic flaws. Candidate quality matters.
Yeah, the Nazi tattoo leaves me a little "skeptical" and "unsure" myself... I might have a few minor doubts!
I think he’s more likely just an idiot than someone with Nazi sympathies so we probably differ on what our concerns are but yes there are concerns
For what it's worth, I had never heard of the skull nazi symbol before the Platner story broke. That doesn't mean that HE didn't know, but it is at least plausible.
That being said, I would never get a tattoo of something that I did not research first.
If I were to guess, he probably didn’t know when he got it but found out later and never bothered to get rid of it. I don’t buy the story that he just found out. But again that supports my claim that he’s an irresponsible idiot, not an actual Nazi.
That's understandable, because you didn't spend 18 years seeing the symbol on a daily basis. Anyone in that circumstance who's minimally observant - to popular movies, books, news, etc. - would eventually recognize it, and indeed, his comments on multiple threads proved that he knew the symbol's precise meaning by 2019 at the latest. So the primary issue isn't the initial act (though I agree it's pretty foolish to not research it, either before or immediately after). The primary issue is he's lying about his awareness, and he spent many years not caring enough to bother getting it removed until he was forced.
I will say though a senator basically doesn’t do anything besides vote on bills and Platner is going to probably vote party line. I would have much greater concerns if he was running for an executive position (mayor, governor, president) where he’s responsible for day to day stuff and directly responsible delivering outcomes. I don’t blame Dems who either choose to vote for him or against him, they’re both understandable positions imo
Even boiling the role down to its most bare-minimum duty (which I think leaves out an awful lot), I'm not so sure how much confidence we can have in even that; the guy has virtually no track record on which to judge. We're basically being asked to trust him for six years based on... speeches.
It remains to be seen whether being an idiot will help him or not in the election...
Nate should do a post on how many points being an idiot is worth.
Fun fact: some states ban idiots from voting. So why are they allowed to run for office? 😂
Well I’m a moderate so if leftists want me to overlook the ideology, at least put up a decent candidate so I don’t have to swallow both ideological and personalistic flaws. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, I voted for Mamdani and so far, besides minor complaints, I’m okay with him. Platner hasn’t even tried to reassure his skeptics.
Saying things like “Platner hasn’t even tried to reassure his skeptics”, and repeatedly calling him an idiot shows me you are far more interested in straw man arguments than actually engaging with his beliefs and policy ideas (which are very easy to find with even the slightest bit of effort). This is the same tactic you will see MAGA employing until November because their worst case scenario is actually having to address these issues head on.
Entering a US Senate race knowing for years that he had a giant SS tattoo (comments on multiple 2019 threads prove this), then further waiting to get it covered until it inevitably became public, makes him a massive political idiot. We shouldn't need to get into policies; he's an unqualified and tactless vehicle for policy from the outset.
I'd also categorize the majority of what I've heard as pretty simplistic feel-good sentiments bording on platitudes. I've yet to hear a deep point that made me go "wow, what a surprisingly wise observation, or clever, nuanced response." It seems to me as though he (alongside the team that recruited him mere weeks ahead of his campaign launch) is just reading the room for what Democrats want to hear... which makes me doubt how genuine his stances are. Normally, we could use a candidate's extensive prior record to judge for a position as consequential as a six-year term in a national body of just 100 members. With Platner, there's virtually nothing to go on.
And yes, he has repeatedly met good-faith skepticism of his tattoo lies and problematic posts with obfuscation, following hollow apologies with much louder dismissals of us as bad-faith Mills / Schumer / DNC establishment supporters.
So getting a tattoo removed - a hideously painful experience that leaves an ugly scar - isn't "trying to reassure his skeptics"?
He didn't get it removed; he got it covered by additional ink. Which, of course he did... once the public reveal forced him. But no, that's not reassuring his skeptics; reassuring would be owning up to the fact that he knew the tattoo's meaning for years prior, and not following his hollow apologies by dismissing critics as bad-faith Mills supporters.
Against one of the most brilliant politicians Maine has seen, the Dems chose... a guy with a Nazi tattoo.
Does age even matter when someone has a Nazi tattoo?
It's like the old joke. "but you fuck one little goat..."
This appears to be one topic on which we agree.
It's very odd to see, within my lifetime, Nazis going from the stock villains in movies and TV shows to their fans and apologists becoming mainstream political actors. I doubt that anybody would have predicted that circa 1980, but maybe somebody did.
Its not just the shadow of Joe Biden. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (not a 'Democratic politician' but still) and Ted Kennedy are further examples of septuagenarians and octogenarians that refused to retire and ended up costing the party and, I would argue, the country dearly. It likely extends past elected officials too as 'Boomers' in do many aspects of society remain firmly in place and crowd out the generations behind them.
Not endorsing it, but adding additional context.
Nancy Pelosi is another.
Dianne Feinstein.
Chuck Schumer (better than Mitch McConnell, but, still).
John Dingell, John Conyers.
Of course, the GOP has had their share, too.
My memory is it was more a problem of the GOP 15-20 years ago & as the Dems have become more establishment, it is now more of a Dem issue.
In 1980, 5% of Congress was aged 70 or older. Today it's 25%. This is why people hate boomers. In the job market exists a glut boomers that lived paycheck to paycheck on a high salary that can't afford to retire, and stay in their roles way longer than expected. While young people are priced out of homes.
Right. On the other side, a problem is Clarence Thomas, whom we badly need to retire and let Trump appoint someone younger --- say, 35. (Kidding. 45 would be okay.)
You're not wrong. But Alito is over 80 as well. If Dems win the Senate in Nov, the right could be down two SCOTUS seats before the end of Trump's term unless one of them retires at the end of this term (which would be smart)
We can only hope they don’t retire.
Amen. I hope Alito thinks seriously about this and does the right thing! What, 80??? Darn. He seems to be doing fine mentally, but you can't fight Mother Nature and he should think of our future, IMO, which is not going to include him. I don't suppose Clarence Thomas is up to that kind of thinking, but Alito could properly withdraw before November. And he may. They all must have noticed how annoyed the left was with Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she supposed she would live forever despite the cancer and recurring hospitalization, and correctly so.
For god’s sake, get the fuck out of the way you old geezers! I am 72 and I loathe the ‘energy’ of Chuck “Mildly Miffed Max” Schumer and Hakeem “Oh, my, we must do something someday” Jeffries. Gimme Talarico or Plantner or of course AOC! Old people need to step down. Grassley looks like he died two years ago and arguably Mitch McConnell did die several months ago.
Hakeem Jeffries is only 55, so pretty squarely Gen X.
Chuck Grassley is sort of 92 ------ but I think he is peppy and able and in great shape. It DOES happen, and seems to have in this case; I hope both of us (and all of us here) are as lucky in age as he has been.
Personally, I think 92, even a spray 92, is far too old.
Henry Kissinger was still writing books (2, IIRC) at 99 and 100. Maybe not great books ---- but there are a lot of not great books; he might have done that anyway.
Still, you could be right. I hate to be ageist, however. People should keep being who they are as long as they can.
To some degree, demographics is destiny, so as a GenX-er, it doesn't surprise me too much that the age of a majority of candidates is undergoing a shift from Boomers to Millennials (originally called "Echo Boomers").
The number of Baby Boomers far exceeded those of GenX, and their children substantially outnumbered GenX, as well. So basically, the Boomers held office until their advanced age became a public issue, and then the next-most-populous generation took over (or is about to).
Been saying this since the 90s; Generation X (my cohort) was too small to shove aside the Boomers hard enough. We've had to wait til they were literally dying off and that means policy over the last 40 years didn't shift to meet the needs of the incoming generations. We can see the downsides of that now as younger groups have fewer or no children since the economy and infrastructure failed us. Things we've been talking about last 10 years we should have noticed since the early 2000's but since GenX was too small nobody cared to notice.
I am born ‘87, so a Millennial, but always loved the Gen X though because they were the cooler older classmen, siblings, and cousins of my generation.
Blaming everything on Boomer rhetoric is overplayed, and that’s not what you and Nate are doing. However, listening to my Boomer parents/aunts/uncles and the disconnect between how they see the world and political issues than my generation is stark.
Also, there was a stereotype during the Obama admin of the senior citizens of that generation being brain washed by Fox News. It feels like now instead of the stereotype of having an out of touch conservative grandparent, we have out of touch liberal parents/grandparents (depending on your age). To me they are a bit too self righteous.
The over 50 year old demographic is what elected Trump in 2024.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
Of course your personal "out of touch" slice of relatives might not overlap those voters, but the Faux News is still strong enough to swing an election.
Gen-Xers have been the strongest Republican voting bloc, especially the older half of Gen X. They came of age with Reagan so the preferences were baked in.
You have no clue what you are talking about; I'm GenX and when I was in college there were frequent demonstrations against Reagan era policy. Your comment is offensive and reductive.
It is a fact.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/behind-trumps-2024-victory-a-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-voter-coalition/
Do you really think a few protests long ago are representative of everyone in your age group?
No one said that EVERY SINGLE Gen-X person is a Republican. I know such protests existed.
But polling bears out that as a whole people in the Gen-X age cohort have been the most Republican group. Very specifically, it's the older X voters who are most heavily Republican; younger Gen-X votes a little more Democratic (probably because they came of age with Clinton).
Yup. The double whammy of Reagan advertising and defunded education.
I'd be happy to round up some of my GenX peers and run a quiz show against any of the younger crowd. We all know colleges and high schools have dumbed down requirements and that happened more under Obama than anyone else in my lifetime. I voted for the guy twice, but it's just a measurable fact. A degree today is worth less than one earned 25 years ago.
Your belief that kids that grew up in the 80s under Reagan must be stupider and 'therefore they vote Republican' is a better indicator of your lack of education than anyone who went to school back then.
You seem to confuse ignorance with intelligence.
As for knowledge and Republican voters, the data is pretty clear.
Tariffs are going to lower prices real soon.
But if you look at the record, test scores improved under Reagan significantly; on the other hand they dropped under Obama and have yet to recover
Education is not a Federal thing.
Born in 84, and completely agree!
Boomers parents saw this one coming. Probably worse than they Imagined. Used to work when greatest and Gen x could outvote boomers but now we just gotta wait and then clean up their "legacy."
Would love to see a similar graph for the GOP. I think the most telling thing about this graph is how tightly boomer Democrats are holding onto power instead of mentoring the next generation.
Umm, the graph specifically shows that there has been a massive shift in the ages of the Dems.
The exact opposite of tightly holding on.
If you meant how tightly they were holding on on 2018, that was a while back.
…as the graph explicitly states, the age shift is happening because of younger Dems challenging older Dems in the primaries, not because older Dems are retiring and passing the torch.
No, it doesn't say that.
It compares median 'viable' Dem ages now to previous actual candidates.
In 1980, 5% of Congress was age 70 or older. Today it's 25%. I hope it's finally done. They can't take a hint.
Forget age: Platner is not fit to be in the Senate. I think this says a LOT more about how Democratic voters are becoming more populist, more like Republicans, than it does about age
Funny that this is happening just as corporate America moves the other way. The average age at S&P 500 CEO appointment has risen from about 48 in 2000 to 55 today (NBER working paper by Kecht, Lizzeri, and Saidi). Boards say they need generalists with longer career paths. Voters apparently disagree about politicians. One of these groups is going to look wrong in ten years.
The closest historical parallel is the Watergate Babies of 1974—87 House freshmen under 40, knocking off committee chairmen they considered too old and too entrenched. Tom Downey was 25. The class shaved roughly two decades off the average age of House Democrats. Platner fits the archetype: outsider, anti-establishment, replacing a 78-year-old.
The irony is that the Boomers and near-Boomers who rode that wave into power then pulled the ladder up behind them. Pat Leahy stayed until 2023—48 years. Waxman and Miller did 40. They got their generational turnover in their 30s and then spent half a century making sure no one else got one. That's exactly why it has to happen again now, and why it has to be this disruptive to happen at all.
The NFL went through the same shift on a compressed timeline. The Sean McVay effect dropped the average head coach age from 53.4 in 2015 to 47.7 by 2024. The logic was the same too: better to be a year early on the next McVay than a year late. The catch is that nobody has actually shown a correlation between coach age and team performance. The youth movement was a bet on pattern-matching that may or may not pay out.
Even the Vatican is sort of in on it. Leo XIV at 69 was treated as the youthful choice after Francis (76 at election) and Benedict (78). But the long-run trend in papal age is still upward—average age at death has risen about seven years since the 18th century. Global gerontocracy is broadly winning; the Democratic primary electorate is one of the few constituencies actively pushing back.
It's the greatly increased lifespans, I think. 70 now is hardly 70 in 1950! Now, 70 is just getting started. However, if people are showing age-related problems they should be a lot easier to remove from office than they are. These congressional offices are just corporations, that hire a LOT of young people who don't want their principal to retire. Congress: best nursing home in the country, I read once.
No doubt. And more than the increase in average longevity is the mental and physical health after age 60.
As a younger Gen-X Dem voter all i can say is thank fucking god. The boomers have had way more than their fair share of political power, to say the least
The statement about platner’s “poor tattoo choice” make me question the writers partisanship or judgement. Lets see, platner also wondered if blacks are good tippers, said women who get drunk shouldn’t complain about being raped, that he learned to understand gays by listening to them sing show tunes and posted a number of other non-progressive- maybe even reactionary - comments. It’s so odd he’s beloved by progressives. Reminds me of another senate candidate - John fetterman.
Fetterman is great. He's pro-Israel, not afraid to disagree with the Dems when they're wrong, speaks out against wokeness, and is totally authentic.
Most of Platner's other comments were fine or taken out of context - you've completedly misquoted or misinterpreted many of them.
That said, none of his comments matter when the guy **has a Nazi tattoo.** That should be disqualifying.
He'll always be the guy with the Nazi tattoo. Whatever he says, whatever he does, wherever he goes. He's the guy with the Nazi tattoo. It'll be in his obituary.
Fetterman might be great for Israel but he's a terrible Senator for the Commonwealth of PA. This mofo cheering on a pointless war of choice with Iran while gas in the Philly suburbs just hit $4.40. We're all concerned about skyrocketing cost of living and he's using terms like TDS to describle opposing spending $400M in taxpayer dollars on Trump's ridiculous ballroom. Authentic my ass he's as phony as his hero in the WH.
Can't WAIT to vote against him in the '28 primary if he hasn't switched parties by then.
I think he's a great senator. The war against Iran is necessary, and if the US Navy exists for any reason it is there for freedom of navigation. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is an act of war that the world cannot allow.
For whatever it's worth, he's the guy that formerly had a Nazi tattoo and no longer does.
It's not worth anything - he only removed it after he was forced. His comments to multiple threads proved he knew the symbol's precise meaning by 2019 at the latest. And of course he did; he lived with it for 18 years. You're gonna notice eventually. So he spent many years not caring, then lied about his awareness. You don't get partial credit at that point.
Yes, not to mention that he is a military history buff and there are witnesses saying he described it as his Totenkampf.
Also, just look at that thing, it's hard to see it and not feel chills. It looks very fascist.
Fetterman disagrees with the Democrats on basically everything. Authenticity is overrated. I personally care more about how a Senator votes than whether he’s real or phony. Progressives undoubtedly gained too much power within the party, but any power within the party for Fetterman, who is basically a mainstream Republican, is too much.
Fetterman is also going further to the right on most things than what he campaigned on. His own voters feel betrayed, and I can't blame them.
But he isn't, at all. He's a moderate Democrat. He joins with the Democratic party on essential votes. He's just moderate on some issues, while staying fairly progressive on anything genuinely economic.
Fetterman intends to become a Republican, I assume. This midterm? Come on over, Fetterman! We love you!
Fetterman is amazing. We need sane people on both sides really.
"We've secretly replaced Generation X with Folger's Crystals. Let's see if anybody notices..."
As a GenXer the thing that worries me the most is a political environment that pivots from old-people priorities to young-people priorities...just as my cohort gets old.
We will have gone our entire life looking askance at a government that has always had someone else's best interests at heart.
I've read my Strauss-Howe, and I think our GenZ kids will also get screwed.
BOHICA. At least have the decency to write us a thank-you note.
As another Gen Xer, I also noticed how this shift managed to skip almost entirely over our generation. In 2018, I was younger than all of the listed senators except Sinema and O'Rourke. In 2026, I'm older than all of the listed senators except for Cooper and Brown.
It's interesting how this generational skip applies to politicians, but not CEOs and founders in the corporate world. If you look at founders and CEOs of the Magnificent Seven companies that hold 33% of the value of the entire S&P 500, you have Xers Elon Musk (Tesla), Larry Page (Google), Sergey Brin (Google), Sundar Pichai (Google/Alphabet), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Andy Jassey (Amazon), and John Ternus (Apple). Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) are barely Boomers, both being born in 1964. While Microsoft and Apple were founded by Boomers, only two of the Seven -- Nvidia and Meta -- currently lack a Gen X CEO.
I wonder whether this generational divide between the political world and the business world will have any consequences.
You can ignore Strauss-Howe's astrology - it's meaningless. What is "bohica"?
I read Strauss & Howe's book when it first came out, and I found it interesting, but I've always been very skeptical about the idea of predictable multi-generational cycles.
That said, I do see some similarities between Gen X and the Lost Generation that they mention. I also think the idea that "After 80 years, almost everyone who remembers what happened 80 years ago will be dead," does present the opportunity of some "repeating of the past."
Also, there's this point, which I attribute more to luck than foresight: I remember thinking back when 9/11 happened that S&H's prediction of a "Crisis in 2020" was obviously wrong. "After all, what are the odds that the US and the world will face a bigger crisis than 9/11 in the year 2020?"
Maybe this is a hot take, but I think 9/11 was a much bigger crisis than Covid. We're over Covid in a way that we still aren't over 9/11. 9/11 changed virtually everything. Still, we certainly did have a crisis in 2020.
IMO there is some broad truth in the Strauss-Howe generational theory: I think the "mood" of the country does tend to move in roughly the historical cycles they laid out.
Taking that and trying to predict specific events and outcomes won't work, though, a fact that the authors themselves would admit.
I’m already seeing PDS (Platner Derangement Syndrome) from republicans online. The sheer amount of pearl clutching is ridiculous
If you're referring to disgust over wearing a giant SS tattoo for 18 years, aware of its precise meaning since at least 2019 based on his own comments, and then lying about that awareness when inevitably caught... then they have a point.
Boy, you blithely insult an entire generation; the anti-Vietnam, free peace, space-exploring, tech-founding, pro-JFK, RFK and Humphries, among others, gay-liberating generation? Boomers fought against rabidly conservative members of the "greatest generation" to create room for progressives to flourish. Boomers pushed and died for voting rights. They fought for feminism and the right for women to have credit cards, for Gods sake. That didn't happen in a vacuum, you know. Boomers did that. Go to any No Kings/anti-Trump march, and you'll see a wave of gray Boomer heads. Senator Bernie is a Boomer. A little, just the tiniest bit, of respect and maybe a "thank you" is indicated. I say all of the above with love and a some humor, but, seriously, put the tarring brush away.
In that long diatribe, there wasn't a single mention of anything boomers did to make things affordable for younger generations. How grateful we are to the boomers that starter homes no longer exist, bachelors required but masters preferred, social security is depleted, and the birth rate has plummeted because nobody can afford to live. A truly terrific generation.
Younger people didn't steal enough wealth from their children and grandchildren to be able to have that much time to virtue signal about their own self-aggrandizement. That's why there's so many gray haired Fs at these rallies. Those are the only people that aren't struggling in this society because they pillaged everything from future generations.
GenXers swallowed Reaganomics hook line and sinker.
Blame the boomers in politics if you want, but GenXers picked those leaders.
The article is not insulting the past achievements of Boomers. It is criticizing the Boomers who are clinging to power well past their prime.
The people who are trying to replace Nancy Pelosi show how vacuous that argument is.
SF will not have better representation under any of them.
I agree that Nancy Pelosi is a very impressive politician, but she is 86, and even she will feel her age at some point. SF is going to need a new representative sooner rather than later regardless of whether they are as good as Nancy Pelosi.
I will concede that some people perform well at advanced age, and she does seem to be one of them. If she had been elected president in 2020 rather than Biden we would not be in the mess we are in right now.
Read the opinion piece in the NYT by Ben Rhodes. It paints Platner as a strongly anti-war candidate. Support for forever wars by people like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have tripped up the Democratic party for decades. Obama beat Clinton in the 2008 primary in part because he wasn't tainted by supporting the Iraq war. Not for nothing, but Trump won twice in part on an anti-war platform. So don't write Platner off so fast. In Downeast Maine, we're lovin' it!
And Nixon won in '68 in part because of his secret plan to end the war. (And the anti-war riots)
But Hillary would not have spent years jawboning Republicans and probably would have been willing to campaign for a D in Massachusetts, so Obama was a net loss.
And Biden's numbers turned negative when he withdrew from Afghanistan. Not clear where you get him as a supporter of "forever wars", but whatever.
It isn't clear that the single issue anti-war voters actually have a clue.
Well, Biden's Afghan withdrawal was so poorly managed, not to mention all the related lies and broken promises, that the decline it caused has nothing to do with supporting wars or being anti-war, just his incompetence.
I'm not sure what you mean about Obama being a net loss - what about jawboning the GOP and campaigning in Mass?
Biden left on Trump's negotiated schedule after delaying it as long as possible. It isn't at all clear what he could legally have done differently. But my point was that saying Biden was in favor of a "forever war" is clearly hyperbole.
Obama had a filibuster proof Senate and got nothing out of it. He spent a year trying to get Republicans to support his policies, and as a result we had an anemic recovery and a bunch of gaps in the ACA.
As for Massachusetts, Obama did literally nothing to get a Dem elected to replace Teddy Kennedy, resulting in losing the critical 60th vote in the Senate.
The end result was a Democratic blood bath in 2010 and almost no meaningful legislation.
The anemic recovery helped Trump in 2016, and the 2010 election locked in Republican gerrymandering that still hasn't been fixed, and thanks to Trump's Supreme Court may last until 2040.
Obama was a nice guy and great campaigner, but a disaster for the country.
The only thing Hillary could have done to elect Martha Coakley was clone herself a million times and have them all vote. Ditto for Obama. Coakley had terrible political instincts and its laughable that you are blaming her loss on anybody but Martha Coakley.
The election was closer that you remember if you think a million more votes were needed.
Obama didn't even try.
Quite interesting signal the boomer purge has begun.
I anticipate a more chaotic decade ahead with the youthful exuberance of our future 40 year old politicians.