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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

Even among the dinosaurs in the US Senate, Feinstein stands alone in her striking ability to be willfully ignorant about anything developed after the steam locomotive.

The country would be an objectively better place if both the House and Senate had a mandatory retirement age.

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Why do these people continue to be re-elected at all?

Surely there's some other (D) that could have replaced Feinstein a decade ago - but California keeps re-electing her? There's near unanimous agreement she "lost it" long ago - yet here she still is.

A mandatory retirement age is great and all... but maybe we need to figure out why people vote for someone nearly nobody wants in the first place. Just the "safe" vote? That can't be all of the story...

Senators get OP with longevity. Having a bunch of old senators is an emergent behavior of the rules of the Senate.

I don't personally think age is really the problem - mental (and to some extent, physical) abilities are, however.

There's the good 80 years old, and then there's the bad 80 years old. We all know it when we see it... and we're watching it in real time in multiple places within our federal government right now.

We, as a country, are about to face this very same question again, as President Biden is expected to announce his re-election bid shortly. Are we OK with that as a country, given his obvious decline in the past few years? Objectively, and without red or blue coloring, he's not the Joe Biden of 2008.

So, what do we do?

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't want people born before Hitler rose to power to be in the government at all. I don't care how sharp you are and I don't care how progressive or conservative you are.

If you're old enough to have had strong opinions about LBJ when he was in office, your time has passed and we really don't need you in the Senate, or the White House, or anywhere else in government making decisions that will have impacts decades after you're gone.

Is this true, or are these just benefits of someone who has been in the Senate for 30 years having good working relationships with 70 other Senators, and the branch new Senator being lucky to know one or two?

Put another way, what rules of the Senate benefit length of service over anything else?

Committee and chair assignments.

https://www.senate.gov/about/traditions-symbols/seniority.ht...

There's this idea that someone shouldn't run against an incumbent. It goes against both parties. The boomer generation was a large group, they often see the world in a more common way (that world of the 50s and early 60s?), they still want to see themselves as being in power, even as they are all getting close to age 80 (made a typo here originally, I put 60 instead of 80). They don't want to give up. That's why these elderly politicians stay in power.

I think it's a combination of risk aversion and the cost of acquiring information.

Most people don't do extensive (or any) research before voting. They choose a candidate based on party affiliation or the information on TV. So for that majority of people, they will vote for a candidate whether or not the candidate is of sound mind. They assume other people have done the due diligence.

On the other hand, you have the parties themselves. The Democratic Party would rather have a senile Democrat than a non-senile Republican. And the Democratic Party is itself strongly influenced by other Democrat politicians who may even appreciate a senile coworker since that coworker can be more easily manipulated. So they have no incentive to risk losing that by suggesting or supporting a different Democratic candidate.

That in turn means new Democrat candidates will struggle to get the amount of support or funding which is necessary to publicize oneself enough that the complacent members of the public mentioned earlier could vote for them.

Only 24% of registered voters in California are Republican, so the election hinges on the Democratic primary. You don't get to a position in a political party where you can realistically run for and potentially win a US Senate seat by making a habit of attacking people in your own party. Those that do get ostracized long before they have that kind of juice, and the people who could potentially do it are not likely to risk the entire thing on running now when they could more safely run in another term or two, especially if they've already got a comfortable elected position.

So the answer on the inside is that nobody willing to run against her has the power to, and nobody with the power to is willing. On the outside, it's people who don't care who is running, they only care about the letter next to the name, so would never vote for a Republican or an Independent.

I thought so too, but no! The California General Election is Dem vs Dem, and they choose Feinstein! It's bonkers!

I think the reasoning behind not having an age cap in Congress is that if the people want to elect someone who is old, they should be able to do so. The ultimate check in a democratic society is the people, and like a different commenter said, it's strange that the voters of California continue to vote for Feinstein.

Presumably they vote for her because she is a democrat and the other viable candidate, a republican, is completely unpalatable to them. The problem is internal party politics that appear to have an unwritten rule of re-running the same candidate until they lose.

California has had a jungle primary for a bit now, and there has been at least one general election that pitted Feinstein against a Democrat in the general election. As I mentioned elsewhere, the most common argument I got from Democrats around me for voting for her was seniority, for committee appointments and such.

Seems odd to knowingly choose a candidate that will work to make the lives of Americans worse solely to keep seniority. In fact, doing so seems like you would be empowering a terrible person beyond a normal terrible person, thus ensuring the lives of Americans are that much worse.

Bonkers.

I mean, I don't think they believe she is "work[ing] to make the lives of Americans worse", even if they think the other candidate might be better. They agree with a lot of her positions. Heck, I agree with a lot of her positions, I just disagree with too many important ones.

This, at one point a candidate, and those working for a candidate would be blacklisted by the party if they tried to run against an incumbent.

> I think the reasoning behind not having an age cap in Congress is that if the people want to elect someone who is old, they should be able to do so.

If that were true, why aren't we allowed to elect someone younger than 30?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy_laws_in_the_U...

"United States Senator:

Minimum age: 30"

My instinct is to say “no, that’s ageist” because there are plenty of older people who are legitimately brilliant.

But honestly, she’s a fantastic example of why we should have term limits, at the very least.

Leave administration to younger, more capable people. The ones who are too old but are brilliant can still be advisors and mentors.

You don't need a mandatory retirement age, just term limits. For example, no more than two terms as a Senator, no more than three as a House member.

Why do you recommend different term limits for house members?

House positions last a third the amount of time (2 years versus 6).

She's not any more intelligent regarding other topics. Firearms being a prime example.

In fairness, she’s announced that she won’t seek re-election in 2024.

And her health has been failing recently, which has been a big problem for operations in the Senate (judicial appointments have stalled as there is now no party majority on the judiciary committee). She claims she will still serve the rest of her term, but I think there's a decent chance she'll eventually see the light and step down within the next few months. (Though this might just be wishful thinking on my part.)

The downside there is that Gov. Newsom then gets to appoint someone to serve the rest of her term, and then will have the incumbent advantage in 2024, even if they turn out to be not that great. But I think that's probably preferable to the current situation.

Not sure how this is relevant to the point.

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