this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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The vast majority of the Democratic's higher leadership are elderly. I like Bernie, but it is clear that Republicans, despite being shit, actually have representation of their younger cohort and benefit from that vitality. Just look at the Democrats: inaction and timidity is the default state among their politicians. An old person cannot fully grasp the issues of the day and have less energy to carry out an agenda, whatever that may be. Biden wasn't willing to use the immunity that the Supreme Court handed him, despite fully knowing that Trump won't hesitate to abuse it.
Also, term limits would help prevent the likes of Nancy Pelosi from freezing out potentially great leaders from ascending into higher ranks of leadership - which reinforces the priorities of establishment, rather than voters. We have many mayors and governors among the Republicans who don't have town halls, or simply ignore their constitutes. Sometimes, an incumbent simply stays in office due to no viable competition appearing, no matter the (de)merits of the sitting official.
As to evidence, just lots of history books. It typically isn't the older rulers who change the fate of nations in a helpful way. Their idleness, is typically the cause of famine, decay, and disaster, because they simply didn't care or couldn't understand.
Also, I have an elderly parent, and it ain't no picnic. It is hard to 'adult', when the home owner doesn't want the world around them to change. Opportunities or risk mitigation, neither can happen if the old cannot grasp the implications of inaction - which they are prone to do. It isn't hard to map such biological reality onto politics, because politicians are fleshy humans, with all the issues that comes with aging.
I will grow old, and so shall you - we both will become infirm and dimwitted, and so will politicians we have elected. That is why it is important for the young to elect the young.
So you don't actually have any empirical evidence for term limits doing what you say they will, and your dead set on judging people by their age and not their actual capabilities.
You're reducing a person to a number and ignoring their actual personhood. If you think that someone is mentally unfit for office, argue based on them, not their age.
Maybe it will make more sense if we replace one characteristic of a person that isn't relevant to the job with another:
Religion has as much to do with the job as age.
Citation needed. Hitler took power at 43. Stalin at 46. Mao at 56. Pol pot at 50. Czar Nicholas II was 50 when he died and took office at 27. Lincoln was 56. Ghandi was most influential in his 70s. FDR was in his 50s. Pretty good spread for leaders I could think of off the top of my head who were notably good or bad. Who were you thinking? "Look at history books" isn't evidence when history books are full of people of all ages doing basically everything.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(24)00140-5/fulltext
Have you considered that that's just how your parent is, and their age has nothing to do with it?
I had aging parents too. One was basically fine until the end, other than arthritis and blood pressure. The other has a host of ailments, and the only mental change was that he got more progressive, since he had more time to read, and he refused to accept that his sense of taste was getting weaker.
You do understand that people are voting for these politicians you want to bar from office, right? Not liking who people choose to represent them is usually best acted upon by voting for someone else, or encouraging someone you like more to run, not by disqualifying the person most people preferred.
You should take a step back and consider why you hold your beliefs. Are they based on feelings about how you think the world is, or should be, or are they based in things that are objectively true? How do you know they're true?