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The Senate primary in Maine looks like the next test of old guard vs. new for Democrats. Despite being a political novice, Platner raised over $1 million in the first nine days. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reportedly is working behind the scenes to get 77-year-old Gov. Janet Mills to enter the race.
I don't know much about Mills other than the fact that, earlier this year she admirably stood up to Trump when he threatened the State of Maine. But I do know that while she is 77 now, she turns 78 in December and that if she ran for Senate and won she'd be 79 when she took her oath of office.
I also know that, given what's going on in this country right now, you can't just win an election " assuming Mills can win the election " and do nothing. There are several years of unprecedentedly hard work ahead of us to try to undo this fascist slide, and that work has to begin with the fascists being punched in the face, and hard. A lifelong institutionalist Democrat who would owe her office to passive losers like Chuck Schumer and who would turn 80 during her first year of a six-year term is not going to be able to commit to that, let alone accomplish it.
I understand that many might take what I just said as ageism, but I prefer to think of it as realism.
Separate and apart from being someone who would like to see some younger blood elected who can lead us into a future in which they themselves have a decades-long stake, I'm someone who has been taking care of his nearly 82 and 77 year-old parents for a good bit. And I don't mean playing nurse to them or anything like that. My parents live independently. They drive. Technologically speaking they are pretty savvy for people their age. They have not suffered any notable cognitive decline. Despite some conventional and expected age-related ailments, both of them are as mentally and physically fit as the median Member of Congress in their late 70s or early 80s.
But it's an unavoidable fact of being that age that everyday things take a large amount of time, energy, and stamina. Which is fine when unless you're trying to fight an existential battle for the continued existence of America. The job ahead is going to require a surfeit of mental and physical exertion over several years. It's the sort of work that is gonna be hard on the people doing it if the job is done right. It's not the sort of work for which you want your rookie Members of Congress to be octogenarians.
I'm not gonna sit here and tear Chuck Schumer apart issue-by-issue or strategy-by-strategy because I spend enough time doing that, but the fact is that we've descended into this hell we currently inhabit while he and his generational and ideological cohort have had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party for the past 30 years. We're well past the point when the torch should've been passed to younger leaders, and such a torch-passing will never happen when candidate recruitment continues to be run by people born in the Truman administration and focuses on those who were born before FDR's body was even cold.
I'd like to see Democrats fight Trump and the rest of the fascists as heartily as they fight progressives and younger people in their own party. If they did, we'd be in much better shape as a nation. Maybe they can start doing it now.
