77 is too old when you have a very viable 49 year old candidate. All 3 will be better than Feinstein’s corpse, but how have we not learned our lesson here yet?
2nd oldest US Senator dies in office so let’s make sure her replacement is instantly one of the ten oldest senators!
I don’t know, ask all the young dem progressives who have already endorsed Lee.
God, I sound like I’m campaigning for her, when I’m not. Just trying to explain the realities of what’s happening here. Her endorsement list is kind of a weird mix of establishment and progressive leaders. Which is why she has a real shot at the party endorsement. Like, Ro Khanna and Ricardo Lara? never thought I’d see that.
Dems are pretty elite at unforced errors so 
I mean, a bunch of her endorsements are from people who scream and yell at the Democratic party all the time just like progressives on this forum, so I’m not sure what you’re looking for.
Yeah I’m not happy with them either. Progressive 49 yo is better than progressive 77 yo in the senate. Should be pretty simple, but somehow it’s not.
Nah, that’s extremely hard for me to forget. People were talking about invading Iraq on Day 1. No one even knew who was behind the 9/11 attacks yet and dudes were fucking gagging to go off to fight Saddam.
I’d vote for the fucking Furry Party if it meant people’s lives actually getting better - like this feinstein stuff. People are lauding her long career, but from my POV, that is in and of itself damning. despite being educated and making a decent living -
This is shit me, as a normal every day joe “progressive” Californian (I put in quotes because i think on the absolute political scale, not the absurdly far right american one, i’d actually be closer to middle, and californians in general are WAY less progressive than they act like they are) voter is very concerned and worried about and I dont see many people talking to people like me with any kind of seriousness.
To me anyone who’s been doing this a very long time is immediately someone I dont want to vote for, because it is nearly impossible they arent part of the problem already. I’d vote for a fucking republican if they genuinely promised at least trying to address these things and could deliver on them. I don’t care what party they are.
Chris Hayes of all people should realize the reason people think the economy sucks is because it objectively fucking sucks for the bottom 90% of the country.
The shit people have to buy like food and college and health care just keeps chugging along at 10%+ annual increases. The “awesome” job market where you get 3% raises isn’t cutting it.
The necessary reforms are massive, and structural. Not surprising boomer Dems and their media allies don’t get this as they’re not personally burdened by it.
https://x.com/chrislhayes/status/1709250016957649075?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg
Yeah it sure felt like a recession this last sixteen months or so in trucking I can tell you that. Granted it was nuts before that and far better than it had any right to be, but goddamn is this a long down cycle. Longest I’ve ever seen and this is my tenth year.
If Ds want to be honest with themselves, nobody can conceive of let alone care about a slowdown in the rate of inflation. How does the average consumer notice that the #1 combo at Wendy’s is up from $12 to $12.50, but the previous inflation trend would have been $13, so winning! Chris Hayes should know better.
The problem is that the feedback mechanism between wages and productivity is so badly broken that there can be 30% worth of inflation over a 3 year period where people get a 2.5% raise, a 3% raise, and a 6% raise. Meanwhile the company that employs them had record profits because they raised prices 30% and labor cost only went up 12%.
And now the system is starting to melt down in slow motion as the workers stop having children and the labor supply craters and everyone gets really really old on average. And our generation works until we die.
At this point I’m barely rooting for humanity. Whatever awful thing happens next we deserve it.
I have what I call the “cheez it index.”
I have a cheezit habit, it’s why I’m fat, but for years upon years the large box of cheezits costed $3.99, up from $2.99 iirc in the only price increase I can remember. But, very reasonable price for the calories and deliciousness you’d get.
Box of the same cheezits is slightly smaller (substitute cheezits for a lot of products here) and double the price now at most stores and this happened in the space of about a year. Almost everything is twice as expensive at the end consumer level. Rent is rapidly increasing where I am. Wages are not going up. I honestly have no clue how the bottom half are doing it because I am easily in the top 20% of my age group. The system will break but probably not til after all these clearly idiot gen x/millennial/gen z voters have successfully voted enough dinosaurs into power that take away any hope we had at a retirement for themselves and their ilk and then leave us the mess to clean up. Oh, and then blame us for it!
I think this is a major fuck up by the very wealthy as a class. I think the right move here is to give back a good chunk in exchange for getting to run the game another 40-50 years. Nothing would change and they would retain power which is the important part from their perspective.
It’s just a good investment right now. If they don’t make that investment they’re going to discover how much fun problems money won’t solve are. They’re risking another FDR or worse (from their perspective).
My guy the avg age of congressman is like 97 what 40-50 years LOL
Yeah I guess we’re really waiting for enough of the fossils to die so we can negotiate with their heirs.
Or, and just hear me out here, maybe they just keep squeezing and everyone just grooves on it.
I pretty much agree with this. A lot of Gen X is pretty fucked for retirement, and probably won’t be able to. I have made decent money the last few years and I’m getting squeezed like never before, and home ownership and retirement at 65 are far off pipe dreams in my current reality. I’m with @TheDudeAbides, I have no idea how the bottom half are doing it. Literally nobody in my immediate circle locally is doing well right now.
So yeah, you’ve got tens of millions of people who grew up expecting and being promised lifestyle X, and are now experiencing lifestyle 0.1X, and it’s not going to go over well as they really come to terms with that reality. I assume the way people are doing it is just racking up credit card debt because fuck the lenders and the system.
At some point it feels like the system is going to snap, and it feels like we’re getting closer every day. If I were in the wealthy/ruling class, I’d for sure be advocating for giving the have-nots a more fair shake, because this shit is not sustainable.
The dems message of “no, you’re wrong, you’re actually doing awesome,” inevitably delivered by some fossil multimillionaire, is a sure loser. But what’s their alternative? Most of them don’t even support policies that would actually help.
And from any perspective I can summon that’s idiotic. The donors should be for it too. They’re going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs soon enough that the boomers will be here for it.
How exactly do they think this is going to play out? The way a government remains in power is by not getting overthrown by the population. There are tons of mechanisms for that to happen in the US and several of those fuses were lit a while ago.
For old people, the people currently running everything are not very aware of history. Prohibition went from needing a constitutional amendment (and that being totally impossible) to get rid of to gone in <4 years. Income tax got a constitutional amendment to make it possible.
The problem I have with the current leaders of the country is that they’re just pigs. They have never experienced hardship, have never done anything but stuff their faces, and they seem totally unaware that the machine they are stewards of has been redlining for at least a decade and is starting to smoke.
None of this is new, there’s a reason why almost every institution ever created by humanity is gone now. It’s a cycle. The people inside institutions care more about their personal power inside that institution than they do about the health of the institution and it isn’t particularly close.
Our government is run by careerist assholes who got into politics because of what it could do for them. This is an economy run by an industry whose business model is essentially the same as a termite infestation (eat the walls leave sawdust behind). The lower levels of popular art/culture have been demonetized to the point you need to be born rich to participate.
We’ve been death spiraling for a while straight at the ground but our leaders seem entirely oblivious to the fact that they’re going to lose worse than just about anyone if we hit the ground because they have so much shit currently.
They could pull up for <25% of what they currently have. People would be so happy/grateful. Instead they’d rather ruin 50+ years of aggressive propaganda and cultural manipulation so they can get 5% more next year.
I’m sorry but I was a pro poker player for a couple of years, have a very good investing track record, and have been a pretty successful freight broker for coming up on ten years now… and every single neuron in my brain dedicated to measuring whether a situation is +EV or not is screaming this latest post pandemic wealth grab is a huuuuuuuuuuuge error.
The only people in my circle of friends that are doing well by normal standards are dual income families with both earners making north if 6 figures. Gone are the days of a family being able to own a house on one income of 80k.
As a single person making a modest above average living, homeownership is such a pipe dream right now. I’m constantly looking at options in NJ/PA and it’s just comically absurd. Shit houses that sold in 2021 for $175k are now selling for $390k. People in “starter homes” who would be moving to larger homes are locked in with their 3% mortgages, so the supply of affordable small homes is nearly nonexistent. It just sucks and is depressing, and renting is the absolute woat.
What really pisses me off though is that in my search I have found I think three homes for sale that were in my price range, really nice, and relatively new. All three were in 55+ communities. So these assholes have been gifted everything their entire lives, and continue to be. I guess I just need to pull on my boot straps a little bit harder and one day I’ll too get to live on easy street.