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Cake day: August 25th, 2024

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  • I’ve wrestled with this quite a bit. And as someone who donated to his political campaigns, multiple times, I still think Bernie has to go too. It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that he’s just too old to be doing work. The optics are awful.

    The larger issue is that the Dem party has been nipping buds before they can even stretch for the sun, for decades. So any real progressive candidates will need to be drawn in from the outside. Which also means the Dem party itself needs to be dismantled from the top, and reconstructed to be effective in the 21st century. Late 1900s strategies are all the Dems have been offering, while losing again and again and again. Bernie has been an Independent since 1978. And that’s largely a function of Vermont. So the question is, how can we affect the political landscape such that living fossils understand they’re no longer wanted, when their entire careers are predicated on egoism insisting that theirs are the necessary hands on the tiller?

    So, I’m not saying throw the wizened baby out with the bathwater, but asking an 83 year old man to serve another 6 years is not fair to anyone. And despite his fantastic vigor, it’s a recipe for diminishing returns.








  • The beginning and end of Leadership is accountability. The Dems refuse to accept their part in this loss.

    The President and Vice President have zero outward indications that this is personally painful to them, at all. If anything, they seem relieved to be passing the potato. If they are so out of touch, or so insulated from the pernicious outcomes of their doleful stewardship of this country, then WHY should voters place their trust in that party again, considering it’s been helmed and staffed by the same obstinate members for decades?

    I don’t see Leadership, I see a kind of craven capitulation, at a time when America most needs its leaders to have fire in their bellies, and compassion in their eyes.




  • Can’t argue against those points, though I still think that the figures listed lack the broader weight and gravitas required to successfully hold together a cult following. Trump succeeds because he’s also an old Boomer, and old Boomer white men like to imagine they are him- a weak man’s idea of a strong man.

    As to the young men of America, we have essentially left them behind for 25-30 years as the cultural focus pivoted to ensuring that girls and young women have a seat at the table. So now young women are graduating college and going into advanced education and growing professional careers, but boys and young men have been handed the remnants of toxic masculinity, without any real, positive modeling. My father predicted this outcome in the late 90s and it’s been heartbreaking to watch it play out.