Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders rally Democrats, calling for a party that 'fights harder'
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-rally-democrats-rcna197296Open linkView original on lemmy.world1228
Comments111
Too bad the rest of the Democrats can't hear them with all that money stuffed in their ears.
They can't. But that just means we demand they go.
I'm sure they'll all just step down on demand /s
Can't insider trade if you aren't inside her...wait what?
They should make their own party with blackjack and hookers. A third party that isn't sleepwalking like the democrats could actually win in this shitshow
That's already happening without a new party. AOC has got some of the thickest skin in DC, she'd be fine.
A new party isn't going to go anywhere without big established names leaving the Democrats and leading the new one though.
They'd need to start ASAP, though.
Not if it gets started further than a month out from the election and doesn’t mysteriously disappear immediately after
Lol we don't need Republicans 2™️
You've already got it.
Revenge of the Whigs
(This time everyone has to wear powdered wigs.)
May I also have syphilis?
You can have a little syphilis, as a treat.
Ye-eee-eeee-sssss!
Live in the US any longer and it’s going to become a greatest hits album of communicable diseases regardless.
Not sure how you envision this. It’s not a winning strategy to have a third party run for election. The best outcome by far is if AOC is the Democratic presidential candidate in 2028.
You think the DNC would let AOC anywhere near candidacy? They torpedoed Bernie. They seem quite content with their failing platform.
Apparently it's not a winning strategy to have Democrats run for elections either, so what's there to lose?
Lincoln was a Whig before a 'third' party came along. The calls for a new party aren't necessarily to form a third party. They are calls to form a party in power.
The Dems need to do a lot of things. I don't really believe it's possible.
For one, if they continue to be owned by corporations, then no change will happen.
If We The People don't actually have a say in party nominees, no change will happen.
If they keep bending over to "cross the aisle", no change will happen. Stop trying to be the "good guy" and fucking fight for the party platform.
And that platform needs to shift away from the wants of rich liberals. Progressives need a voice.
Burn every company. Copy.
REI gets a pass
Dems are the establishment, both parties are full of old pieces of shit I think Bernie is the only decent one and he's promoting stuff that we have in Europe and is basic for a rich western democracy.
Nothing is gonna change unless people start rioting and protesting in the streets like the fucking French do, go set a few precints on fire and the ruling noble class will notice you once you kick a few of their loyal uniformed dogs
We in Europe won’t have that stuff for long if people keep voting these fascists adjacent parties into power.
sadf
Damn, if only someone could have seen this all coming 200 years ago as industrialization started to take off
Yeah, who was that guy again? Groucho Marx or something?
asdf
It's easy if you try.
asdf
It isn't hard to do.
Bernie is kinda as bad as your run off the mill democrat candidate. He's just more palatable to capture young and progressive vote, but he refused to call the genocide by what it is, and has been a defender of Zionism in the past.
I would love to see AOC and Bernie attempt to bring back the American labor party
This is the answer. Dems are compromised. A new party is needed.
Pick up where Debs left off
The people need to save this country. Yes that means you and me actually going outside. We need to stop expecting systemic change to come from politicians within a two-party system.
But what if it inconveniences me even slightly?
Shit, forgot about that. We had a good run, fellas. Crash it up, and let's pick a different seed for next run.
But I'm le tired.
Well have a nap..THEN FIRE THE MISSILES!!!!
Bernie/AOC 2028
AOC/The Squad 2032
Make America decent again
I think you’re going to need to burn the whole system down before you guys can just rely on voting to get out of this mess
D0GE is already doing that part.
Then separate yourselves from the dems and create your own party. We will follow.
Absolutely. Dems are at an all time low of approval as far as I'm aware. This is the opportune time to make a new one. Enough with the weak responses to a threat that not only throws the US into chaos, but the rest of the world as well.
The Democrats need to dump their old shitty politicians. I would vote for AOC if she decided to run for president.
just make a new one already
What's wrong with the leftist third parties we already have?
The fact they exist and got us nowhere near a unified working class movement.
They're all sectarian and pointless. The party that takes us there will be formed by the popular working class movement
The ones that exist solely to split the progressive vote to ensure a loss?
Dems are just a bunch of empty chairs.
Sucks, but it's also an opportunity. Plenty of space for progressives to move in and take over.
It's mostly the consultant class morons that suck. Both parties used to be full of consultants until 2010-2015 with the rise of the tea party / trumpism. The GOP kicked most of the consultants to the curb, but the Democrats are still running campaigns like it's 2008 and the voters give a shit about the color tie the candidate is wearing.
Harris would've been a good candidate had she not been market researched to death.
I obviously don't agree with TDS-having morons that believe that all experts are useless, but expertise should really be evaluated every once in a while. It's clear to me from my field that professional management and consultants are often goldbricking idiots with impressive resumes and few actual professional accomplishments.
“There go my people. I must find out where they’re going, so I can lead them.”
Fuckin A, West Wing. We could only wish to have people in the white house like them. They're not perfect, but at least they care and they aren't literally evil.
Yeah. On the other hand, it may have done some damage to the left by portraying a fantasy world where explaining looks like winning… which is, very obviously, not how real-world politics works.
Unfortunately this just isn't true. It's not the consultant class that made AOC cry on the floor of the House for not wanting to fund Israel's iron dome, it was Nancy Pelosi. The whole infrastructure is corrupt with wall street money. It wasn't the consultant class that disciplined each every squad member into toeing the party line, not coming out guns blazing for progressive candidates and calling for primaries against corporate Dems, it's the party leadership.
They also suck. I'll give you that. It's all things at once: the policy sucks, the leadership sucks, and the messaging sucks. However, the leaders aren't immune to the ouroboros nature of the consultancy within the Democratic party.
Some of the leaders obviously internalized all of the marketing feedback. By the time Hillary Clinton did her final lap on the stage, she was clearly little more than 30 years of political marketing advice in a pantsuit.
You're right though, basically everyone involved is a sellout and that's the real root of the problem.
Great to see from these two.
Rather than try to start a new party, it's easier and more efficient for the left and progressives to take control of the Democratic party and make it their own (can rename it later). Just like the right took over the Repub party.
The time is ripe for it -- yes, a bit too ripe, maybe even too late, but unfortunately that's how it works with humans--it takes things to get to extremely dire circumstances where all could be lost for the general population to be jolted out of complacency and finally take action.
BUT the other thing we need is someone with charisma and a certain personality type to emerge and lead, because most humans need to be led like sheep.
Except that was the whole idea with the Justice Democrats, that got AOC elected in the first place. Remember when she protested outside of Pelosi's office? Seen any of that lately? Remember when she cried on the House floor? That strategy hasn't worked. As soon as AOC got in, she got eaten by the party. I think advocates of the "take over the Dem party" strategy underestimate the enormous institutional pressure party members come under when they enter that bubble.
This is exactly right. I don’t think AOC has compromised as much as we think she has, but the institutional power is very real. I remember what things were like in 2016 too. They fought against Bernie’s influence at every step, and colluded to get their favorite candidate elected.
All we have to do is look at the most recent Third Way strategy document to understand. The right wing Democrats (“centrists”) would rather lose to Donald Trump with Harris than win with Sanders or any halfway progressive. It’s just a huge obstacle and if we do try to fix the party, we need to dislodge ALL of the entrenched right wing elements.
I know and agree with your points, but the time wasn't ripe then. There are always people ahead of the curve and AOC is one. When she got there the Dem machine was still too powerful and too early to change it but now things have changed. People are now demanding that the old guard Dems either stand up and fight or get out and make room. AOC will be a leader in that.
The last election was a mortal wound to the old Dem party--not dead yet but dying and its infrastructure is there and ready to be taken over and appropriated for a new purpose.
Remember the TEA party is how the right started their movement. It took several election cycles but eventually every old guard Repub either joined them or got kicked out. They won because they had a significant movement of regular people behind them and then a charasmatic leader appeared and took the lead. That needs to happen on the left.
Luigi for President
Left founded the Labour Party in UK, was excluded by Centrists for most of last century, has never been able to gain political control for pushing radical change since 1945. If you try to make Dems your vehicle, it will destroy you before you reform it. Your plan is a false hope, I'm sorry to say.
I think it makes more sense to found your own political movement. That matters more than parties. Especially in an emergency when what matters is survival not manifesto promises or campaigns for elections that, realistically given Trump's lawlessness and declared intention to reign as monarch and founder of a dynasty, might never happen.
Feed, house, heal each other - Americans already do that, just look at community responses to recent natural disasters like California fires - 'ordinary people' can help each other and often do so better than the government. This is a crisis for USA but also an opportunity for citizens to make an alternative society, invent new ways of working, new ways of meeting needs, inspiring creativity and innovation, creating an economy that really takes care of people instead of making some creep more wealth than he could ever use in a hundred lifetimes. Do for yourselves what the state has failed to do. Build another nation inside the dead carcass of corporate America. Be ready to take over when Trump's coup and the fantasy of representative democracy finally dies. Emerge as a radically different society.
There's no point trying to reanimate the old America when it brought you to this crisis and would do so again in future you ever let it. You need your own Plan 2025. I used to think like you, now I think anarchy is probably the best strategy. Do not gift your power to others, least of all charismatic leaders or political parties dominated by careerists, lobbyists, and corruption. When in crisis, do not carry on as normal. In crisis the best hope of survival is to do something radically different. Science shows, 80% of people cannot recognise a crisis and cannot innovate. You must be in the 20%. Cultivate boldness!
Left taking over the D party is no more reanimating the old America than the right taking over the R party was. D party a dying machine but a machine that's already built and running, ready to be handed over to new operators to replace the defective parts and make it do what the people demand and need.
The most important thing now is to first stop the fascists from gaining total control, which means the opposition has to gain more political power quickly, whether that's by fighting from the outside with a new party (IMO a less tenable strategy) or by fighting from both inside and outside to kick out the old guard and replace them, taking over the party apparatus (like the right did to the R party starting with the TEA Party movement).
You make good points. I sincerely hope you succeed. I admire Sanders and AOC - wish we had similar figures here in UK politics, we had Corbyn but he was destroyed by the rightwing of his party and now we have Starmer who is at best Centre-Right. I think Starmer is clueless and unwittingly preparing the way for a coup in UK like the one in US. We are just a few years behind you unless we find a miracle. I am more pessimistic than you because I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch. I cannot imagine Trump being impeached, tried, deposed in USA's current situation and I expect it to get much, much worse because Trump is serious about dismantling American democracy and has no respect for human rights and wants to wage imperialist wars and open access to the new economic zone in the ice-free Arctic. Would he even allow another election or accept any result he dislikes? Will Dems not be soon made an illegal group or labelled a terrorist organisation - like the people vandalising Tesla cars? The window of opportunity to stop him is closing very, very fast.
Given that what amounts to fascism or some similar tyranny not yet defined by academia already controls USA, what can ordinary citizens do? I think they have to recognise the old way is gone - no more calling police to report a crime, or expecting rights of employees to be respected, or getting insurance to cover healthcare, or having enforcible consumer rights, no free education, no civic freedoms or human rights, no social security in sickness or old age. Society, for the poor, those unable to emigrate, will be effectively lawless, have no safety nets, few outside resources to rely on, no state provision. Trump is trying to replace dollar with crypto currency. People might not even have access to cash economy but be reduced to barter. When 'might is right', the only way to protect your life, your loved ones, your neighbours and community, will be by organising yourself and improvising at the local level (and building ties with other similar organisations). Thus a kind of practical de facto anarchism - not read from a textbook and led by theory but built by trial and error from scratch from the ground up. I feel insane saying this about USA. It sounds more like an HBO or video game scenario! If Trump objects to such communities, they will either be disappeared by police or military or dragged into violent conflict with police or military. Eventually, it scales up and we have civil war or organised armed resistance and/or terrorism against Trump's regime. Who wins that armed struggle, who else gets involved, will it lead to WW3, is beyond my guess. I cannot imagine what 2050 will be like for anywhere on earth, least of all USA. And by then, I'll probably be dead of old age and never know.
I base this sketch of post-democracy USA on seeing what happens in improvised communities e.g. refugee camps etc. Yes, UN or MSF or other NGOs and charities do some professional organisation, send in some outside help/rations/transport/water/electricity, but the main work of surviving is on the refugees themselves. They do what they can, improvise schools, childcare, community kitchens, latrines, form orderly queues, ensure fair shares, stop crime, stop black markets, or help one another tolerate what they cannot control. USA has better infrastructure than a city of tents in Sudan or wherever but the principle remains - when a state fails, the people have to build from the ground up. Either that, or some opportunists hijack their fears, hunger, desperation, ambition, and recruit them into some cause not necessarily their own e.g. organised crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism, armed struggle in a civil war or maybe a revolution - give me your son to fight my cause and I'll give you rice, give me your daughter for my brothel and she'll send you a cut of the earnings so you can buy medicine, sell me your kidney and I'll smuggle you to a new country where you'll be safe. When society falls apart, there is chaos, and then there are new rules. The future is created by those who make those new rules.
I hope it will not come to this 'worst case' scenario. I hope there is a way to avoid this. But if it comes to it, I think leadership will emerge in the moment, from the community. It will not helicopter in from Washington or the state capital. The political parties will not organise food or medicine or dig graves. They are not designed to do that. Boy scouts, school football teams, college students, religious congregations, and random community groups would be more organised, integrated into the community, and potentially provide more timely, practical help. I would hope Leftists would be useful too but too many of us just talk, we don't do the work. There is some hope in that community preparedness - we can be our own leaders, make our own society, fix our problems good enough to get by. Humans have that built in. We have been doing this for millions of years and we all default to human and we can build on that and protect the human against the inhumane. I have to believe that. I have to believe most people are good and do right by one another given a chance. I believe good is better than evil and can win in any struggle, given time, hard work, and some luck. I don't want to be wrong about that. I think your hope in saving the democratic system by heroic efforts now, and my hope of surviving a failed system through heroic efforts in future, is based on this same belief in human decency and human beings' sheer determination to survive. We are allies, I think.
I'm old. I write essays. Youngsters write snippets for social media. Apologies for my verbosity!
I agree, I think it's a matter of a very short time before we all understand that the judicial branch is powerless against him, or I should say him combined with the Repub party which collaborates with him.
Either he'll be stopped by political power of the opposition (if an effective one can be exercised), or violence like a civil war or coup, or else he won't be stopped at all. Judging by how similar things are and have been happening in other countries, this feels like some kind of widespread shift away from a relatively short-lived period of democracy and back to the more usual systems of autocratic/oligarchic rule. But hey, it ain't over yet so we should at least try to save what we've got.
I'm old too, so I don't know how much help I can give to the younger people who will be the ones living long-term in whatever comes next. Good luck on your side of pond.
Cheers friend! My hope lies in the decency of most people - yes, we are told that humans will readily do evil e.g. will hurt others if ordered to do so by an authority figure in a white coat (a classic experiment I vaguely recall from somewhere). But what gets missed is that there are always some people who refuse the first time, and if those who get fooled once realise what happened they are harder to fool a second time, which means we humans are fallible but we tend to fail towards becoming older, wiser. In brief, we can learn to do better. That is our strength. That's how we survive.
Would it be easier and more efficient?
You'd have to scrap the entire party. Pretty much every candidate, every analyst and advisor. They won't oppose the republicans, but they'll for sure oppose that.
I don't see it happening, I keep hearing the dems wanting to double down.
What will happen is they'll go "we tried to be more like the republicans but people voted republican. So we need to be even more like the republicans" and eventually they'll win because the republicans do so much damage and they'll say "we won by being more republican" and then they'll pass the power back over. You need a real opposition party.
You don't reform the democratic party, it reforms you. It's like a corrupted windows install, you don't use the reinstall windows option from within the corrupted windows, cause the corruption is carried over almost invisibility untill issues happen again. You make a fresh boot drive, and use that outside of the current instance to start fresh. The amount of people it would take to reform the democratic party would be more than enough to start our own parry, one without a history of corruption or full of old guard to sabotage it.
Who said reform it? Take it over! Or to use your analogy, they've built a powerful machine over many years with tons of resources and capabilities--THAT's what we take away from them, we uninstall them and install a new OS / new leadership on. Starting a new party is like having the software but you're starting from scratch building hardware to run it on.
Take it over? From the people who control the entirety of every process and have a finger on every level?
Your optimism is not matched by an understanding of how things actually work. The Democratic party is private; it's essentially a club. Which means that the party dictates which funding goes to whom, and which candidates are allowed to campaign for specific posts. It's the opposite of democracy.
When AOC started making waves, Pelosi, that fucking corrupt dinosaur, pulled her aside and read her the riot act- quintessentially reminding any further progressives that the OLD GUARD neoliberals are in charge, as they have been for the last 30 years. Which is why the Dems have been floundering and failing, by design, for 30+ years.
The only way forward for the party as it stands is to purge the entirety of elderly power-clutching corporate boot throaters. Otherwise they'll strangle any rising progressive stars before they can walk, let alone run.
Not to mention those entities activley corrupt new members, whittling away at their progressive tendencies until they fall into place, and then perpetuate that whole cycle into a new generation. That is the carrying over of the corruption I was referring to. You gotta start fresh without that virus or it will perpetuate through the interior like mold spreading.
Agreed.
Fyi, it's *whittling
Any amount of effort and movement required to "take over" the democratic party and fix the flaws inherent at every level is less than the effort it would take to create a true workers party that wouldn't just be subject to the same eventual outcomes, and thus be better to just put effort into that.
The obsticles and saboteurs in the democratic party are what have curbed the movement for decades and will continue to hold it back or even prevent it, it's the method they've perfected. Its not a "hardware" they've built, but "software" designed to sell sections of computing power to mining bitcoin, and that's all the system has been doing despite the fact we need it for actual work, and not somebody else's profit.
Not to mention the fact that as soon as the tides would theoretically shift, all the Shumers and Sinemas would pretend they were really progressive the whole time, and some would get through, and then they would slowly turn the water back up again.
We need a democratic party that fights ... just that .. that will do something besides just expose their belly.
Democrats fight like hell all the time except when they're in office.
How is approving trumps budget and candidates "fighting like hell"?
It's not.
Their average age is just under 60. I'd vote for it, if I we're still allowing that kind of thing
Now there's a ticket.
Gonna be honest, wasn’t a huge fan of AOC a couple years ago. Glad to see her being the one person out there with Bernie trying to keep it real. Hell yeah
Who were you a fan of years ago?
Always been a Bernie guy
Bernie is pushing the 2028 presidential candidates.
That will never be the democratic party. We need a new party, not a new democrat to save us.
So many comments about them starting a new political party and I don't want to disagree but if democrats already have less votes than republicans now, wouldn't that make it even harder to win an election?
If democrats are worried about splitting the vote, they don't have to field a candidate.
Chuckle!
The democrats have less votes because their policies are platitudes and austerity at the expense of the working people and in service to party donors. It's not for a lack of leftist sentiment, as Bernie himself still has quite a bit of a following in spite being independent
Huge numbers of people eligible to vote, do not vote. I think the hope behind these calls for new parties is that the shy voters would like a change and would vote for a radical alternative in enough numbers to elect the Left into government. I am less convinced that shy voters are just waiting to give their votes to a better party. I think many have given up on representative democracy. The way all democracy, but especially USA democracy, has been privatised means you would still have to get massive funding to run a campaign just for the new party to be noticed by the media, let alone win votes from people not motivated to even bother to register to vote before. Thus your new party has to pander to donors more than its members or potential voters and the old, old story repeats on a loop where the party is just a puppet to wealthy puppet-masters. Old Dems are dead, welcome the New Dems, same as the old Dems.
Thinking things over, I am pretty old, nearly 70, I have recently decided that political parties and representative democracy are not able to deliver good government. Maybe last century they did, sometimes, but there's no way to go back in time. I now believe in direct democracy and some kind of anarchy - my model is life in a small community, everyone knows and trusts each other, agrees the rules on how to run their lives, the focus is on just living each day and being as happy as possible. This society meets human need, in humane ways. We humans need that kind of nurturing. Modern nation states are too big, too complex, admin is too 'one size must fit all' impersonal not to be inefficient and tyranical. Better to live in smaller communities and have more autonomy. Manage larger problems through a wider network of those who share your values, a federation of new city states maybe. Can it be done? Only way to know is to try it.
The Far-Right have smashed the old reality. Their ideas about new cities-states imagine them as kingdoms with absolute monarchs, elites admin, and slaves with no rights, only allowed to live if they generate profits. It is up to each of us to use this cursed opportunity to make a new future different from the dystopia imagined by Curtis Yarvin and his ilk. We have to dare to be free. As things get worse, it will not be a choice but a necessity. Be your own rescuer or be another's slave. Political parties have almost never been our friend, no matter what they say just to get our votes. More of the same is just slow death.
Too little, too late.
I'll vote for a Bernie AOC ticket if it ever materializes but I won't hold my breath. You people keep expecting politicians to save you when we need to be taking a note from the French. Grassroots organization: labor strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience. It's the only thing these leeches understand.
New Democrat motto
If only AOC also fought harder and signed along with other members of congress to free mahmoud Khalil.
I will put forward a radical suggestion for Progressive candidates in 2028: physically take control of television studios at key points, and make your message. This is because FOX and other mass-media channels are in the pocket of conservatives, so they will try to downplay or outright ignore Progressives, in an attempt to deplatform them among the general public.
While online social platforms like Bluesky or physical locations like churches would be key for messaging, television is a major mouthpiece of the 1%. It will be important to steal the megaphone on occasion.
The studios almost certainly will speak only for Trump when not busy with glazing his nethers.
They should make a new party, call it the greens or something
That name is already taken by an organization funded primarily by Republican donors.
Thats so weird, I know in the UK there is a greens party who is the progressive party
It is the progressive party. But they can't win a local council seat let alone any valuable position. But they run for President every year and normally run one of their established candidates. The right gains more by supporting them.
That said funding is questionable. They normally have their primary debate around a rental folding table. Im shocked they can even afford chairs.
There's probably a greens party in every country and in most, it's probably the least green thing there is
And it’s an open secret that they’re kinda Russian assets.
Tomato tomato.
I'd love to be wrong, but while they talk a lot neither of these two are accomplishing much on that front either. And no, I don't mean their voting history.
Messaging is important. While the Republicans are saying "There's some temporary pain, but it'll all sort itself out in the end. We just need to get through this transition, and the tarrifs and deportations will MAGA", there needs to be a counter-argument.
They're (thankfully) not preaching to the choir. They're going to Republicans and independents and explaining in these rallies that there's an oligarchy that has taken control, made them poorer, and it will get worse.
If they can convince enough people of the real causes, they have a broader base, and potentially even some new progressives.
lol Republicans messaging is always that BS. Just like trying to get rid of Obamacare.
"it'll sort itself out".
Yes, with lots of death and money lost.
I doubt Republicans are attending these rallies; good chance most of the people attending are blue-leaning voters (which exist everywhere in the same way red-leaning voters exist in California).
That's true, but the problem is twofold here: First, without strong leadership willing to take to the streets all this messaging will never lead to action. Messaging is important, but it's not everything. Second, America is going fascist at breakneck speed and doesn't have the time for progressives slowly build up a base of support. This is a time of crisis, and both the Squad specifically and the American progressive movement in general are letting a good crisis go to waste (which incidentally is not how you solve a crisis). Everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan is acutely aware that something needs to be done, and many want someone to give them something to do. Bernie simply doesn't give people anything to do—which even in the best of times this is a big problem with how he does things—but right now it's downright suicidal.
Edit: Typo.
What would you recommend they do? And how would they go about doing that within the strictures of a two-party system where one is fascist and the other is captured?
Drum up support for protests, boycotts, strikes and other forms of resistance. They—or anyone else trying to lead the American progressive movement now—have to understand that they're leading a resistance movement, not a political movement. The battlefield ceased to be Washington in January; now it's the hearts and minds of people and, most importantly, the streets. Bernie, if he's interested leading the movement (which I doubt), should be linking up with local and state-level progressive movements and cooperating with them to organize a nationwide resistance effort, not try to pour progressive energy into a system that has already failed them. This resistance effort can then be reorganized into a third party and knock the democrats out of the competition with the legitimacy it'll gain from being the resistance that toppled Trump's regime. This is a time where the GOP is only concerned with their third of the population and the DNC has almost completely lost legitimacy in the eyes of the other two thirds; there is no reason to operate within the system. If the GOP plays a "good game of chess", then the progressive movement should take a sledgehammer to the chess board.
You likely don't know shit about economics. That's why you still think it's important to vaguely allude to economics as an important element to understand in politics when really it's just a smoke screen used to tell people that policies that make their lives miserable are all very well and good actually. 🧐🎩
Economic "experts" running policy on the basis of laughably bad classroom economic theory -- save those from the behavioral economics realm that generate testable, falsifiable hypotheses -- are a big reason why the middle class has gone down the tubes in this country for 50 years.
To be fair, no body understands 'economics' and age has not stopped Putin, Xi, Trump or a whole list of evil people get and keep power so why say Bernie is too old?
I could see a role for 'elder statesmen and women' as a chamber of cousellors i.e. they offer advice when asked but are not 'hands-on'. Instead, they step down at a retirement age (about 60 years old say) and their juniors step up. That way you get the best from all generations and no generation selfishly dominates decision-making.