Generational transition now!

Well, here's one way it happens: 

Since the start of the [current] 119th Congress, five members of the House—four Democrats and one Republican—have died. Several others have missed significant periods of work because of illnesses that either remain mysterious or have been revealed by the president as being quite serious.

In recent history, the deadliest session of Congress was the 117th, which took place in 2021–2023, when seven lawmakers died. With five deaths among the ranks, the 119th Congress is among the deadliest since then; the 115th Congress also had five deaths during its two-year span.

According to an analysis from Slate, 16 lawmakers have died in office in the past decade, which is greater than any stretch of three consecutive Congresses since the new millennium.

Replacement by mortality seems an extreme way to achieve generational transition. 

Congress is old. The nation is in general not young; our median age is about 40, half younger, half older. Perhaps that's why we seem to have an enduring tolerance for politicians who have long reached their sell-by date. 

Congresscritters of both parties take extended absences for health reasons. Republican Tom Kean Jr. who apparently has been absent for months is only 57. Maybe he's got a good excuse, but he's not saying. Meanwhile "Representative Frederica S. Wilson, 83, a Florida Democrat, has been absent from the Capitol for over a month." Apparently she had an eye ailment and apparently she is running for reelection.  Despite Florida redistricting which favors Republicans, her Miami district remains a safe D seat, so expect her to be around for awhile.

Re-electing an 83 year old doesn't suggest dynamism. I'm grateful my Congresscritter Nancy Pelosi, 86, has decided to hang it up. Over her many years in office, I'd describe her as growing in wisdom. 

Despite the impression one gets that Congress is stuffed with old people, the tilt toward the old has very slightly moderated in the last four years.  The Pew Research Center reports:

The median age of voting members of the House of Representatives is now 57.5 years. That’s down from 57.9 at the start of the 118th Congress (2023-25), 58.9 in the 117th Congress (2021-23), 58.0 in the 116th (2019-21) and 58.4 in the 115th (2017-19).

The Senate, following the death or retirement of some of its oldest members, has reversed its aging trend. The new Senate’s median age is 64.7 years, down from 65.3 at the start of the previous Congress. The median age of the Senate had previously risen for three Congresses in a row: from 62.4 (115th) to 63.6 (116th), to 64.8 (117th) and to 65.3 (118th).

I'm a boomer, but I'm well aware that the time for the political dominance of my generation is so over. Last year New York Times Opinion published this delicious jeremiad against our monopolization of the power and wealth. I can't figure out how to embed the video here, but click this link for an experience. 

Enjoy.

Two old men

In a week when convicted felon Donald Trump is whining loudly about being found guilty by a jury of his fellow citizens of a scheme to hoodwink voters, it may seem beside the point to go back to voters' concerns about the ages of our presidential choices. The jury verdict affirms our assumption that the Orange Man violates any law (or recognized ethical injunction) that gets in his way. That's bad.

But the age discussion is sure to come back, especially if Trump thinks it can distract from his criminal record. 

Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the basketball great and supreme exponent of rational thinking, made some observations that seem worth sharing:

I’m younger than both Biden and Trump and I think I’m too old to be president. But what rankles in [one] poll is that Trump is 77 and Biden is 81—a four-year difference—and yet 25% more thought Biden was too old. Given what we’ve been able to observe in both men through their actions and words, how can 62% think Biden doesn’t have the mental fitness needed to do the job but only 48% think that of Trump? 

We’re so focused on worrying about the decline of the brain by aging that we miss this clear evidence of the decline of the use of the brain based on the inability to use facts and logic to form opinions. In the best of all worlds, we’d have younger and more robust candidates. But that, too, was our choice, so all that’s left for those with fully functioning brains is to choose which is best for the country.

I suggest you follow [this gift] link and read the entire article because it offers some scientific insight into the process of aging and its effects on the brain. For example, when older people fumble names and places—as both Trump and Biden (and myself) have done—it’s not necessarily an indication of declining cognizance. It could simply be depression, temporary dehydration, or a deficiency of vitamin B12.

Older people also tend to be more emotionally stable. Aging reduces negative emotions and lets us see with more clarity what’s worth getting worked up about and what isn’t.

What’s concerning about the debate over Trump and Biden’s age is that it spills over into how society perceives seniors in general. Says Laura Carstensen, a professor of psychology and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, “The ageism that underlies these discussions is remarkable.”

She also pointed out that “Emotional regulation, emotional caring, appreciation, motivation to be social with others — all of those go up with age.”

Well, we've certainly got one candidate who, if anything, seems to lose emotional regulation and/or emotional stability by the day, if he ever had any. Meanwhile the other guy is doing the most difficult job in the world, creditably if imperfectly.

Kareem's confession that he -- Kareem at 77 -- is "too old to be president" frames his thinking about Joe Biden (who he nonetheless supports). 

I want to suggest that Kareem is not being entirely logical here. 

I too feel myself "too old to be president" -- but I think that conclusion answers the wrong question. The better frame is, does the individual have life experience that helps do the job. We don't often put it that way, but I think that is what we are seeing.

Here's how I've lived an experience which suggests this might be the right frame: when I was a mere 75, I had the chance to fulfill a useful and difficult logistical role for a vital political campaign. I had my doubts about whether I could do it; this sort of work is detail-oriented and completely exhausting. Would I hold up? But I took the chance and plunged in. And, I think, I did just fine. I realized in retrospect that decades of working in campaigns in various roles had thoroughly prepared me for this job. That accumulated experience gave me the intellectual and emotional flexibility to undertake new, but still recognizable. tasks in a fraught campaign setting. I could do it because specific life experiences had prepared me to do it.

I think we are getting to see that Joe Biden's decades of aspiring to be president and of knowing where he wanted to take the role are serving the country well. He's one of the most experienced figures ever to reach the highest office. Presumably no one is fully prepared for that job, but Biden probably comes as close as anyone. I don't like every direction he takes it in, but I recognize that he's indeed "got what it takes" despite advanced age. Sometimes age is actually wisdom. Not every time, but sometimes.

Certainly he's got more of what it takes than the crazy other guy.

In which Erudite Partner returns to the inescapable ...

... after a 40 year hiatus. 

Stumbling Towards Old Age ... And Looking for Someone to Lean On
It turns out that we — the people of this country — are all on our own. ... But even as I grieve for capacities lost and departing, I’m still not ready to come face to face with the only true alternative to aging: not some tech bro’s wet dream of eternal life, but the reality of death. I’m opposed to dying and, had the universe consulted me, I’d have left mortality out of its design completely. 

... Aging really is a roulette game.

Need the inevitable be quite so lonely? Could we, collectively, do better by each other?

In which Ron Kim became a champion for elders

For those of us not from New York State, mention of disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo brings to mind a bully and an empowered lech. But it was not only those who chose (in return for a measure of power?) to work in proximity to this very bad boss who suffered.

New York Times opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang has conducted a substantial interview with Assemblyman Ron Kim who blew the whistle on Cuomo's murderous misadministration of his state's nursing home business during the pandemic. Cuomo propped up his donor cronies by requiring nursing homes to house COVID patients released from hospitals who could be labeled "stable." Thousands died and nursing homes, where staff were often under-trained and short term as well as poorly paid, became centers of transmission for the virus. And then Cuomo used his pandemic emergency powers to protect nursing home owners from wrongful death lawsuits.

Having successfully raised the issue of mismanagement and malfeasance in private nursing homes, Assemblyman Kim has found greater understanding of elders and a passion for more .

Nursing homes and elder care aren’t really things that generally make somebody’s political career. What caused you to get involved so heavily in this one issue? 

Kim: It’s deeply personal for me. We had constituents at the peak of the pandemic that came to us desperately crying that their loved ones were dying in these facilities. The language that they used was out of this world. Half of my staff was like: “Don’t talk to this person, they seem crazy. How could these facilities be committing murder?” 

My gut feeling was that I should talk to them. And after I understood what was going on, because I also had an uncle in a nursing home, things started to connect very quickly for me. ... I think there are way too many powerful individuals and groups implicated in this scandal, which goes back many decades. 

... I think we’ve culturally accepted and normalized ageism. Because when it comes to corporate and establishment Democrats involving racism or sexism, we are so quick to police each other and call each other out, because we want to keep that moral standard. But when it comes to older people dying thousands at a time, we’re out eating brunch, looking the other way. 

There is no return on investment for policing ageism. I think that’s the status that we’re in, and unless we’re completely honest about where we are, we’re not going to move forward.

Assemblyman Kim thinks the state needs to create a public nursing home program that competes with, and outshines, the private businesses in both efficiency and human decency. Who knows whether New York politics will enable him to succeed.

Kang reports that he came to his attention to Kim's reform effort by observing what happened during the pandemic at San Francisco's Laguna Honda.

It was a public facility in San Francisco that offered a good example of how to battle the pandemic inside a nursing home. Laguna Honda, one of the largest county-run nursing homes in the country, houses a significant portion of the city’s indigent elderly. Under normal conditions, an outbreak there would have almost certainly led to extensive loss of life as understaffed and poorly run facilities scrambled to deal with the crisis. That didn’t happen, in no small part, because Laguna Honda and its staff are run by the local government. Not only did the facility have much better staffing numbers than many of the for-profit nursing homes in the area; the direct link to public health officials also allowed for direct and decisive action. 

It’s true that outbreaks can happen at even the best-run facilities, but the for-profit industry can almost entirely be blamed for the scope of the American nursing home tragedy.

Kang doesn't mention that our mayor's grandmother had once lived at Laguna Honda; that certainly helped get the city's attention. As soon as it became feasible, residents and staff were frequently tested and quarantined. It undoubtedly also helped that the strong union of city employees insisted on protective measures. And when vaccines became available, Laguna Honda residents were first in line.

In the early months of the pandemic, my Walking San Francisco project took me to the perimeter of Laguna Honda. I looked at the huge facility with foreboding. Was the virus going to crash through those huge buildings, wiping out helpless inmates?

San Francisco's obsessive attention to a plethora of injustices can often make us a national laughstock. But there's a residue of broad, informed, applied compassion around here which we should treasure.