Airline pilots are forced to retire age 65, federal law enforcement officers,
57, judges here in South Carolina, 72.
>> What >> Have you ever noticed that politicians
hardly ever retire?
Our country and our state are being run by geriatric oligarchy,
people who stay in office way past their prime.
>> That is an ad by Joe Cunningham who is the Democratic nominee for
governor in south Carolina.
Who has identified that, yes, we do have a lot of older politicians, but
he doesn't just want to identify, he wants to do something about it.
Listen to this.
>> That's why it's time to put term limits and age limits on politicians,
will bring new blood and new ideas to the table.
That's why I want to legalize marijuana and sports betting and
then use that money to give our teachers a raise and fix our roads.
Let's fight climate change and put people to work while doing it.
And how about this?
Let's move towards eliminating the state income tax,
to keep more money in your pocket.
>> Okay, so we included that last bit there because look, I don't know a lot
about Joe Cunningham, but like, okay, so you want to legalize marijuana.
That's good, just good and then getting rid of state income tax.
Okay, so things get a little bit complicated there, but
we're setting aside that for now, let's talk about this idea.
He wants not only term limits which lots of politicians before they get into
office, advocate for that.
I don't know him.
Maybe he still will in 20 years.
Usually once they get into elected office, they stop talking about that.
That's not too crazy though, talking about term limits.
But talking about age limits is not something generally that you hear a lot
about, particularly from major party candidates for governor.
What do you think about that?
>> You know, even though it falls into the category of ageism,
I see his point because there's a commonality and
the thinking of people that fall into this certain demographic.
And how they've been affecting our country and they bring their old ways and
they don't want to make change.
And then a lot of those older white men that he's talking about are sitting
like fat rats collecting these checks from these corporations and not wanting
to make changes because they don't want to let go of their generational wealth.
They want to ensure that their children and their children's children
continue to have what they have while the other people struggle.
And in south Carolina in particular where the education system is so lacking and
the cost of living versus the income and the average income in that place.
The struggle that is real in a place called South Carolina.
I'm really impressed to hear someone, it's very refreshing to hear
someone with a Southern draw talk about climate change in a way that is
affirming that it's real and saying that they want to legalize marijuana.
And so, I think that we've gotten such into this culture of
the takedown is gonna take all hands on deck.
And someone that's leaning towards progress is always better than
the people who are trying to prevent it at all costs.
>> I agree with you.
Yeah, I need to look more into him when he goes into getting rid of the state income
tax, that worries me a little bit, because that I don't know how that necessarily
advances those other goals or whatever.
But it is interesting and he is coming with real fresh ideas.
I will give my take on whether it makes sense that these age limits in one sec.
First, I do want to lay out the data.
So, does he have a point?
Do we have really?
I mean, we know anecdotally, we have a lot of old elected officials, but,
here's a breakdown of the different chambers of commerce.
Half of the Senate is 65 years or older, 32% of the houses.
And you can see the breakdown for the different parties.
54% of Senate Republicans are that old and it isn't just that they're old.
Let's be clear, they're getting older.
I mean, we all are in a very real sense.
We're all aging.
We're all hurtling towards being decrepit and out of touch and
everything, but them, especially, if you look at this,
here's a chart of the average age of the Senate and the house over time.
So the average age of the Senate is 63.9, the house is 58.3.
Those are each about 4.5 years older on average than they
were just two decades ago.
And I actually I don't have it in fun chart form,
but I looked at the data for as far back as 20 years prior to that.
So 1980 to 1982 the average age of US Senators was 47.
That's like a kind of young senator now, 47, now it's 64.5.
That is a big difference and it is changing.
And now with all that said, all that laid out.
No, I don't support it.
Maybe term limits, I could kind of see that, but
the age limit is the issue like everything that I just said, I agree with you.
I do think that there is a predisposition towards getting out of touch not being
willing to rethink things.
I agree with all of that.
But the issue is that almost like when I critique the Yuval, the response being too
much about the cops rather than the guns because I don't think the cops at the end
of the day or like better cops aren't the solution to gun violence.
Making it all about the age, age is a thing.
It does matter for some, but compared to money, compared to ideology
like under his rules, Bernie Sanders wouldn't be able to run again.
But Kirsten cinema would be totally fine.
Like that's the thing that we don't need, like should we have younger representation
totally, we should, but what we need isn't necessarily younger representation.
It's better representation.
Representation that's not been bought by the big interests and yeah, so
what do you think?
>> No, I said I agree.
I think balance is the utmost necessity for
anything that's gonna function properly.
And I think that, of course Bernie Sanders is in that age range where of the people
that he's trying to eliminate and I don't agree with setting an age limit.
But I do believe that there needs to be some sort of balancing of
the floor because we need to have all types of people in the body
of government that represents us all, and they don't.
And the majority of them are Mitch McConnell looking people that tweet
ridiculous things and
are completely out of touch with the regular average American person that
has to go to work every day because they've been getting money for so long.
They don't, they're not even you talk about celebrities being disconnected,
those are the celebrities of government, those people are completely
disconnected from the reality of those of us who have to show up and work every day.
And those people get have had great educations, they live in the best
neighborhoods, they have the best healthcare, they have the best lives.
And then they have an active push against education and health care for
everybody else.
It's just not them.
So a lot of those people need to be eliminated.
I don't know if that's the smartest way to get rid of those people because then we
get rid of the people who are on the side of good for the Americans.
But I do think that there needs to be some sort of balance because it's just
disgusting.
It's egregious and it is, it's tiresome.
The American people are tired.
I can say that from talking to anybody, no matter what side of the political
aisle they're on, everybody is tired >> I agree.
I feel it.
>> Yeah >> Look at my face, right now,
look at this.
I'm not saying I looked great a couple of years ago or anything, but
it was better than this, come on.
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