Today, Explained - Old Country for Old Men

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

After last night, Joe Biden is one step closer to the nomination, but no matter who wins, the next president will be over 70. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson explains why that could be a problem. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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20, 20 explain. 20, 20 explain. Andrew Prokop, Vox, six states held primaries yesterday. What are we calling this Tuesday? Some have called it Super Tuesday 2. I've also seen it referred to as Big Tuesday, Mini Tuesday. Too Fast Tuesday. Oh, it's a sad situation. I mean, next time around, Democrats really have to get it together and come up with better names for some of these non-super days. So what's our big takeaway from what happened last night?

It was a very bad night for Bernie Sanders and his chances of winning the nomination. This was the first actual voting day where we were down to two candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Biden had clearly gained the advantage on Super Tuesday, but now it was a two-way contest. And Sanders needed to really change the dynamics of the race, and he very much did not do that. He got utterly blown out in Mississippi and Missouri, lost pretty strongly in Michigan as well, a state he has affection for because he pulled off a surprising upset victory against Hillary Clinton there in 2016. He also even lost Idaho, which is a white rural state and showcases some of the differences in Bernie's coalition this time around. Was there any good news for Bernie last night? Not really. He won the North Dakota caucuses, but that is a very small state. And the actual margin of victory means that he will probably net about two delegates there. So it's not going to help him in the delegate count.

Then there's Washington state. We don't have a call yet as of the time of this recording, but currently it looks like Biden and Bernie are about tied. And that would really be a blow to Bernie in terms of the delegate count. To be even in Washington state, which was his single best state in terms of delegates last time, is just a huge defeat for him and calls into question how he is ever going to be able to turn this thing around going forward. So let's focus on Michigan for a second, because that's a state where Bernie surprisingly won in 2016 and lost pretty handily this time around to Biden. How did Biden pull off this victory there? I think it is a similar story that we've seen in Michigan and across the country, really. Once the field winnowed to two candidates, a clear majority of Democratic voters, almost everywhere, are supporting Joe Biden at this point. And that is what happened in Michigan. Bernie beat Hillary there quite

narrowly. It was about by one percentage point in 2016. So even then, Michigan was more important in terms of the media narrative. Bernie pulled off this comeback. He got a lot of attention for it. And people said, oh, maybe this thing isn't over yet. Not only did he not achieve that, but he lost big. He was down by about 15 percentage points at the last count that I have seen. And that bodes ill for Bernie in other northern and midwestern states, particularly with significant black proportion of the electorate, but he has performed more weakly among working class white voters as well. I wonder also with Michigan, you know, Bernie beat Hillary and then lost to Biden. And those two seem pretty similar in a lot of ways. How much do you think that can be chalked up to sexism? Yeah, I mean, this is something that I hope is studied pretty closely.

There seem to be some pretty powerful arguments, you know, because when trying to find out why a certain politician lost, it is helpful to have a situation that is quite similar in many respects, because there are always many different factors that go into each race. So when you have Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden largely agree on most substantive issues, they're both establishment figures, they were both running against Bernie Sanders, and they both hope to run against Donald Trump in the general election. Of course, there are differences he's a good guy. Hillary Clinton, something about her that I don't like. And whether you put that down to unique factors of their political history or due to sexism, I think there are strong arguments

on both sides. And you got to wonder about what is unfolding here. Bernie Sanders actually gave a speech today about his campaign. Today, I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues of Concern to them for a second there. I thought he might actually drop out, but I guess he doubled down So Bernie opened the speech by saying that the most important thing is to beat Donald Trump in November in my view he is a racist a sexist a homophobe a xenophobe, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot. And he must be defeated.

And I will do everything in my power to make that happen. Then he moved on to say that Tuesday's results were a bad night for him in terms of delegate math. He tried to point out a few bright spots, including his win in North Dakota being about even in Washington. And more broadly, he said that Democratic voters were embracing his agenda as seen in exit polls. And he pointed to his success among young voters. We are winning the generational debate. While Joe Biden continues to do very well with older Americans, especially those people over 65, our campaign continues to win the vast majority of the votes of younger people. If he's winning so many young people over, why is he losing so badly overall? to win the vast majority of the votes of younger people. If he's winning so many young people over, why is he losing so badly overall?

Bernie's theory of how he would reshape the electorate has hinged on mobilizing great numbers of people who don't ordinarily vote to turn out to the polls. And that simply has not happened and certainly not happened in terms of young voters so far in the primaries and caucuses this year. I saw one estimate that the median age of the Democratic voter this year has been 56 years old. And that just goes to show that most Democratic voters are older. And if Bernie is getting blown out among older voters, as he is, then winning big among young voters doesn't really do much to counteract that. So why is he staying in? So Bernie said he is looking forward to his first one-on-one debate against Joe Biden on Sunday night. And let me be very frank as to the questions that I will be asking Joe. Joe, what are you going to do for the 500,000 people who go bankrupt in our country because of medically related debt? And what are you going to do for the working people of this country and small business people who are paying on average

20% of their incomes for health care? As far as Bernie's larger strategic thinking, it is extremely unlikely at this point that Sanders will manage to make a comeback. Basically, he'd have to win about 57 percent of pledged delegates remaining to pass Biden. And that is very unlikely. But it is not impossible. If this race, which has been volatile in the wrong direction for Bernie at this point. And there's little reason, it seems, that if things continue as they are, to believe that he will be able to pull off that comeback. So you think next Tuesday, March 17th, could be decision time for the Bernie campaign? Yeah, I obviously have no idea what Bernie will decide. It's a very personal decision.

But he's certainly going to have to think very hard about the best way forward for his ideas and his own influence. And that best way forward may not be staying in the race to just lose big to Joe Biden everywhere. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden clearly have a lot of differences. But they do have one thing in common. They'd each be the oldest president ever elected. And that might be a problem. That's next. What they explain comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained,

cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. 2020, 2020, 2020. Derek Thompson, The Atlantic. We still don't know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, but we do know that whoever wins is going to be pretty old. At the very least, we know that our next president is going to be over 70.

Is that unusual? It's extremely unusual. We are looking at an election in November where no matter who wins the election, the person giving the inaugural address in January will be the oldest president ever delivering an inaugural address. And I think this is a problem. So is this a new problem or has it been around for a while? This is a relatively new thing in terms of just the extraordinary oldness of the contest. At the same time, though, I think it clicks into a lot of geriatrics that exist in American power today. Congress is just about older than it's ever been.

If you look at the House Speaker, the House Whip, the Senate Majority Leader, they are all older than 75. You find when you look across the corporate world that new CEOs are getting older. You look across the science world, you see that Nobel Prize winners are getting older. So it seems like power across disciplines, political, corporate, scientific, power is getting older. And as a result, that intersection between oldness and power, between what you might

call gerontocracy ruled by the old and plutocracy ruled by the moneyed, those are becoming intertwined. And it's creating a scenario where, as I see it, there's a lot of negative facts about America that are the result of gerontocracy multiplied by plutocracy. So do we have any idea why the change to gerontocracy? So the way that I think about it is that there is a supply issue and a demand issue. On the supply issue, you look at the pipeline of American leadership, and it's extremely old. You look at the fact that most of the people who are ready to become president, by dint of their political record, they tend to be in their 60s and 70s.

You can also look at the fact that campaigns are becoming more expensive. It takes more money to win a presidential campaign. And who has the money? Well, it's old people. It's not just the fact that older politicians have more money and they have more donor networks. It's also that they are more willing to leave the private sector and spend a decade being president. Look at someone like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg. If they run for president and become president, that's 10 years of peak earnings power, peak productivity that they're cutting out of their life in order to live in the White House.

Look at Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg. You know, what's their opportunity cost? They're both in their 70s. Their greatest achievements in the private sector are behind them. Like, what else are they going to do with their 80s except spend money on political and national causes that are meaningful to them? So in a variety of ways, I think the supply of leadership is trending toward oldness. What about the other side of the equation, which is demand about voters' preferences?

Do voters prefer older candidates? Yeah, on the demand side, it's pretty simple. The American electorate is getting older. Americans overall are on average older than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Older people tend to vote for older people. A finding of political science is that voters tend to like candidates that are somewhat their age.

So when you add it all up, you know, older voters preferring older candidates, you're going to have an older sort of batch of leadership. Is this just an American thing? I mean, Europe's got a bunch of young politicians and they must have a lot of old people too. What's really interesting about Europe is that even though Europe is getting older faster than America, it turns out that the average age of European Union leaders has actually declined in the last 30 years. And what you look across the leadership at Macron or Trudeau or Johnson

and other OECD countries, they tend to be younger than 60. Boris Johnson, for example, the prime minister of the UK is, quote, only 55, even though in the UK, old people outvote young people by a really wide margin. In fact, Biden, Sanders and Trump are all older right now than any of the UK's five previous prime ministers today, going back to Tony Blair. So the US election is really extraordinarily old. You know, you say that in France and Canada, maybe they have an aging population, but not aging candidates. I wonder if when we look at America and we have Mayor Pete, whose base was largely old white people, and Bernie, whose base is clearly young people. Are they exceptions that prove the rule, or are they just maybe showing that America could be headed in a different direction?

Bernie and Pete are fascinating exceptions because in many ways they are mirrors of the exact same phenomenon. Both of them are relatively popular politicians who are deeply disliked among their own age group. Bernie Sanders' weakest age group is people over 65, which he clearly is. And Pete Buttigieg's weakest demographic was people under 40, which he clearly is. And I've thought a lot about why they might be strangely offensive to people that are their same age, given the political science finding that typically voters like people that are their age. And I think in both cases, it's the same two things. First, it's about ideology. The younger American Democratic cohort is pretty far to the left of the median American voter. And Pete Buttigieg was trying to be the

median American voter. So in a way, was trying to be the median American voter. So in a way, he was a traitor to his generational identity. Bernie Sanders, in many ways, is the same thing. He comes from a generation that fought the Cold War. And meanwhile, here he is with all of these video clips saying, yes, the Soviets do this bad and the Cubans do this bad, but let's praise certain elements of their socialist policy. But in addition to these ideological differences, there's also something personal. When in addition to these ideological differences, there's also something personal. When I talk to older people,

like say my grandmother and her friends in Michigan, and I ask them, Democratic voters, lifelong Democratic voters, why don't you like Bernie Sanders? It's the same answer every single time. They don't like the way he presents himself. They hate the shouting. They hate the hair.

They hate the flying wrists. They hate the shouting. They hate the hair. They hate the flying wrists. They hate it all. And it's actually really similar when you sort of put that up next to the reason why young people don't like Pete Buttigieg. They want more like flying wrists? They want more flying wrists. They want Pete to do what Bernie does. When Bernie shouts,

old people think he's shouting at them and young people think he's shouting at power. Shouting with them. He's shouting with them on their behalf. He is their surrogate shouter. And Pete Buttigieg was never the surrogate shouter. Pete Buttigieg was always the 37, 38-year-old who looked like he was doing a emulation of someone who was 55 and had been a senator for 30 years. Or someone who had been president for eight years from Chicago. Or say. Exactly. So I guess unless you are, you know, a generation traitor, you know, going against

stereotypes or ideologies of your generation, you're probably going to be liked by that generation of voters. But if that does lead to a lot of old candidates, is that necessarily a bad thing? Yeah, I don't want this argument to sound like ageism. I don't want it to sound like anti-experience. And I don't want it to sound like I think young people should just run more stuff by dint of their age. At the same time, you know, to betray a thousand Hallmark cards, age is not just a number. Rule by the old is not harmless. And there's three reasons why it's not harmless. First, gerontocracy is a cousin of plutocracy. Because wealth is concentrated among the old, if you have a situation where older Americans are running everything from the corporate world to Congress and the Senate and the White House,

that leads to a scenario where more policy is entrenched that helps old moneyed interests. And that means that the vast majority of Americans are cut out. Second, I think old governance can be bad governance because as Americans get older, it is more likely that they suffer some kind of cognitive decline. Not all of them. You have some people who could destroy you and me in a chess game and crossword puzzle right now. And you also have some people who have early dementia or early Alzheimer's. And as a result, because there's so much cognitive diversity among people in their 70s and 80s,

it becomes more important, I think, to have testing available to determine the cognitive health of America's leaders if our leaders are going to have a median age of something like 75, 76. And we don't have that right now. And then number three, this is more of a philosophical point, but I think the most important problem

in the world right now is climate change. And climate change is the sort of problem that is going to be felt most acutely by younger generations. And if you have older people who are not necessarily going to experience the biggest problems of climate change, making decisions on behalf of the masses who will be experiencing this, I see that as an incentive problem. And I think that government of the elderly, by the elderly, for the elderly is not the right way to establish a government to help younger interests, especially when the problems we face are in the future. Okay, so assuming gerontocracy is a

problem, are there solutions, wealth taxes, term limits? I think that, you know, maybe higher taxes can help. Maybe term limits can help. But I also see clear downsides to those things as well. A wealth tax, for example, is going to be, I think, really difficult to pass through a sort of moderate conservative government. And that might be the wrong place to put America's political capital if we get a democratic president. And then on term limits, you know, I want to be mindful of gerontocracy, but I also don't want to be anti-experience. And I think that, you know, one of the side effects of term limits is that term limits are a really clear tax on experience. I wonder, you know, what you make of the fact that the two most successful leftist candidates who were both super popular among young people were 70 plus. I mean, if a Bernie voter hears a conversation like this and they're like, well, Bernie's the guy who is really radical on climate change and radical on taxes and health care. I mean, who cares that he's old? Nobody should vote or not vote for any candidate

because of that candidate's age. Full stop. But also when you broaden the lens and look at American government, you have an American government that is older than it's ever been. And that might be a problem. Both parties need to do a much better job

at building their pipeline, building their bench of political leadership in not just their 60s and 70s, but their 30s through 50s as well. And I think any country that has a menu of viable presidents, where every choice in the menu is older than 70, has a problem. It has a political pipeline problem, and it has an electoral problem. That said, I think that problem clearly isn't going to be fixed in 2020

because no matter what, we are certainly going to elect a president who by January will be the oldest president ever delivering an inaugural address. Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic. I'm Noam Hassenfeld, filling in for Sean Ramos for him while he's on vacation. This is Today Explained.