Old age

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is at the nice old age of sixty-nine. Considering the average age of a US senator is sixty-five, she’s essentially in the prime of her political life. But that hasn’t stopped the growing calls for her resignation.   Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, who himself is seventy-eight, recently compared the justice to a pile of bones. “The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included,” Blumenthal told NBC on Wednesday. He’s worried that unless Sotomayor steps down, the court will be left with a RBG repeat and the ascension of another conservative judge.

Will Joe Biden be feeling the Bern in 2024? According to a memo leaked to the Washington Post, private-jet-flying socialist Bernie Sanders has not “ruled out” the possibility of throwing his red beret into the ring for a third time. The memo, written by Sanders’s advisor and 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir, read: “In the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary, Senator Sanders has not ruled out another run for president, so we advise that you answer any questions about 2024 with that in mind.” The timing of this memo is interesting. Just days before the leak, the Hill reported that President Joe Biden had told former president Barack Obama that he is “planning to run for reelection in 2024.

This year’s presidential election may see a new pattern that may prove disastrous for the GOP. Former vice president Joe Biden appears on track to win an impressive share of the oldest voters, without losing support among the young.The relationship between age and political party preference is not linear, but for many election cycles older voters have been, on average, more Republican than younger voters. According to exit polls, in 2016 voters age 65 and older gave Donald Trump 52 percent of their votes. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 56 percent of this cohort.The correlation between age and vote choice gives the Democrats a compelling narrative.