Pelosi and the Democrats: the capturers in the rye
Nancy Pelosi says [emphasis mine]:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) voiced her support on Thursday for lowering the federal voting age to 16, telling reporters during a press conference that doing so would be a boon to voter engagement in the U.S.
Pelosi said Thursday that lowering the voting age would drive interest in politics among younger Americans who are learning about the subject in high school. The Speaker said that changing the voting age to 16 would help drive a higher level of voter awareness and turnout.
“I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Pelosi said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school, when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government, to be able to vote.”
Defenders will say, of course, that she meant “capture” their interest, not the kids themselves or as voters for the Democratic Party. But of course, whatever her language, that is indeed the reason behind the proposal: to capture them as voters.
Because that is the only way in which the idea makes a particle of sense at all, and it makes a great deal of sense if your goal is Democratic power. A great, great deal.
But if your goal is actually to get mature, informed voters who can make mature, informed decisions, it is an absurdity on its face. Sixteen-year-olds are not allowed to do lots of things, have not reached majority, and are not functioning at the level one would like in order to make decisions for the polity as a whole. They are not even considered capable of making good decisions for themselves, much less for society. But that is certainly not Pelosi’s concern; indoctrination is, and at that the Democrats are very very good, and they know it.
Kids also don’t learn much about government these days compared to yesteryear. But hey, that’s a feature to Pelosi, not a bug.
And I wonder whether Pelosi really thinks it’s appropriate to allow people who are just learning about something to practice on us all? Hey, I vote for having new biology students learn by operating as surgeons on Pelosi! It would certainly spark the students enthusiasm for becoming doctors, wouldn’t it? Or lawyers, or anything at all really?
When my child was small, I used to joke with other mothers that children’s enthusiasm for helping parents with tasks was inversely proportional to their ability to actually be of competent assistance. Your two-year-old would love to help you paint that wall. Your sixteen-year-old often has better things to do.
Well, voting is a lot more complex of a decision than painting a wall. At least, it should be, although I think most people do it in kneejerk fashion. And most young people would do it that way, and be very susceptible to propaganda (which, I realize, is the idea behind Pelosi and the Democrats’ suggestion). It used to not matter all that much because the less-motivated young people didn’t vote in large numbers, but the Democratic Party has figured out ways to Get Out the Vote of the youngest and most ignorant and most easily-influenced among us.
It’s a silly idea, and she wouldn’t be advocating it bar that discourse in the Democratic Party is quite fashion driven. It’s a reasonable wager she fancies it would benefit the Democratic Party vote farm to set the ballot harvesters loose in high schools. Most people of any description don’t follow public affairs. However, the young are notorious for achieving a level of clueless their elders simply cannot match.
For more than a century, the age a which people assume adult responsibility has crept upward. The median-age-at-first marriage went up and down between 1890 and 1955. Since then, it just goes up. In 1900, my home town had a population of 150,000 and just one public high school, which might have captured 15% of the population between the ages of 12 and 18. Harry Truman earned a high school diploma in 1902; his brother left school at 12. As recently as 1928, the majority of youths between the ages of 14 and 18 were not enrolled in high school and it was about normal for youths from wage-earning families to leave school at 14 or 15 and start work; maybe 6% of each cohort was at that time a four-year college or a professional school (which commonly did not require a BA). Another single-digit percentage enrolled in junior colleges, normal schools, or nursing schools (which were generally auxilliary to a hospital). (About 62% of each cohort today have some sort of tertiary schooling).
This is the context. The young take on less and less responsibility, but we provide them with more-and-more baubles and privileges that should be paired with responsibility to contain their misuse.
Clayton Cramer offered a while back that physiological psychologists had determined that the age of 25 was a frontier not really recognized in culture, as it is the age where there tends to be an abrupt drop in the propensity to take risks. Fewer stupid games, fewer stupid prizes. Also, the employment-to-population ratio is close to a fixed constant between the ages of 25 and 55, after which it begins to fall off. With that in mind, the appropriate age for granting the suffrage to citizens not incarcerated, on probation, on parole, or under an order or civil commitment or guardianship should be 25. You can grant a qualified suffrage to persons between the ages of 18 and 25. Have a token federal payroll tax of 0.1% of wages. Distribute the proceeds to the state governments for elections administration and then issue suffrage tickets each year to persons under 25 who over the previous year paid payroll taxes in excess of a certain threshold. If you set the threshold at 0.04% of personal income per capita and make sure that wage rates for Army privates and their counterparts in the other services are such that those enrolled in the service always exceed the threshold, you can answer the incantations which were being uttered in 1970.
I can’t think of a single 16 year old that has the knowledge and experience to vote.
But if passed I do see the leftist democrats having a field day with ballot harvesting.
I vote for having new biology students learn by operating as surgeons on Pelosi!
When I was a 4th year resident in surgery it was the late 60s and craziness reigned supreme. We had a 4th year medical student on the service who called himself “Doctor Mickey.” He had done a history and physical (which medical students did all the time) on a patient coming in for an aortic valve replacement. Doctor Mickey announced he wanted to do the surgery. We told him that medical students did not do open heart surgery and he went back and told the patient not to have the surgery.
I even have another Doctor Mickey story. A friend of mine, a cardiology fellow, came up on the ward one day and told us he had just had his internal medicine oral exam. I asked how it was and he said it was grueling. The examiner asked him what he had had for lunch (It was right after lunch) and Earl told him. He said, “OK. For your oral, describe describe the digestion and assimilation of that lunch.”
Doctor Mickey piped up and said, “What’s so hard about that ?” He had no concept. And he was about three months from graduation,
The frontal lobe of the brain is not fully developed until age 25.
I can’t think of a single 16 year old that has the knowledge and experience to vote.
About 1/3 to 2/3 of the people who routinely cast ballots lack knowledge, though some make up for it by leveraging bits of data. We’re all ignorant about just about everything but what we do for a living and what goes on in our home and a hobby or two. The thing is, there is no ready way to screen people for the suffrage bar a small menu of rules in re compliance is obvious. Citizenship, whether one is in custody or not, age &c. The more elaborate the rule and the more it relies on black-box tests, the more it’s likely to be gamed in some way. Simple rules are coarse and not adapted to particular circumstances. It’s the presumption in making them that trying to adapt them will leave you worse off.
We can tell from social data the age at which people are reliably self-supporting and at which point they have usually taken on a wife or a husband or a child.
Anyone remember the movie “Wild in the Streets”? Was based on the idea of gaining political power by lowering the voting age.
Of course, anyone reflecting on the founder’s idea that a republic requires a mature, thoughtful and virtuous citizenry is instantly dismissed as a troglodyte.
With the amount of sense the young ones born after 1980 I suggest we move the voting age to 30 years old. The participation prize, don’t hurt my feelings or cause me to suffer micro-aggressions appear to have neither knowledge or real world experience. Perhaps make each of those wishing to register take a US History/Government exam in English as a requirement to register along with being a US citizen with no felonies, un-paid fines, un-paid taxes or un-paid child support. In other words fellow Americans in good standing ready to be serious about electing leaders.
I’ll agree with idea of age 25 for voting, perhaps with an exception for those 18-24 in active military service.
Several states have raised the age to legally purchase a firearm to 21, and most everywhere under 21s can’t legally drink alcohol. They can’t do these things, but voting is okay?
Neo:
This.
.
Although — After all, Neo, surely you’ve seen the documentary TV series Doogie Hauser.
.
Which leads me to wonder if maybe that’s what happened to Ms. Pelosi’s brain….
Ask people whether they are willing to turn over their paychecks and bank accounts to their 16 year olds. Then ask them if they would put these kids in charge of buying their groceries and household supplies, paying their bills, and filing their tax returns.
16 year olds are having enough difficulty in Driver’s Ed. Voter’s Ed would be to overburden the equipment.
I wonder at what point the stress of deciding how to vote would fall in the list in this article:
https://www.studyfinds.org/survey-millennials-life-more-stressful-than-ever-before/
Or would it just be classified as “whatever”
Keep in mind that the demographic that has the most automobile accidents is the 18-25 year old males. The inexperience, bad judgment and risk taking is often deadly. Those are really the people you don’t want voting.
“In America the young are always ready to give those who are older the full benefit of their own inexperience.” Oscar Wilde
Someone should ask Pelosi about lowering the voting age to those 13 and over. Afterall, are 16 year olds that much more mature than 13 year olds? I have long thought potential voters should be tested on their knowledge of the Constitution, and American and world history. LIVs already pose a threat to our republic, YLIVs will only make the situation worse.
Anyone remember the movie “Wild in the Streets”? Was based on the idea of gaining political power by lowering the voting age.
Bill M.: I sure do! Very wild indeed. Charismatic, genius rock star with genius dream team manage to force the voting age to be lowered to 14. Their slogan: “14 or Fight.”
It ends happily. Everyone over 35 is forced into camps where they must take LSD. Though there is an ominous note that the pre-teens may be plotting their own age coup.
Richard Pryor’s first film, I think.
She says, “I myself have always been in favor of lowering the voting age to 16.”
Yeah,riiiight.
It would be interesting to see if anyone can find her saying that in any form–written, audio, video–earlier than when she made the statement above.
My bet is that you couldn’t find it, because it doesn’t exist.
This is an idiotic, crack-brained idea–which goes against everyone’s personal experience with 16 year olds, and their general level of knowledge, maturity, practical experience, and wisdom.
The only reason that Pelosi dares to utter this idiocy is that the political atmosphere on the Left is so full of other–even more idiotic proposals–that it fits right in, that in this company it appears to be one of the more sane proposals.
In fact, would seem to be somewhat more sane a proposition than, say, the Green New Deal and rebuilding or upgrading every structure in the United States in 12 years, doing away with carbon based fuels with no actual, practical, comparably priced substitute sources of energy actually ready to replace them, somehow eliminating cow farts and changing to Vegetarianism, free Medicare, Education, Housing, and Basic Income for all–including for illegal aliens, and those who refuse to work, absolute and total elimination of the death penalty, allowing illegal aliens to vote in our elections, etc., etc., etc.
Considering that a large part of the leadership of the Democrat Party behaves like a bunch of hormonal teenage girls with their cliques and hysterias, this fits right in with the rest of their thinking and behavior.
What do average Democrats make of all this? Are they really onboard with socialism, transgenderism, climate change, the Green New Deal and sixteen year-olds voting?
I think not, at least not the whole enchilada. I’ve met enough fairly liberal people who will confide their reservations about any of the above. In 2020 I suspect the main thing holding them to blackening the D circles in the voting booth is Trump’s unseemliness.
In 1972 McGovern’s platform was parodied as “Acid, Amnesty* and Abortion.” It was a radical time, but McGovern only won one state, Massachusetts.
*Amnesty was for draft dodgers.
I’ve known plenty of 16 year-olds in my lifetime, heck, I was one once, and I wouldn’t trust the judgement of a person that age as far as I could throw them. Which is precisely why Pelosi, and others, think it would be a good idea to give them the vote – they can be manipulated and cowed. I wonder, do they want that Covington kid, Sandmann, to vote?
Kate — Here’s a fun one: One can’t legally buy alcohol in most States until one is twenty-one, but if you are under twenty-one and over eighteen, and with someone under the age of eighteen, and they’ve been drinking, you can be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Even though you couldn’t buy the alcohol.
Kate — Here’s a fun one:
One can’t legally buy alcohol in most States until one is twenty-one, but if you are under twenty-one and over eighteen, and with someone under the age of eighteen, and they’ve been drinking, you can be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Even though you couldn’t buy the alcohol.
Have you seen this collection of people’s tweets responding to Pelosi by reminiscing about what they were doing at age 16? (As for crediting the source, I think I saw it linked from Instapundit this morning, but for some reason I can’t find the linking page in my history — only the page itself.)
I turned 18 roughly two months before the voting age was lowered to 18. Not that I cared, because for some reason my state also lowered the drinking age to 18 at the exact same time.
Woo hoo! I got a driver’s lic., and can go to bars, and vote, and get drafted while finishing my senior year in high school. Was that a great country or what? The unassailable logic then was that if you are old enough to hold a rifle and point it at the state’s enemies, then you are completely an adult.
Now, a fourth year college student is treated like a quasi-adult in some respects.
But why stop at 16 year olds? Way back in yesteryear, I had finished a couple semesters in civics class at the end of 4th grade. With all that knowledge, I think I was qualified to vote. Maybe not.
What do average Democrats make of all this? Are they really onboard with socialism, transgenderism, climate change, the Green New Deal and sixteen year-olds voting?
You wan’t to see what comes over our Facebook wall? How many street-level Democrats of your acquaintance were willing to acknowledge Christine Blasey was full of it? They swallow it all.
How many street-level Democrats of your acquaintance were willing to acknowledge Christine Blasey was full of it?
Art Deco: None of my acquaintance wanted to talk about it and I didn’t want to press them.
Of course, the plural of anecdote is not data, and the absence of anecdotes less so.
Those who climb over your Facebook wall to virtue signal are those who virtue signal. It’s the ones who aren’t signaling who may make the difference. That’s what I suspect.
Be Angry at the Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
–Robinson Jeffers, 1941
There is now no ploy too low for the democrat leadership to stoop to, no tactic however harmful to the Republic that they will not employ because…
“the elimination of the American Republic is (now) the core agenda of the democrat party” – David Horowitz
The Democrats scare me. They say, with straight faces, what we all know to be lies, and they do it for votes. Yes, all politicians lie, but there is something about the way it is being done in the current political environment that is particularly upsetting. I believe it is the blatant phoniness of positions like “I think that sixteen year olds should be able to vote,” or “I don’t think those statements show prejudice against Jews” that make me sit up and take note that there is now something terribly wrong. It reminds me of the terrorist killings in France several years ago, when Islamists shot Jewish citizens (was it outside a synagogue?) and then ran into a kosher market next store. The Obama administration spokesman observed that this had nothing to do with it being a kosher market; no- it was just the place “they happened to run into.” This is how the progressive left works. Now that the Democrat party is controlled by these types, we had better get used to this as they way they do business. It is not going away.
That we are even having this as a subject of serious conversation is a sad comment on the decline of civilization. Thousands of years of experience, the compelling evidence staring us in the face from our own lives, mitigates against it. There is no intellectual shame anymore. I am embarrassed.
I remember the kinds of things I thought about politics when I was sixteen. Yeesh.
“Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” — Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages”
Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages”
The Byrds.
Those who climb over your Facebook wall to virtue signal are those who virtue signal. It’s the ones who aren’t signaling who may make the difference. That’s what I suspect.
Not ‘virtue signalling’. The Democrats on our friend list just have to tell you what’s on their mind (usually stupid memes). The Republicans post pictures of their grandchildren. Different cultures in the parties.
None of my acquaintance wanted to talk about it
Again, I’m speaking of people who volunteer opinions routinely.
Originally Dylan in 1964, covered by The Byrds in 1967. So saith Wikipedia, who I trust for this sort of thing. Really, just read the lyrics and you know it’s not a Byrds original. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Back_Pages
Dylan wrote it (and sings it on one of his Greatest Hits collections), but as usual with great Dylan hits, the Byrds do a better pop song with it. It’s also in their Greatest Hits.
The PC-Klan wants 5 & 6 year olds to be able to choose their genders, even against the consent of their parents.
If you’re old enough to decide what gender to choose, you’re old enough to vote, aren’t you?
It’s ridiculous. But now that the Dems have discovered vote harvesting, they’re ready to
stealwin more elections with their “new tech”.Perhaps this is just a distraction attack, to help avoid talking about hundreds of Christians being murdered by Muslims in 2019.
Byrds – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKLIrOGfUo
Dylan – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7seZjqkk2n0
Great music. Always like the Byrds; only sometimes Dylan – in the mood, you gotta love him.
The young persons’ vote has always been thought of as somewhat unreliable. Reliably Democrat, no doubt, but unreliable when it comes to turnout.
By lowering the voting age to 16, the Democrats envision ways of making this bloc reliable. With the proliferation of “vote harvesting” practices, less-motivated young voters could have their ballots filled out and filed for them by just giving a Democrat party worker their say-so in person or over the phone. Plus, with high schoolers now on the voting rolls, schools can compel students to register and vote. Of course, the schools will hide behind the defense that they aren’t telling them WHO to vote for, but let’s be serious–the kids are all going to vote Democrat.
My take on this latest bit of tomfoolery by Nancy Pelosi is that she has learned well from Trump: keep the opposition stirred up! She has never thought about this before, despite her avowal that she has. The idea came to her, in fact, a few minutes before she said it. And once it came into her head, she realized it would divert the news media from their questions about Democratic anti-Semitism, about the Green New Deal, and generally about all the losing cards she has in her hand right now. But giving 16 year olds the vote — now there’s an idea that will dominate the news cycle! Go with it!
F:
While I doubt very much that Pelosi has been in favor of this for long, she most definitely did not just think of it. In fact, it is a movement within the Democratic Party. They recently took a vote on it, with 125 Democratic members of Congress in support. That’s a majority of the Democrats in the House.
This needs to be taken very seriously. I believe they are intent on doing it if they ever get control of House, Senate, and the Presidency.
Perhaps you missed it; it happened on Mar 8. I think I’ll write a post about it.
You’re right, Neo — I missed that. Hard to believe. But then it’s hard to believe a lot of what Democrats have come up with since Trump’s inauguration: postpartum abortion, Green New Deal, the new wave of anti-Semitism. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.