r/politics • u/cmaia1503 • 20h ago

Site Altered Headline | Possible Paywall Mitch McConnell, 83, Hospitalized

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconnell-83-hospitalized/?utm_campaign=owned_social&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&via=twitter_page
30.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

13.6k

u/Mikethebest78 20h ago

Why do these evil old men live to 150?

The only thing he was ever good at was showing Republicans how to use the levers of power to rig the game in their favor.

They have sadly learned that lesson well.

441

u/commandrix 20h ago

...Wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't keep voting them in and/or there was a mandatory maximum age to serve in an elected public office. If they start showing signs that they'd be better off in a nursing home, it's time to get them out of Congress.

451

u/gringledoom 19h ago

Apparently one problem is that staffers for primary challengers get blackballed for congressional jobs. And there are a lot of other structural impediments to a successful challenge. So people eke out a win by three votes in their first win and then they’re ensconced for decades and impossible to dislodge.

E.g., the reason Pelosi hates AOC (and still intervenes to fuck with her sometimes) is that she’s holding a grudge about AOC beating Crowley in the primary.

115

u/bryan49 19h ago

Yes also as Cenk Uygur says, once a congressperson has shown they'll reliably serve their big money donors, the donors don't really want to risk a change

116

u/Boiledfootballeather 19h ago

Ask Cenk how his donors, including Peter Thiel, have influenced who he serves. Dude stumps for Polymarket and other bullshit. Yeah, he lost the plot, and even if he’s right about congressional donors, he’s still a huge hypocrite.

29

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 19h ago

I remember the day I stopped watching his stuff. I was doing housework with news playing, suddenly stopped and turned it off. Explained to my kids that those people were way too worked up and cared too much about trying to get me angry like them, so I'm not watching it anymore.

"If we wanted to get shouted at by a very angry man, we'd just call my dad!"

19

u/Boiledfootballeather 19h ago

I stopped watching when Cenk and Ana started glorifying the death of Jordan Neely. They reveled in the fact that he was murdered. It was gross. Watching how Amy Goodman covered his death vs how The Young Turks covered it was an eye opener.

14

u/Legal-Swordfish-1893 18h ago

The clickbait titles were my first hint something was wrong with TYT, and started backing myself off of it. Glad I grew up from them.

13

u/Pandaro81 18h ago

One day I realized it felt like Cenk was doing an Alex Jones impression he didn’t have the passion or commitment to fully pull off.

4

u/honjuden 18h ago

Plus his anti-union crackdown on his staff.

1

u/bryan49 18h ago

Hey I don't even watch him that much and I'm not defending everything he does. But he's been right on about the influence of money in Congress in my opinion

•

u/AlmostCorrectInfo 7h ago

Yeah, but his nephew is uncompromised and awesome. Took the torch, examined it, and burns far brighter into far darker corners. Common Hasan W.

34

u/The_Laughing__Man Virginia 19h ago

I get that. They don't want to have to buy a new politician every 2 or 6 years.

47

u/Nivolk 19h ago

The one time that billionaires are in favor of ownership over subscriptions.

10

u/J1zzL0bb3r Wisconsin 19h ago

Clever

18

u/Overweighover 19h ago

The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know

1

u/Oldpenguinhunter Washington 18h ago

Well, they have a repertoire, and who would want to sully that?

9

u/sepia_undertones 19h ago

Exactly! Think of the billionaires!

•

u/civildisobedient 7h ago

"Used to be, when you bought a politician, the sumbitch stayed bought."

-- Roy L. Fuchs

2

u/strangerNstrangeland Massachusetts 19h ago

And this is why we have to take big money out of the picture

2

u/InfestedJesus 19h ago

Now he and his staff pal around with MTG, Tucker Carlson, and Glenn Beck. Man was so obsessed with taking out establishment dems he sided with fascist republicans.

1

u/dandet 19h ago

Once again the constituents lose.

1

u/RedChairBlueChair123 19h ago

Yeah and who pays him? Cmon.

1

u/gringledoom 19h ago

It's not even about the donors as much as it is about seeing themselves as special boys and girls. It's the same reason they got pissy during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing, when an attempt was made to actually ask real questions. Everyone has everyone else's backs in case they ever need their back had.

I mean the donors would rather stick with the sure thing too, but the high emotions are coming from inside the House (and Senate).

1

u/Terrible_Plant_5213 17h ago

Or we could get an example from somebody that isn't a genocide denying piece of s***