The gerontocracy and its vultures
As the old and powerful age, their young hangers-on are making a bad problem worse
“The anger I hear are at the people that are keeping him in a bubble or who may have their own interests, some financial, in keeping him in the race. That is the real anger. It is widespread. Joe Biden deserves better.” — Joe Scarborough
Recall that little more than a year ago we saw the exact same thing: as Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s health deteriorated at the end of her life, her staff frantically worked to hide this from the public. And there was, of course, a clear conflict of interest in play. Feinstein’s staffers had careers to maintain and undoubtedly enjoyed the power of playing de facto Senator; if nothing else, keeping her in office bought them time to look for a new employer. That these financial incentives were directly at odds with the interests of the country didn’t seem to bother them one bit.
So it is hardly surprising to see the exact same dynamic at work here: White House staffers telling Biden to stay in the race because they have their own careers to look after. Consider Neera Tanden, for example: a lifelong aspiring White House apparatchik who became the only White House cabinet nominee that couldn’t get confirmed by the Senate, and who only found her way in by eventual appointment. Tanden also, of course, maintained a Pollyanaseque optimism to the very end in another wildly unpopular candidate who ran against Trump: Hillary Clinton. Scarborough was tight-lipped about who is keeping Biden in the race, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess that Tanden is one of them. As an advisor she would almost certainly be one of the first staffers out the door even if Biden’s replacement manages to win.
We should in any case expect to see more and more of these Lanyard Vultures picking the bones of our gerontocracy in the coming years. This will also, I suspect, create a whole genre of infotainment “journalism” that revolves entirely around waging war against the danged kids on behalf of the gerontocracy. Think about Matt Yglesias, for example, who in a recent post bizarrely blamed “young college graduates” for Biden’s media problems — and then called on his disproportionately old audience to support him in exchange for better coverage. This kind of generational warfare made zero sense as media analysis, but it made perfect sense if you’re aiming your pitch at old people who have more disposable income to spend on blog subscriptions.
Similarly, when it came to Biden’s age, one could see a clear progression in Matt Yglesias Thought:
STAGE ONE — People who have concerns about Biden’s age are either ideologically motivated or too online; their concerns cannot be sincere. (Basically up until the first Biden-Trump debate.)
STAGE TWO — I have to admit that Joe Biden’s age is a problem, though onjly for superficial optics reasons, though I guess that means he should step aside.(The morning after the debate.)
STAGE THREE — Okay now that literally everyone is saying it I can’t keep foot dragging and maintain my credibility, so I admit I was wrong about Biden’s age. (More than a month later.)
Perhaps most telling: in that final post, Yglesias actually pleads that he knew Biden’s age was an issue all along. So why did he accuse anyone who said it out loud of having ulterior motives or being too online? Why did he try to spin it as an optics problem the morning after the debate? Here’s my guess: Yglesias knew that calling Biden old was a good way to alienate his customers, so he was afraid to do it. If this meant defaming people who were telling the truth and getting Trump elected, so be it.
Reading through statements from Feinstein and Biden staffers, along with media flacks like Yglesias, it is striking to see how ineffectual identitarian rhetoric has been in their cause. There have not, that is, been many attempts to attack their critics as ageist. We’ve seen claims that Biden’s critics are ableist, but it seems like no one can really bring themselves to earnestly insist that the gerontocracy is an oppressed class and that young people are victimizing them by begging them to retire. Ironically, the real case of elder abuse is probably coming from the staffers and media hacks who won’t let them retire.