Of Course It's Unfair
Doesn't matter.
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I spent Thursday afternoon on the Acela from D.C. to New York, sitting directly across the table from an older Democratic congressman.
He is somewhat known nationally. He is an older gentleman. He is clearly tired when he sits down, out of breath, barely having caught the train before we left Union Station.
I debate whether or not to strike up conversation, which is a polite way of saying I’d like to ask him, with more graceful wording, what the hell he and his colleagues are doing in the midst of all this.
But I don’t because I know what it feels like to work a long day at the end of a long week and hop on the train hoping for some peace and quiet.
I also know he’s not going to offer any answers here that satisfy me. I don’t say that with malice. I just know that he and many of his colleagues showed up to a fight in 2025 with a 2012 toolkit.
We cannot press release our way out of this. We cannot “strongly condemn” our way out of this. There is no light at the end of a tunnel built solely with MSNBC hits and Meet the Press panel appearances and quotes given to The New York Times, and he probably knows that deep down, too, but here we are.
What I want to gently say to him: “From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your many years of public service. Thank you for standing on the right side of issues even when it’s difficult. Thank you for caring about democracy. Maybe it’s time to pass the torch to a leader who knows how to message in this moment.”
But I don’t because that’s rude, and there are some things you don’t do on the Amtrak after a long work week and this is one of them.
What happened next was a very poorly written SNL sketch that felt surreal for the way it immediately reflected my doubts.
The gentleman took out cartons (plural) of Ensure and began downing them. He would periodically pass out in his seat, phone in hand, slumped low, and for three hours, aside from brief phone calls, there was a constant stream of burping in the midst of napping.
I’m not talking a few burps. It was every five minutes, just a succession of burping, audible to only our part of the car but audible nonetheless. At one point, he woke himself up burping. No exaggeration: it must have been a few dozen burps over those three hours. No “pardon me.” No sense of his surroundings. Just burping.
Now, I know what some of y’all are gonna say: Charlotte, that’s not very kind. It’s unfair. It’s ageist. The man deserves privacy and grace.
I completely agree. You’re right. It is unfair and ageist and unkind. And if this were some random older gentleman, it would be none of my business and I certainly wouldn’t be writing about it. And in the Before Times, even a sitting congressman doing this wouldn’t matter.
But it’s not the Before Times and our democracy has been lit on fire and the discourse over aging federal lawmakers has been searing and those within Trump’s world have demonstrated, again and again, that they have no sense of honor and no understanding of grace and take every opportunity to be shameless.
So, I sat there wondering if I should do something before any given knucklehead takes a pic or video of the older Congressman passed out in front of empty cartons of Ensure, burping away the week. Some Trump appointee or supporter looking to cause a mess. Some rightwing reporter hoping for social media engagement.
It doesn’t matter if almost everyone on the train has the decency to let the man sleep and refrain from snapping a quick pic of this tableau. All it takes is one terrible person to be cruel.
I began to think that maybe I should throw away the cartons for him, at least get those out-of-sight. Maybe engage him in conversation, so that spark plug of understanding will go off and he’ll remember: “Oh, right, I’m in public.”
But I do not. He would probably bristle. It’s not my place. He’s a grown ass man who works in politics and understands how ridiculous it can be and he’s still decided to leave himself vulnerable like this.
He knows that it doesn’t matter if you’re right on the issues and if you’re a good person and if you’ve spent your life in public service. Certainly more than the vast majority of people, he knows that what matters in this relentlessly cruel era is that an unfair photo or video has enormous potential as social media fodder.
Of course it’s unfair. Of course it’s not how things are supposed to be. And yet, here he sleeps and burps behind his empty Ensure cartons, just begging to be parodied by some clown with an axe to grind.
This really has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with awareness and energy and common sense. It has everything to do with optics and messaging and grasping the importance of this moment.
I need Democratic lawmakers to understand something: there is a profound disconnect among many of you between the world as it should be and the world as it is, and we are in a moment in which many of you, bless your hearts, don’t seem to get that.
In a political environment in which even a little complacency leads to unfair consequences, many of you are not only failing to have the energy required in this moment but more importantly: simply not reading the room.
If you don’t know how to message in this moment, it’s time to pass the torch. If you’re tired of all this, it’s time to give up your seat for someone who’s ready to fight. If you don’t get that we are no longer living in the American Politics of Yesteryear, it’s time to allow people to thank you for service and make room for someone else.
It doesn’t matter how old you are. I truly don’t care about your age. What I care about is having leaders, regardless of age, who understand what we’re facing right now and act like it.
That may come across as mean, but your constituents really no longer have the luxury of being nice about this.
Please, for the love of all that’s good, ask yourself honestly if you’re being an effective messenger, and if not, maybe it’s time to ask yourself if someone else could be and decide accordingly.
Amen. And I say that as a 70-year old woman. We need younger, fresher blood in the Democratic party to fight back and save our Democracy before it's too late.
Spot on. I just had this conversation with my husband. I love my dad. He is a 30 year retired high school teacher from the NYCDOE. He has always advocated for young people. But at 85, even he is out of touch with what younger people want and need. He went to city college in NYC for free. His new home cost $25,000 (his salary was probably around $6000 or so a year). He got health insurance from his teaching job and had a strong union. He was able to retire after 30 years at age 55. These are no longer things that are true for most younger people, so how could even he relate? It’s time for our older leaders to pass the torch. Not ageist, realist.