Now is the time for the Democratic Party to get serious about its oldsters problem.
The furor over President Joe Biden’s cognitive issues is not going away any time soon. On Tuesday it bubbled up in the California governor’s race, when one candidate, Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, accused two other Democrats eyeing the governor’s mansion — former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra — of participating in a “cover-up” of Mr. Biden’s fading fitness in office.
“Voters deserve to know the truth. What did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn’t either of them speak out?” Mr. Villaraigosa fumed in a statement, spurred by tidbits from the new book “Original Sin,” which chronicles the efforts of Mr. Biden’s inner circle to conceal his mental and physical decline. Mr. Villaraigosa called on Ms. Harris and Mr. Becerra to “apologize to the American people.”
Is Mr. Villaraigosa, who is 72 himself, exploiting the orgy of Biden recriminations for political ends? Probably. Does he have a point? Absolutely. Team Biden deserves much abuse for its sins. That said, last week also reminded us that the Democrats’ flirtation with gerontocracy is not confined to a single office or branch of government when, on Wednesday, the House was shaken by the death of Representative Gerry Connolly.
Mr. Connolly, a 75-year-old lawmaker from Northern Virginia, had been in poor health. On Nov. 7 last year, two days after his re-election to a ninth term, he announced he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would undergo treatments. Even so, in December he won a high-profile contest against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. The race was seen as a struggle over the future of the seniority system that has long shaped how Democrats pick committee leaders. Despite concerns about his health, seniority carried the day. On April 28, he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would not seek re-election next year. Less than a month later, he was gone.
Washington being Washington, his death was greeted with sadness but also with chatter about the political repercussions in the narrowly divided House. It was not lost on Beltway pundits that if Democrats had had one more “no” vote in their deliberations over President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” Republicans would have had to sway another of their holdouts to ram it through the House last week.
Mr. Connolly was the third House Democrat to die in recent months, after the deaths in March of Raúl Grijalva and Sylvester Turner, both septuagenarians. All three seats are vacant for now. Axios pointed out that eight members of Congress have died in office since November 2022. All were Democrats, with an average age of 75.
Cold political musings about the failing health or cognitive troubles of elected officials can feel heartless, if not aggressively ageist. And there is a difference, of course, between lawmakers who succumb to deadly illnesses and those who think they can simply defy the ravages of age. But time takes its toll on everyone, and even among Washington’s hard-charging, well-maintained masters of the universe, precious few weather it as well as Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders.
Neither major party is immune to the practical challenges of aging leaders. (For Republican drama, see last year’s long, mysterious absence of the now-retired representative Kay Granger.) But the problem has been extra-sticky for Democrats for years, in part because Ms. Pelosi and her equally senior lieutenants, Steny Hoyer, now 85, and Jim Clyburn, now 84, sat atop the caucus for so long that younger members started leaving in frustration — or plotted to oust them. It took a coup threat or two to get Ms. Pelosi et al. to relinquish their grip, and tensions between younger members and the old guard remain.
The Ocasio-Cortez and Connolly struggle was just one of the generational matches to kick off this Congress, and the party has yet to find a good way to balance experience with energy. Among other challenges, Democrats do not put term limits on committee leaders, unlike Republicans, and plum assignments are doled out based heavily on length of service.
Concerns about America’s aging political leadership are longstanding. But the Biden debacle has given them new urgency — especially as the Democrats struggle to win back younger voters. If talking about age feels too icky, think of it more in terms of revivifying the party’s ideas and approach to meet the moment. Among Democrats at all levels, there is much debate over rebranding and rebuilding and reconnecting with voters who feel alienated from the current system. Figuring out how to elevate new voices needs to be a part of the process.
Last month, David Hogg, the 25-year-old recently elected as a vice chairman of the national party, announced that his group Leaders We Deserve would spend $20 million to get more young blood into the party — and to support primary challengers against the party’s older incumbents — with an eye toward dismantling a “culture of seniority politics.”
The Democratic establishment is unamused, and it feels unlikely to be pure coincidence that the Democratic National Committee will vote next month on whether to redo the election of Mr. Hogg and his fellow vice chair, ostensibly because of questions about whether their original election adhered to the committee’s complex gender requirements. Whatever happens with Mr. Hogg, young Democrats are increasingly in the mood to tussle.
If the Democratic establishment doesn’t want to face a generational attack from within its ranks, it needs to convey that it understands there is a problem. Obviously, there is no easy fix. But that makes it all the more vital to tackle this issue now. If the sorry state in which the party currently finds itself isn’t enough to jolt it into action, it is hard to imagine what it would take.
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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