The useless hand of gerontocracy can also be a symptom of ideological malaise.
In principle, the Democratic Get together is a political group aimed toward gaining energy and implementing an agenda. In follow, the Democrats extra carefully resemble a hospice, if not a funeral residence. An inordinately massive variety of celebration leaders are so previous and infirm they’re at loss of life’s door. That is most notoriously true of the celebration’s most up-to-date standard-bearer, former president Joe Biden. A recent media controversy over a brand new guide alleging that Biden’s interior circle had lined up his infirmity was overshadowed on Sunday by revelations that he suffers from an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
On Wednesday, Democratic Consultant Gerry Connolly—a lightning rod within the debates over his celebration’s gerontocracy when in December 2024 he defeated the a lot youthful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the highest Democrat within the Home Oversight Committee—died of cancer at age 74. Connolly’s most cancers had been made public final November. His victory over AOC—who is sort of 4 a long time his junior, freed from life-threatening illnesses, and probably the most telegenic of elected officers in fashionable politics—was a dramatic illustration of how a lot the Democrats worth seniority above all different issues. Connolly’s transient tenure as rating Democrat within the Oversight Committee abruptly led to April after his most cancers prevented him from doing the job. Sadly, as a substitute of being a profession spotlight, Connolly’s truncated time at that put up relegated him to the rising listing of American public figures who didn’t know when to stop. This corridor of infamy additionally contains Joe Biden, the late Senator Dianne Feinstein and the late Supreme Courtroom Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.
In a put up, the political analyst Lakshya Jain listed some startling facts exhibiting simply how sharply elected Democrats skew in direction of the aged:
Three of the 215 Home Democrats have died this yr, all from states that Trump received (TX/AZ) or have a Republican Governor (TX/VA). Six Home Democrats have died since April 2024. The final eight Home members to die in workplace have been Democrats, going again to 2022.
I believe the query right here is whether or not we notice that that is merely not a coincidence—it’s the results of choices made concerning seniority and working for re-election.
One final level: 11 of the 14 Home members over 80 are Democrats.
In a Congress the place Republicans have solely a skinny maintain on energy, each vote counts. On Thursday, Congress handed the reconciliation invoice by a vote of 215–214, with two Republicans breaking rank. As Branko Marcetic of Jacobin points out, “Three Democrats who would’ve made the dropping vote 214-217 died in workplace this yr. So principally, the price range Democrats have warned continuous is a catastrophe will go immediately due to their insistence they keep in Congress till loss of life.”
Jain is true to insist that the Democratic Get together gerontocracy is a results of selection, not simply coincidence. Whereas each Republicans and Democrats have aged members, Democrats specifically have elevated seniority to a governing precept, which means that celebration management is dominated by the aged.
In December, Politico pointed out that this dynamic remained in place even after the election of Donald Trump, which ought to have brought about a serious shake-up within the celebration—however in truth left the established order largely unchanged. Politico notes:
It’s revealing that even after the ouster of three 70-somethings from rating spots on committees—Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), David Scott (D-Ga.), and Nadler—prime Democrats on 10 totally different committees within the subsequent Congress shall be over 70 years previous. Two of them are octogenarians, together with 86-year-old Consultant Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who shall be rating member on the Home Monetary Providers Committee.
The GOP Home chairmen these Democrats shall be up towards aren’t precisely spring chickens. However Republicans could have half the variety of 70-plus-year-olds serving within the prime spot. Two GOP chairmen shall be greater than 25 years youthful than their Democratic counterpart on the committee. Partly, it’s a operate of the time period limits imposed on committee leaders by the Home GOP convention. Democrats, against this, are wedded to seniority as the idea of energy.
Present Situation
Their devotion to seniority makes clear that gerontocracy is merely a symptom of a deeper challenge: The Democrats haven’t any guiding ideology or rules holding them collectively. The celebration is a heterogenous coalition of centrists and progressives that has didn’t outline a core aim. Even anti-Trumpism, which served as an efficient glue for holding the faction-ridden celebration collectively from 2016 to 2024, is not efficient. Trump’s victory over Biden has demoralized the celebration, and a few main figures in purple states are all too keen to remain on the nice facet of MAGA.
It’s more and more troublesome to know what Democrats, as a collectivity, consider. This explains why the celebration continues to be unpopular though Trump himself can also be dropping recognition.
On Tuesday, Vox reported, “Congressional Democrats—and their celebration’s nationwide model—stay dismal: Some 37 % of voters view the celebration favorably, whereas about 60 % view them unfavorably, based on YouGov’s monitoring surveys.”
Missing a cohesive celebration ideology, every Democratic lawmaker is in impact a warlord ruling over a small fiefdom. For warlords, the sport is to carry energy over the fiefdom till you die. If the Democrats had some bigger imaginative and prescient of the social good, then one may anticipate politicians to sacrifice their profession for that aim. Sadly, the one widespread imaginative and prescient appears to be careerism.
Earlier this month, David Hogg, the controversial vice chair of the Democratic Nationwide Committee, stirred up anger by happening Actual Time with Invoice Maher and saying, “There’ve been a number of members which have come out, which have stated, ‘if I retire my life is successfully over.’… Recover from your self. This isn’t about you.” Not surprisingly, the DNC is now attempting to take away Hogg. As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann rightly laments, this push towards Hogg is being argued for (at the very least in public) on merely procedural grounds with none effort to have interaction with the substantive factors Hogg made in regards to the celebration needing to switch incumbents who lack power.
In his feedback on Actual Time, Hogg alluded to a remark Consultant James Clyburn, age 84, made when asked by The Wall Road Journal about retirement: “What would you like—me to surrender my life?” Final week, when requested about this remark, Clyburn denied he ever made it however then expressed the same sentiment in an even more extreme form: “Would you like me to commit suicide?” Politics is the nice divider; infirmity and loss of life are the nice uniters. It’s attainable on a human degree to have empathy for Biden, Connolly, and Clyburn: It’s onerous for any of us, in our frailty, to confront proof of diminishment and impending loss of life. However this sympathy for a shared human plight, for the King Lear that lives in all our souls, shouldn’t blind us to the political actuality. In a democracy, politicians exist to serve the general public; the general public doesn’t exist to serve politicians. It’s an indication of democratic decline if politicians reside and die like warlords, clinging to each final ounce of energy. Democrats have to outline what they stand for as a celebration so their elected officers can as soon as extra be real public servants and never mere warlords.
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