Old and busted: Don’t trust anyone under 30! New hotness: Don’t trust anyone under 80!
Ever since Joe Biden supposedly gave Kamala Harris “months of growing panic” over the realization that he had become too old to hold office, Democrats supposedly have begun an introspection process over how long the hippies should stick around. The hippies, however, have become surprisingly resistant to the idea of retirement, perhaps in recognition that their Gen-X and millennial replacements are bat-guano nutcase Marxists. The Wall Street Journal* takes notice of the Gray Resistance to the idea of stepping aside by the octagenarian leadership of the party:
“I think every Democrat over 70 should make this their last term,” said Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, a PAC that supports young progressive candidates.
Primary challengers have cast elder lawmakers as clinging onto power and out of touch with the needs of voters. But incumbents say their experience and influence in Congress is worth defending, and many longtime members say they haven’t made up their minds yet—or have already said they are sticking around.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to say that everybody in the delegation should be leaving, especially if you want to have power,” said 71-year-old Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We want to keep the power that we have.” Meeks has filed to run for a 14th term in 2026.
The numbers are stark. While the median age of Democrats and Republicans is about the same—around 57 years old at the start of this year—Democrats have far more older members. There are 55 House Democrats age 70 or older as of Sept. 10, compared with 33 Republicans, according to data from the congressional Biographical Directory. Three House Democrats in their 70s died this year, and the last eight members of Congress to die in office have all been Democrats.
As the WSJ notes, a handful of older Dems have decided to (ahem) ‘spend more time with their families.’ Jerrold Nadler is the most recent, but the pace of retirements has been higher in this Congress than in 2023. Most of the senior House members, however, have opted to stick around, in part because they believe the electoral “weather” favors Democrats in the midterms. Unlike the GOP, the House Dems do not have time limits on leadership positions, which means that these seniority citizens will have the inside track on committee chairs if they can take the majority again.
Just how good is the ‘weather,’ though? Thus far, it’s not looking all that sunny for Democrats, especially after the Texas redistricting. RCP shows Democrats with a narrow three-point lead in the average for the generic ballot, 44/41, which usually overstates Democrat performance in House and Senate elections. Generally speaking, Democrats need about a five-point lead in this measure to tip over to net pickups.
Besides that, though, Democrats have an even more basic problem. They don’t have a coherent message outside of knee-jerk hatred of Donald Trump. That became painfully apparent in the 2024 election, in which their only consistent message was an effort to disqualify Trump and claim office by default. That platform collapsed spectacularly in November, but Democrats still have not crafted a real policy platform — while Trump succeeds in delivering on everything he promised in the 2024 campaign.
Why not? In large part, it’s because of the Hippie Gap. The younger Democrats tend to be proto-Marxists or worse, while the gerontocracy understands how badly that sells with the American electorate. Voters are already up in arms over Woke Madness, the disastrous results of progressive open-borders policies, and the utter lack of credible response to high rates of crime and violence in American cities controlled exclusively by progressives. Those issues helped peel away Hispanics, black men, and younger men generally in the last election, making the generational issue even more acute.
This may be a rare case of demonstrating the wisdom of not having term limits. The Democrat gerontocracy is bad enough, but the next generation is clearly worse. They want to push the Democrat Party even further to the radical Left, curating their support down in a manner similar to Stephen Colbert’s ratings arc. The elders know what comes after they leave — a Marxist purge that will all but leave the entire field to Republicans and conservative populists.
The only unifying principle among the generations and factions within the Democrat Party now is hatred of Donald Trump. That’s why they don’t have any other message, and that’s why it may take a long time for them to develop one. Watch out for stormy ‘weather’ in the meantime.
The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today's show features:
- Democrats are getting played on crime. As Andrew Malcolm points out, they're mainly getting played by their own Trump obsession.
- We discuss how Trump put them on the fring of another consensus issue, plus the way that a viral crime story utterly defeated the Protection Racket Media embargo.
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!
Note: I paid for my subscription on an annual basis. I still have access to the WSJ until January, even while taking it with an enormous grain of salt.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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