The lifeless hand of gerontocracy can be a symptom of ideological malaise.
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The late Consultant Gerry Connolly—in {a photograph} from 2013.(Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg through Getty Photographs)
In principle, the Democratic Celebration is a political group aimed toward gaining energy and implementing an agenda. In follow, the Democrats extra intently resemble a hospice, if not a funeral residence. An inordinately giant variety of celebration leaders are so previous and infirm they’re at demise’s door. That is most notoriously true of the celebration’s most up-to-date standard-bearer, former president Joe Biden. A latest media controversy over a brand new e-book alleging that Biden’s interior circle had coated up his infirmity was overshadowed on Sunday by revelations that he suffers from an aggressive type of prostate most cancers.
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 most cancers at age 74. Connolly’s most cancers had been made public final November. His victory over AOC—who is almost 4 many years his junior, freed from life-threatening ailments, and some of the telegenic of elected officers in trendy 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 resulted in 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 consists of Joe Biden, the late Senator Dianne Feinstein and the late Supreme Court docket Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.
In a put up, the political analyst Lakshya Jain listed some startling info displaying simply how sharply elected Democrats skew in the 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 feel the query right here is whether or not we notice that that is merely not a coincidence—it’s the results of selections made relating to 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 factors out“Three Democrats who would’ve made the dropping vote 214-217 died in workplace this yr. So principally, the finances Democrats have warned continuous is a catastrophe will go straight due to their insistence they keep in Congress till demise.”
Jain is correct to insist that the Democratic Celebration 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, that means that celebration management is dominated by the aged.
In December, Politico identified that this dynamic remained in place even after the election of Donald Trump, which ought to have induced a significant shake-up within the celebration—however actually 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 completely different committees within the subsequent Congress will likely be over 70 years previous. Two of them are octogenarians, together with 86-year-old Consultant Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who will likely be rating member on the Home Monetary Companies Committee.
The GOP Home chairmen these Democrats will likely be up in opposition to aren’t precisely spring chickens. However Republicans may have half the variety of 70-plus-year-olds serving within the prime spot. Two GOP chairmen will likely be greater than 25 years youthful than their Democratic counterpart on the committee. Partially, it’s a perform 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 Concern
Their devotion to seniority makes clear that gerontocracy is merely a symptom of a deeper challenge: The Democrats haven’t any guiding ideology or ideas holding them collectively. The celebration is a heterogenous coalition of centrists and progressives that has did not outline a core purpose. Even anti-Trumpism, which served as an efficient glue for holding the faction-ridden celebration collectively from 2016 to 2024, is now 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 aspect of MAGA.
It’s more and more tough to know what Democrats, as a collectivity, consider. This explains why the celebration continues to be unpopular despite the fact that Trump himself can be dropping reputation.
On Tuesday, Vox reported“Congressional Democrats—and their celebration’s nationwide model—stay dismal: Some 37 p.c of voters view the celebration favorably, whereas about 60 p.c view them unfavorably, in accordance with 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 might anticipate politicians to sacrifice their profession for that purpose. Sadly, the one frequent 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 couple of members which have come out, which have mentioned, ‘if I retire my life is successfully over.’… Recover from your self. This isn’t about you.” Not surprisingly, the DNC is now making an attempt to take away Hogg. As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann rightly laments, this push in opposition to Hogg is being argued for (a minimum of in public) on merely procedural grounds with none effort to interact with the substantive factors Hogg made concerning the celebration needing to interchange incumbents who lack power.
In his feedback on Actual Time, Hogg alluded to a remark Consultant James Clyburn, age 84, made when requested 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 identical sentiment in an much more excessive type: “Would you like me to commit suicide?” Politics is the nice divider; infirmity and demise are the nice uniters. It’s potential on a human stage to have empathy for Biden, Connolly, and Clyburn: It’s laborious for any of us, in our frailty, to confront proof of diminishment and impending demise. 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 must 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.
Jeet Lord
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The writer of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Critiques, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Evaluate, Virginia Quarterly Evaluate, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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