The Democratic Party Is Literally Dying

In theory, the Democratic Party is a political organization aimed at gaining power and implementing an agenda. In practice, the Democrats more closely resemble a hospice, if not a funeral home. An inordinately large number of party leaders are so old and infirm they are at death’s door. This is most notoriously true of the party’s most recent standard-bearer, former president Joe Biden. A recent media controversy over a new book alleging that Biden’s inner circle had covered up his infirmity was overshadowed on Sunday by revelations that he suffers from an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

On Wednesday, Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly—a lightning rod in the debates over his party’s gerontocracy when in December 2024 he defeated the much younger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the top Democrat in the House Oversight Committee—died of cancer at age 74. Connolly’s cancer had been made public last November. His victory over AOC—who is nearly four decades his junior, free of life-threatening diseases, and one of the most telegenic of elected officials in modern politics—was a dramatic illustration of how much the Democrats value seniority above all other considerations. Connolly’s brief tenure as ranking Democrat in the Oversight Committee abruptly ended in April after his cancer prevented him from doing the job. Sadly, instead of being a career highlight, Connolly’s truncated time at that post relegated him to the growing list of American public figures who didn’t know when to quit. This hall of infamy also includes Joe Biden, the late Senator Dianne Feinstein and the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

In a post, the political analyst Lakshya Jain listed some startling facts showing just how sharply elected Democrats skew towards the elderly:

Three of the 215 House Democrats have died this year, all from states that Trump won (TX/AZ) or have a Republican Governor (TX/VA). Six House Democrats have died since April 2024. The last eight House members to die in office have been Democrats, going back to 2022.

I think the question here is whether we realize that this is simply not a coincidence—it’s the result of decisions made regarding seniority and running for re-election.

One last point: 11 of the 14 House members over 80 are Democrats.

In a Congress where Republicans have only a thin hold on power, every vote counts. On Thursday, Congress passed the reconciliation bill 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 losing vote 214-217 died in office this year. So basically, the budget Democrats have warned non-stop is a disaster will pass directly because of their insistence they stay in Congress until death.”

Jain is right to insist that the Democratic Party gerontocracy is a result of choice, not just coincidence. While both Republicans and Democrats have elderly members, Democrats in particular have elevated seniority to a governing principle, meaning that party leadership is dominated by the aged.

In December, Politico pointed out that this dynamic remained in place even after the election of Donald Trump, which should have caused a major shake-up in the party—but in fact left the status quo largely unchanged. Politico notes:

It’s revealing that even after the ouster of three 70-somethings from ranking spots on committees—Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), David Scott (D-Ga.), and Nadler—top Democrats on 10 different committees in the next Congress will be over 70 years old. Two of them are octogenarians, including 86-year-old Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who will be ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee.

The GOP House chairmen these Democrats will be up against aren’t exactly spring chickens. But Republicans will have half the number of 70-plus-year-olds serving in the top spot. Two GOP chairmen will be more than 25 years younger than their Democratic counterpart on the committee. In part, it’s a function of the term limits imposed on committee leaders by the House GOP conference. Democrats, by contrast, are wedded to seniority as the basis of power.

Their devotion to seniority makes clear that gerontocracy is merely a symptom of a deeper issue: The Democrats have no guiding ideology or principles holding them together. The party is a heterogenous coalition of centrists and progressives that has failed to define a core goal. Even anti-Trumpism, which served as an effective glue for holding the faction-ridden party together from 2016 to 2024, is no longer effective. Trump’s victory over Biden has demoralized the party, and some leading figures in purple states are all too eager to stay on the good side of MAGA.

It’s increasingly difficult to know what Democrats, as a collectivity, believe. This explains why the party continues to be unpopular even though Trump himself is also losing popularity.

On Tuesday, Vox reported, “Congressional Democrats—and their party’s national brand—remain dismal: Some 37 percent of voters view the party favorably, while about 60 percent view them unfavorably, according to YouGov’s tracking surveys.”

Lacking a cohesive party ideology, each Democratic lawmaker is in effect a warlord ruling over a small fiefdom. For warlords, the game is to hold power over the fiefdom until you die. If the Democrats had some larger vision of the social good, then one could expect politicians to sacrifice their career for that goal. Sadly, the only common vision seems to be careerism.