The week the Democrats’ gerontocracy problem came home to roost

The sun rose literally and metaphorically for House Republicans on Thursday when they finally mustered the votes to pass President Donald Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.”

The vote came under the tightest of margins, with 215 Republicans voting for the bill. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, opposed it and Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, voted “present.” While two Republicans, Dave Schweikert of Arizona and Andrew Garbarino of New York, fell asleep.

All 212 Democrats voted against the bill, meaning that the final vote tally was 215-214. But had Gerry Connolly, the Virginia Democratic representative, not died of esophageal cancer earlier this week, the bill would have been deadlocked and failed on the floor. Not only that, but Connolly is the third Democratic member of Congress to die this year.

It served as a bitter bookend to the week that began with former president Joe Biden announcing that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer: Democratic leadership has an age problem and not only does it prevent them from winning re-election, it prevents them from stopping Republicans.

The week was always likely to be a painful reminder about Biden’s age and the role it played in the 2024 election, given that Axios’s Alex Thompson and CNN’s Jake Tapper released their book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

But Biden’s cancer diagnosis put the former president’s decision to run for re-election despite being 81 into even starker relief

It showed his hubris in thinking that he could be up for a full-fledged White House campaign again when he even showed signs of aging in his 2020 presidential run that did not demand the rigor of a cross-country blitz due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Biden family and his defenders have taken to attacking Tapper and Thompson. But Biden’s disastrous debate performance only cemented what people already felt: that Biden’s age and frailty disqualified him from the most difficult job in the world.

And Connolly’s death shows this is not a one-off problem for the Democratic Party. It further solidifies how much Democratic elders refuse to hand over the reins of power to the next generation.

Last year, when Jamie Raskin bumped New York Democrat Jerry Nadler to become the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threw her hat in the ring to replace him. Ocasio-Cortez had occasionally led House Democrats when Raskin underwent treatment for cancer.

She had some of the toughest questions for witnesses in the Oversight Committee and is known to have one of the most professional staffs on Capitol Hill.

But she was passed over for Connolly largely because it was “his turn.” Connolly had been consistently leapfrogged to lead the committee, but Democrats have long adhered to the idea that Democrats earn chairmanships based on whose “turn” it is.

This creates a bottleneck where members can wait for years on end to earn leadership spots, only to be advanced in age when they obtain these coveted positions, thereby repeating the cycle.

This was also compounded by the fact that earlier this year, two other House Democrats died. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona died of cancer, while Sylvester Turner of Texas died the day after Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Grijalva, who had undergone cancer treatment and missed most votes last year, was among those who told Biden he should step aside. Turner, who was 70 and had survived cancer, won his seat in Congress after Sheila Jackson Lee died in office last year.

Had all three Democrats not run for office last year or had younger Democrats run for their seats, the bill likely would have been unsuccessful.

More than that, in 2024, Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell, 87, and Donald Payne of New Jersey both died. The House Democratic caucus’s age problem no longer just means that the party looks out of date: it actively prevents Democrats from doing their job.

Republicans’ hands are, of course, not entirely clean on this. Trump will turn 79 next month and Mitch McConnell, 83, clung to power until last year.

But so far, it has not prevented them from winning elections or passing legislation.

Democrats don’t lack young talent either in the House. They have both the youngest representative, Maxwell Frost of Florida, and the youngest senator, Jon Ossoff of Georgia. They also enjoy a bevy of young Democratic governors like Wes Moore of Maryland, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. They have no reason to continue to rely on older leaders.

The Democratic Party has taken to saying they are the vanguards of democracy and the one thing preventing the rise of authoritarianism in America. But their refusal to change their leadership means they do not take the threat entirely seriously. So why should anyone else?