Old And In the Way… But So Are Some Of The Next Generation

Replacing Dinosaurs With Duds Won’t Save Congress… Values Make A Platform, Not Birth Dates

We’ve been urging elderly Members of Congress to consider— and act on— retirement for years. Some do; some, like Pelosi, consider themselves indispensable and refuse. Others have their entire identities wrapped up in being a Member of Congress and fear they would shrink and die without it. Some of the elderly Members have attracted opposition from candidates selling themselves as younger. And some those younger candidates will make excellent replacements— like Saikat Chakrabarti (for Pelosi), Oliver Larkin (for Jared Moskowitz), Donavan McKinney (for Sri Thanedar), Randy Villegas (for David Valadao), Elijah Manley (for Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick) and Lukas Ventouras (for Nick LaLota)— others are… just younger, although 33 year old Everton Blair seems like a step up from completely senile 79 year old David Scott. Ditto for 33 year old Hartzell Gray, who's challenging 80 year old Emanuel Cleaver, who says he's not running because of Cleaver's age but because Cleaver isn't progressive enough for today's problems.

Some are the same— or even worse— as the incumbents they’re challenging, at least from a policy perspective, just less experienced. Others might even be better but are flakes and incapable of getting anything useful done.

Presumably Nick for Israel is an anti-Josh Gottheimer prank candidate, but he’s passing himself off as someone younger and ready to rumble. ActBlue is allowing him to raise money on their platform. And his goofy Twitter platform isn’t tagged as a spoof. He’s half Gottheimer’s age and though many people consider Gottheimer the worst Democrap in Congress, everything I’ve seen about “Nick”— including everything he’s written on his website— makes it clear that he would be even worse than Gottheimer.

Other candidates using the age card but who aren’t better than the incumbents they’re challenging include:

• 26 year old Liam Elkind vs 78 year old Jerry Nadler

• 34 year old George Hornedo vs 50 year old André Carson

• 37 year old Jake Rakov vs 70 year old Brad Sherman

Age alone is neithert a qualification nor a disqualification. What matters is vision, courage, competence and commitment to the people, not to power. Yes, it’s time for a generational shift in Congress, but not if it means replacing crusty old corporate tools with slick young ones, or trading inert incumbents for careerist opportunists who’ll say anything to win and stand for nothing once elected.

We should welcome a new generation of leaders— but only the kind who are ready to break with the status quo, not just inherit it. Candidates like Chakrabarti, Larkin, Villegas, Manley, McKinney, Blair and Ventouras represent that possibility. But grifters, posers, and empty résumés wrapped in youth should be shown the door, just like the calcified dinosaurs they want to replace. Congress doesn’t need to get younger for the sake of it. It needs to get better.

Oh, and the DCCC has an even worse idea than recruiting young candidates— they’re recruiting people who served the military, almost all of whom— though not all— are far from progressive. “The Democratic Party,” wrote Shane Goldmacher yesterday, “is turning to an unusually large crop of military veterans in an effort to flip the House in 2026, recruiting and promoting veterans in some of the top battleground districts in a reprisal of a strategy that helped deliver the House in 2018 during Trump’s first term. But this time the push for veterans is being embraced to a greater extent by a party establishment keenly aware of the urgent need for Democratic challengers to create distance from a national party brand that remains deeply unpopular.”