The Gerontocrats
Does the Democratic Party have the time to save itself?
In one of my online discussion groups, someone asked me what I thought of James Carville, the 80-year old Democractic political consultant who rose to prominence as Bill Clinton's strategist in the 1992 presidential campaign. Carville is still out there doing election analysis and posting commentary, and this other person in the group was wondering if anyone took him seriously or listened to his advice.
My response was that Carville embodies the Democratic party's gerontocracy problem, that he is stuck in the past along with other Democrats from the older generations. His irascible charm makes him amusing, but there's not much relevance to what he says. When some interview or commentary from him pops up on my feed, I enjoy listening for a few minutes before realizing he has nothing to say and moving on.
The word "gerontocracy" etymologically means "rule by the old," and in many ways is an apt term for the United States today. It's last two Presidents have been in their 70s, the oldest ever. The average age of it's Congressional leadership has been increasing throughout my entire adult life.
This perhaps isn't inherently bad; the overall population has also been aging. And it's logical to have older, more experienced people lead younger, more energetic people, rather than the other way around. We even have minimum age requirements to hold office explicitly in the U.S. Constitiution, reflecting this common sense notion.
But here's the thing: this aging of leadership has meant that older generations have had a lock on U.S. policy for decades. That's how we got stuck with the "neoliberal regime" that encouraged consumption over saving, profits over people, risk-taking in finance, all while the population aged and fertility declined, making the New Deal social saftey nets less and less tenable. So far, this has led to wealth concentration in the older age brackets1, and a sullen sense of despair among young workers best captured by the phrase "late stage captialism."
This trend is going to turn around. The current 119th Congress is slightly younger than the previous 118th Congress. And MAGA is blowing the neoliberal regime out of the water, complete with heinous war crimes and human rights violations. Whatever the older generations were trying to prop up is kind of moot now.
Back to my original point about the Democratic party: they have long had a problem where their leadership skews older compared to the Republicans. In large part, this is because my generation, Generation X, has gravitated to the Republican party. So the GOP has the bulk of the 40-something and 50-something politicians, many of whom are Trump loyalists. The Democrats are lopsided, with aging Boomers in charge and younger Millennials forming the new rank and file.
There are signs that the Democractic party, aware of its disadvantage, is starting to change. A soon-to-be-retiring Democratic Congressman recently gave this reason for not seeking reelection: “Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that.”2
Yeah, I saw the Biden thing, too. Heck, I stood up for Biden even though I thought the Democrats needed younger leaders, just because of my loathing for Trump. And I was thrilled when Biden was replaced as a candidate by the youthful Kamala Harris - just 60 years old!
But I fear it was too little, too late. I wonder if that can be said of the party as a whole. Can it survive the destruction of our political system in the wake of the MAGA regime? Can the system itself survive?
See this chart for a dramatic picture of how Boomers dominate in share of wealth: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-u-s-wealth-by-generation/
Also see this substack post:
Federal judges have lifetime appointments. In 2025, about 2/3 of federal judges are Boomers and 65 or older. Watching YouTube videos hosted by lawyers commenting on Trump Admin losses in court, they point out the Federal judges are not just citing Constitution and Laws in their opinions but also adding moral judgements and thus fulfilling their role as the Prophet Archetype in the Climax Phase at the end of the 4th turning. Also, I've found GenX and Millennials aligning with the judges to form the response to the Climax Crisis.
Steve, I enjoy your opinion pieces and stories, so I'm nitpicking here. I'm constantly finding examples like this where the chart referenced in footnote 1, does not align with Strauss and Howe generation birth years for Boomers, GenX and especially not for Millennials. So basically just fiction to gather clicks and headlines. Demography unplugged hss a paywall.