Fifteen of the twenty four oldest members of Congress are Democrats. For a party that calls itself the future, that is a losing record, and it is long past time to get out of its own way.

The Democratic Party is in the fight of its life for its relevance, its future, and the republic it claims to defend. It has fire in its ranks, hunger in its base, and a generation of young voices ready to throw down and scrap for everything this party says it believes in. All it has to do is get out of its own way.

We have already seen what that hunger looks like. It looks like Adam Mockler.

He is 23 years old, a progressive commentator with a baby face and a giant YouTube following, and a few weeks ago he sat on a CNN panel and did what the Democratic Party’s aging leadership seems constitutionally incapable of doing. He asked a simple question and refused to let it go. He asked Scott Jennings to name a single political concession the United States had received from Iran since Donald Trump ordered air strikes. Jennings could not answer. So instead he sneered about bedtime, got red in the face, and finally screamed an expletive at Mockler on live television, a 48 year old seasoned political strategist undone by a 23 year old who just kept saying, “Answer the question.”

Then Geraldo Rivera, 82, shuffled onto another network and called Mockler a “dick” who needed more life experience, which is cable news code for know your place, kiddo. Rivera had nothing to say when Jennings mocked Mockler’s age, but he suddenly located his voice when he caught Mockler standing on his lawn. Get off my grass, son. Mockler, unfazed, was back on TV the next day. The kids are all right. It is the chaperones we need to talk about.

Mockler is not a candidate. He is a 23 year old who has figured out what this moment demands faster than a lot of people drawing a congressional salary. If you want to see what that energy looks like inside the party machinery, look at Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

She is 35. She is out on a Fighting Oligarchy tour with Bernie Sanders that is lighting up swing districts and college campuses. Bernie, to his great credit, understands the assignment and is smart enough to stand next to the future. AOC is being floated as a possible primary challenger to Chuck Schumer, and a growing number of lawmakers and strategists are whispering that it is time to elevate her. Out loud, some of them sound like Rivera, full of private praise and public cold shoulders. Impressed enough to quote her. Threatened enough to sideline her.

That is the Democratic Party’s seating chart in miniature. The hunger is there. The talent is there. The energy the moment demands is right there in the room. And the folks blocking the door cannot see past the nameplate on their own desk.

In several congressional offices, the Grim Reaper is not a metaphor. He is practically on payroll. He props his feet on a desk next to the chief of staff, scrolling through Politico and just marking time. There are 24 members of Congress who are 80 or older, and more than half of them are Democrats, the party that loves to call itself the party of the future. On that scoreboard, the future is behind by several touchdowns.

That is what I call the Biden lesson we apparently did not learn.

We watched it in real time. A good man. A decent man. A man who gave his life to this party and this country. We watched him hold on past the point where holding on served anyone but himself. We watched the people who loved him choose loyalty over honesty, and now we are living in the reality that choice helped create. The lesson was that a party that cannot tell its own hero the hard truth will wind up losing far more than one man’s pride.

We cannot keep doing this.

This is not ageism. Ageism is prejudice. This is urgency. The Democratic Party is in a fight for its life and its oldest leaders are still asking themselves the wrong question. They stand in front of the mirror and ask, “Can I still do it?” The mirror winks back and says, “You’ve still got it, boss. Now don’t forget your Crestor.” They should be asking, “What does this moment need, and am I really the one it needs? Or is my highest use now to step aside and spend my time mentoring, developing, and lifting the people who will be here after I am gone?”

A few examples. 

Jim Clyburn, 85, of South Carolina, has already answered that question, to his own satisfaction at least. He is running for an 18th term in Congress, the last of his generation of House Democratic leaders still on the ballot. Asked about his age, he jokes that he is about to celebrate the 47th anniversary of his 39th birthday. That is a man doing math to avoid the obvious.

Maxine Waters, 87, of California, is seeking yet another term as well. Waters has earned every ounce of respect and gratitude she gets. But when an octogenarian says her work is not finished and she does not know if it ever will be, that is not a campaign platform. That is a haunting.

And then there is Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, the nonvoting delegate representing Washington, D.C. She told one reporter she was running again while her staff quietly assured another outlet that no decision had been made. Recently, scammers posing as a cleaning crew got into her house and charged thousands of dollars to her credit card for work they never did. A police report described her as being in the early stages of dementia, a characterization her office disputes, but the fact that such a diagnosis appears at all in an internal police document ought to make every Democrat stop and think. At that point, the burden is on the party and her inner circle. If you are still putting her name on a ballot under those circumstances, that is not loyalty. That is exploitation of an elderly woman to protect other people’s power.

Some of these same members understood perfectly well, not long ago, that age and capacity were legitimate public concerns. They said so into microphones. They pushed. They pressured. They were right. Then someone quietly turned the cameras around and pointed the same questions in their direction. Suddenly the calculus changed. That is not leadership. That is self preservation dressed up in the language of service.

And then there is Chuck Schumer. At 74, he is practically a youngster in this crowd, which tells you a great deal about this crowd. Schumer is a dealmaker built for a world where deals were possible, a negotiator forged in an era of genial disagreement, a man who knows every Senate procedure down to the page number. But what this party needs right now is not more institutional memory and a whiz bang parliamentarian. It needs fire. And Chuck Schumer, honorable man that he is, is blocking the doorway where the firebrands are trying to get in.

Consider the contrast. The Republican Party, with all of its chaos and cruelty and contempt for the institutions Democrats claim to defend, did one thing right in 2024. It put a 40 year old tech savvy populist one heartbeat from the presidency. You do not have to admire J.D. Vance (I do not) or agree with a single thing he stands for (I do not) to recognize what that communicated. It said we see you. And all those tech bros you worship? JD is their guy and he is on our ticket.

Biden tried to use Kamala Harris the same way, but after spending most of his term keeping her offstage, out of the spotlight, and handling the slowest moving assignments in the building, she was starting in the hole. By the time he doddered through that fiasco of a debate and finally stepped aside in July of 2024, under intense pressure and far too late, he left her with only a few months to build a national campaign out of the smoking crater of his indecision. She ran hard and she ran well under an impossible clock. The party should remember that when it talks about what went wrong. Not that it ever will in public with any degree of honesty.

Meanwhile the voters who will decide the next decade of American politics are not sitting in front of cable news grading quips on CNN Tonight. They are watching the Adam Mockler Show on YouTube. They are listening to Pod Save America. They found their way into politics through Joe Rogan and Theo Von and an endless universe of long form conversations where somebody actually finishes a sentence before the commercial break. The media landscape has shifted under the party’s feet and too many of its leaders are still obsessing over their Fox and MSNBC hits and Sunday morning greenrooms. The voters they need are not there. They have not been there in years.

The people who will live with the consequences of these decisions were in middle school during the Obama administration. They do not want a Congress that looks like Madame Tussauds, perfectly preserved, permanently still. They need champions who show vigor and strength, who speak their language, who live in the same technological century. Not a lineup of octogenarians who still think driving down to the electric company to pay your bill in person counts as civic engagement.

So here is what we are asking. Not for erasure. Not for ingratitude. We are asking for the hardest thing in public life. To love the party more than you love the seat.

Jim Clyburn knows more about building a coalition in the American South than anyone who will ever primary him. Maxine Waters has forgotten more about fighting for underserved communities than most of her colleagues will ever learn. Eleanor Holmes Norton has given Washington D.C. a voice it never would have had without her. That knowledge, that experience, that scar tissue, that is exactly what the next generation of Democratic leaders is starving for.

The Biden lesson was not that Joe Biden was a bad man. The lesson was that love without clarity is just sentiment, and loyalty without honesty is just comfort. A party that cannot tell its heroes the hard truth has confused affection with strategy. We made that mistake once. We are living in its consequences.

So to Jim Clyburn, to Maxine Waters, to Eleanor Holmes Norton, to Chuck Schumer, and to every long serving Democratic leader still asking can I when the country needs them asking should I, we say this with genuine respect and the urgency this moment demands.

Thank you. You are heroes. Your service has been monumental. This country is better for what you gave it.

Now please. For the love of this party and everything you spent your lives building.

Have some soup. Take a nice nap. And then come back to the table not as a candidate but as a mentor, a counselor, an elder statesman who helps the Pete Buttigiegs, the James Talericos, and the Alexandria Ocasio Cortezes of this party find their footing, sharpen their arguments, and take the fight to people who would very much rather you stay in the way.

Venerable mentor is not a consolation prize. It is the rarest thing in American politics. A leader who loved something more than the sound of their own name being called on the floor.

The exit door is open. Walk through it while you can still do it on your own terms.

Without a quad cane.