It's My Party and I'll Leave When I Want To

Talking to the gerontocracy.

- By Rebecca Traister

LAST YEAR’S ELECTION DEBACLE, rooted in the rapid decline of the then-81-year-old Joe Biden, took a heavy toll on New Hampshire congresswoman Annie Kuster. “It was the most painful thing I've been through since my own parents aging,” she said of her up-close experiences with the former president. “Nobody wants to face incapacity.” It forced Kuster to look hard at her party. Months before the fateful presidential debate that exposed Biden’s frailty, Kuster, at a mere 68 years old, announced her retirement, having served in Congress for 12 years after turning a red seat reliably blue. Though fit and healthy, she was feeling her age on some issues. “We were dealing with AI, cryptocurrency,” she said of her work on the Energy and Commerce Committee. “I am not the person best situated to be dealing with these issues. I did my best to learn, but it’s just time for us to move over.” Now, as debate rages among Democrats over how to improve their party’s abysmal reputation with voters, Kuster worries that the crucial lesson of 2024 has been forgotten, particularly by ancient officials clinging to their seats and seemingly doing everything in their power to prevent a younger generation of politicians from emerging. “People keep asking, ‘What's wrong with the Democratic Party? What's the right message?’” Kuster said. “They act like there are magic words. And it’s like, ‘It’s not a question of just getting the right words. It’s that we are too freaking old.’” A battle between generations is taking place in races across the country. The mayoral race in New York has pitted 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani against not only 67-year-old Andrew Cuomo but also 74-year-old Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who still hasn’t endorsed the younger candidate, presumably because of some combination of Mamdani's left-wing, pro-Palestinian positions and his temerity in believing his elders don’t have a monopoly on deciding how politics should be practiced. In Maine, 77-year-old governor Janet