Dems Want New Blood. But at Whose Expense?
Some of the party’s most revered members are octogenarians facing primary challenges from a younger generation.
Democrats are eager for a younger generation of leaders. But not everyone is ready to let go of the old guard.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY KNOWS that it has an age problem—that voters are hungry for younger leadership with more verve and interest in picking fights with Donald Trump. But as primary campaigns ramp up, opposing factions of the party are grappling with how to welcome fresh faces without forcing out older ones.
Although there’s widespread recognition that new and younger voices could help the party regroup from its 2024 losses, progressive Democrats are debating whether some older members of Congress who have strong legislative and ideological records should be spared primary challenges.
“Just because somebody is not currently in Congress does not mean that they are amazingly great people who’re going to do a great job,” said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works. There are, he continued, “a lot of people who are not in Congress who are shittier than the people who are currently in Congress. This is not a situation where you say, ‘If they’re over the age of 70 then get rid of them! Throw them off the island, to the cliffs they go, Midsommar-style.’ That’s just fucking stupid.”
The debate spilled out into public view last week when David Hogg, the survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting who was recently elected as one of the four vice chairs of the Democratic National Committee, announced he would spend $20 million in the 2026 midterm primaries through the group Leaders We Deserve, of which he is president, to try to oust incumbent Democrats in safe blue districts. Hogg said he would not target 85-year-old Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or 80-year-old Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)—both of whom are already facing primary challenges.
The move pissed off DNC members (the committee typically does not get involved in primaries) and frustrated the old guard in the party who felt those resources could be better spent defending vulnerable Democrats or boosting downballot candidates. Yet at the same time, Hogg’s announcement that he’d stay away from Pelosi’s and Schakowsky’s races frustrated some progressives who felt that he was pulling punches and shying away from a much-needed conversation about age.
“We know it gets complicated. Bernie [Sanders] is one of most forward-thinking people in the party and he’s 83. Pelosi is one of the most effective people in the party and she’s 85. But you have to do some succession planning,” said a progressive Democratic strategist. “Dems have to be careful here not to miss the forest for the trees. It’s great that you have experienced people who are there to guide the party through tough times. But if you’ve been in Congress for 45 years, what are you doing?”
“People that age die,” the strategist added. “You have to think about the job a little bit differently when the stakes are this high.”
Some Democrats who spoke with The Bulwark worry that the party has forgotten the lesson learned from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s untimely death, and argued that it’s a dangerous business to treat age as a non-issue even among party luminaries. Two House Democrats died last month (70-year-old Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas and 77-year-old Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona), allowing Republicans to advance Trump’s budget agenda.
“There’s this idea that you’re just entitled to a seat,” said Suraj Patel, the New York lawyer (age 41) who has run several unsuccessful primary campaigns against Rep. Jerry Nadler (age 77) and former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (who was 76 when she left Congress in 2023). “We’re back to where we were eight years ago—much worse, in fact. And yet these same people are like, ‘Wait, we’re the ones with experience.’ But what did your experience get us?”
In an interview with Punchbowl, Hogg explained his decision to sit out the Pelosi and Schakowsky races: “Jan is one of the best leaders we have. . . . She’s part of the reason, along with people like Congresswoman Pelosi, that I know that the answer here is not to say, ‘Well, let’s just challenge any person that is above a certain age.’”
Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told The Bulwark that Hogg was “smart to take some people out of the mix that would be unnecessarily controversial when there is so much low-hanging fruit.”
“The Democratic party is at record low approval, we have to change the face of the party, and we have to send a signal to voters that we’re changing something. It’s an absolute fact that there are a lot of duds in Congress who could be replaced by people like Jasmine Crockett or Maxwell Frost—and we should be encouraging that,” said Green.
Although Hogg took some heat last week from more established party figures, the party’s tolerance for primary challengers has dramatically shifted compared to Trump’s first presidency. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blacklisted consultants or political groups that worked for primary challengers in the 2018 midterms—such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley—in an effort to protect incumbents in future races. (The ban was lifted in 2021.)
This time around, the level of dissatisfaction among Democratic voters is too hard to ignore. The party has largely accepted that, to some degree, primary challenges in the midterms cannot be avoided. Some prominent Democrats, such as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, have already compared the moment to the GOP’s Tea Party movement in 2010.
Kat Abughazaleh, who is challenging Schakowsky for the Democratic nomination, told The Bulwark that she’s been clear since launching her campaign that she thinks Schakowsky has been a “great leader.” But the age question is too big to ignore.
“We’ve had two Democratic representatives who have died in the last six or seven weeks, and we’ve lost two votes, two very important votes, by one vote,” she said. “I do think that it’s time to give voters another option, and that the Democratic party needs to try something different.”
“Our world is dynamic and changing,” Abughazaleh said, “and we need a Congress that is just as dynamic, rather than stagnant.”
🫏 Donkey Business:
— Speaking of Kat Abughazaleh, Tim Miller and Cam Kasky had her as a guest on the latest episode of our FYPod. Check it out here.
— Democrats are arguing over how much they should publicly condemn the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others to El Salvador. Axios reported last week that some House Democrats felt that it would play right into Donald Trump’s hands if they were to back the deportees. One Democratic member told Axios: “Rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy . . . the thing where his numbers are tanking, we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser” (apparently a reference to makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero). And California Gov. Gavin Newsom essentially said as much at a press conference, telling reporters that it was simply “the distraction of the day.”
Democrats have been petrified to talk about immigration since the 2024 election. Many in the party think President Joe Biden fumbled the border and gave Trump a winning issue to run on. You can almost see the consultant-brain at work when leaders such as Newsom are asked to weigh in on the topic (more on that from Tim Miller in today’s Triad).
Of course, not all Democrats think they should just roll over. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week to advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release. And Colorado Rep. Jason Crow on Sunday urged Democrats to stop thinking through the politics of it and just “do the right thing.”
“If we do the right thing and we defend people, if we defend the innocent, if we defend our democracy, the politics tend to take care of themselves,” Crow told CNN on Sunday. “We can spend all this time thinking about what is the right political thing to do and frankly I think that’s one of the reasons why Democrats have lost elections in the past.”
Crow may have a point. But the fact that Democrats have been twisting themselves in knots for weeks about how to approach the topic suggests that the party has a long way to go to figure out an effective way to communicate on the issue.
My open tabs:
— What We Lose When We’re Priced Out of Our Hobbies
— Hundreds of Giant Rodents ‘Conquered’ This Town. Now What?
— Arizona Democrats clash in intraparty dispute, pitting the party’s state chair against the state’s two sitting U.S. senators.
I think David Hogg has it right. I’m 61. Also, I don’t think defense of due process is a distraction! If they get away with doing it to immigrants, citizens will be next. There may be citizens languishing in CECOT right now, for all we know.
This is badly needed.
Yes, there are a few old but still effective Democrats. Here's the thing: they're not in danger from this. They can fall back on their records, the bills they've pushed through, the decisions they've made, the things they've fought for, and they'll win anyway.
The ones in danger from this are the rest. The old, senile, complacent bulwarks of a status quo that's catastrophically failed. The ones who hold their seats not by the strength of their records, but by the value of their campaign funds and sheer organizational inertia. The ones who still believe that they can compromise and negotiate with the Republicans, as if the American right were a normal political party rather than a pack of rabid dogs mauling America's hamstrings so they can bring it down and feast on its carcass at their leisure.
Those are the ones Hogg's project endangers, and it's about damn time.