As Democrats still recover from the devastating November loss, multiple pundits have made various predictions on how the Democratic Party will move forward. Some argue that there will be a shift to the right in the party, others believe there will be a left wing populist faction challenging the establishment leadership, potentially mirroring the Tea Party movement of the early 2010s. Others have also argued that the Democratic Party simply needs newer and younger leadership.They posit that after, the American public is desperate to see young faces in politics. Especially since it seems like every day another congressperson is being reported as being in a memory care facility like Texas Congresswoman Kay Granger, who has been absent from congress over the past few months. 

However, the Democrats decided to continue their crusade against popular policy and rhetoric by continuing gerontocracy by electing 74-year-old Gerry Conolly to be the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. But don’t worry folks, one congressional colleague of his called him “a young 74 cancer notwithstanding.”  The majority of the Democratic caucus decided 35 year old Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was too radical and supported too many policies popular with the majority of Americans. Instead, a geriatric establishment politician would be better in their future election fight. Of course, Connolly would not be elected if it was not for 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi whipping votes from her hospital bed in Luxembourg after she fell and broke her hip at a Battle of the Bulge anniversary (an event she was alive for). 

Is the Democratic Party aware the base of the party is people under 50? Why they want to continue losing is a mystery to me, but then again, Pelosi at this point is more focused on her multimillion dollar stock portfolio from insider trading than helping working class Americans. The only old man who seems to have it right is Bernie Sanders, who was rumored to be starting either a third party or some kind of separate caucus in opposition to the mainstream corporate democrats. While I am completely against third parties for their unviability, Sanders should do it as a power move so Democrats fall in line and instead focus on populist issues that young people care about like labor rights, raising the minimum wage, or medicare for all. 

Will the democrats ever look at data that shows what the American people want or will they cherry pick data that tells them what they want, just like Joe Biden (who’s staffers reportedly only showed him polls with him winning or the fairy tale prediction system of the 13 keys leading to his delusion that an 81 year old man could still be president and beat Trump). The strategy is unsustainable and unless they adopt a left wing populist message around economics we might as well start discussing the Presidency of J.D. Vance.