The Democratic Party isn’t just grappling with defeat. It’s grieving, internally fractured, and staring down a generational reckoning decades in the making. In the span of just 16 months, six sitting Democratic lawmakers have died in office. Three of them — including Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia — passed away in just the last few months, leaving vacancies that have not only rattled morale but tipped the scales in a narrowly divided House. All of this unfolds as the party continues to face bitter recriminations over its handling of President Joe Biden’s decline and his ill-fated reelection bid in 2024.
It’s not just the physical toll. It’s the political cost — one measured not just in lost votes, but in lost opportunities.
Rep. Connolly’s death from esophageal cancer was the latest and perhaps most impactful in a string of losses. As the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, his absence reopens not just a seat, but a power struggle over influence, direction, and generational succession within the party.
Once again, the seniority system is under fire. Long viewed as a stabilizing tradition, it now stands accused of stifling younger voices, delaying leadership turnover, and keeping aging lawmakers in key roles past the point of effectiveness. “Imagine if one of the older and sicker Dems would’ve retired instead of died in office,” Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz wrote in frustration after a critical vote barely passed the House.
Democrats convincing themselves that if they just get rid of all their old people, they’ll be fine seems to miss the point a bit. https://t.co/zlG8hdirLP
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 27, 2025
But Katz’s frustration goes far beyond legislative math. The broader sentiment among many younger Democrats is that a party unwilling to confront its own aging leadership is one that risks fading relevance — and repeating the same mistakes that delivered a resounding Electoral College loss to Donald Trump in 2024.
That mistake, many now say, was backing Biden’s reelection bid when warning signs were already blinking red. With new reports of the former president’s declining health — including a recent cancer diagnosis — and growing accounts of cognitive slippage during his final months in office, the quiet regret among party insiders is becoming a public reckoning.
Few have voiced it more bluntly than 25-year-old David Hogg, now a vice chair at the DNC. “What we need to be thinking about are the millions of people who are now paying the price for not having those conversations,” he said, reflecting on the party’s failure to confront Biden’s viability more openly in 2023 and 2024. Hogg admitted that he, too, failed to speak up when it mattered. “And I regret that,” he added.
There’s an uncomfortable pattern here — and it’s not limited to Biden. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, revered on the left, also resisted calls to retire during the Obama years. Her eventual death handed Trump the opportunity to appoint a third conservative justice, locking in a Supreme Court majority that continues to reshape American law.
Now, with Biden’s exit and a Republican president back in office, Democrats are again contending with the consequences of delay. As strategist Jim Manley, once a staunch defender of the seniority system, now concedes: “There’s got to be change.”
That’s a hard pill to swallow in a party still led by figures like Nancy Pelosi (85) and Chuck Schumer (74), who continue to exert enormous influence. But it’s a conversation the party can no longer avoid.
Not everyone is waiting patiently. Hogg, along with a cohort of younger progressives, is pushing hard for generational turnover. He’s recruiting new candidates — even if it means challenging sitting incumbents — and has sparked enough backlash that the DNC is considering redoing his election to the vice chair post.
Still, Hogg remains defiant. His message is clear: the cost of loyalty to aging leadership is becoming too high to ignore. If Democrats want to win the future, they’ll need to stop clinging to the past — and that means more than symbolic reforms.
