Gerontocratic Democrats Teach AOC that Helping the Party Doesn’t Help You

The national Democratic Party is not a real political party, it is a social club for gerontocrats who love losing. I have long said that the Democrats do not prioritize winning elections, but fundraising and maintaining an insular world of insiders who curry favor with leadership to keep the same people in power forever, and today gave us another data point buttressing that theory. Fresh off the unanimous elections of 74-year-old Chuck Schumer and 80-year-old Dick Durbin to their leadership positions in the Senate, the Democrats further demonstrated how little they care about building a viable future for the party, as 74 year-old Gerry Connolly defeated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to lead the House Oversight Committee, by a vote of 131-84.

As David Waldman noted on Bluesky, “That’s… about the ratio by which they contributed to successful Dem candidates who were present to vote as current members of the Dem Caucus.” AOC’s PAC spent three times as much as Connolly’s in this election cycle, but she made the grave mistake of spending money on a broader strategy to win elections for the Democratic Party, while Connolly’s contributions reached 22 current caucus members to AOC’s 9.

Lesson learned, then. Don’t spend your money trying to help the entire Democratic Party win elections, because they will reward you with a poke in the eye and further demonstrate their slavish devotion to being America’s most out of touch gerontocrats. If you want a leadership position in the Democratic Party, Connolly’s victory proves that the best way to do that is to strategically donate to the right members of the Democratic Party in what is definitely not a wholly corrupt Trump-style patronage system that leadership has created around themselves for the last forty-plus years. Democratic leadership is clearly willing to die in office before they give a shred of real power to the next generation of officeholders.

Rep. Don Beyer, who is 74-years-old and helped get Connolly across the finish line told Axios that “Gerry’s a young 74, cancer notwithstanding,” which is one of the most on-brand Democratic Party lines I have ever read in my entire life. This group of delusional elites are completely out of touch with modernity, and after spending the entire year being told how no one wanted their ancient president to be in power, they have responded by appointing even more aged people to power. I wonder what will happen next!

Some will dismiss my criticism and point to Congress’s tradition of seniority, but those folks apparently didn’t learn anything from the past twelve months either, and don’t see anything wrong with the Democrats continuing to brand themselves as the party of old rich suburbanites well past the retirement age after an election where the entire country told them to piss off. Kamala Harris lost voters who made under $100,000 per year and lost a ton of ground in the youth vote, as it’s hard to find anyone not brain poisoned by MSNBC who truly believes the Democrats represent the American people anymore. They’re gerontocrats dedicated to preserving their own personal status in their elite social club at all costs, and they have demonstrated that they don’t really care about taking power if it means that their favored members will lose power. This party is truly hopeless, and after today’s vote, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon.