Generational shift as party grandees scarred by Joe Biden’s 2024 loss are ousted by progressives
Out with the Old: Democrats Replace Stalwarts with Young Blood
By Benedict Smith
One by one, stalwarts of the Democrats ’ old guard are falling.
Members of Congress who have won elections time and again, collectively spending almost a century in office, are suddenly being ousted by challengers less than half their age.
Six of the seven House members to have lost a primary this year have been forced out by younger rivals, some of them young enough to be their children or grandchildren.
A generational shift is under way.
“It’s really a sea change in American politics,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster.
Some of it appears to be the result of the widening gulf between the generations on a host of policy issues, from economics to the US’s relationship with Israel .
But Democrats have also spoken of a collective trauma in the party following Joe Biden’s repeated gaffes and the collapse of his campaign in 2024, aged 81. That, and the Republican victories in the 2024 election, have left a mark.
The transformation in the party has taken place over a matter of months, beginning in Texas on May 26, when Julie Johnson, 60, lost to Colin Allred, 43, and Al Green, 78, lost to Christian Menefee, 40 years his junior.
Mr Green is one of the oldest members of Congress – although more than a decade younger than the very oldest.
In March 2025, he was ejected from the House chamber during 80-year-old Donald Trump’s joint address for heckling and waving his cane in the air: possibly not the image of youthful vitality that his voters back home had been looking for.
Then in June, Adriano Espaillat, aged 71, lost his New York primary to 32-year-old Darializa Avila Chevalier, who had been backed by another young, dynamic socialist – Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor.
Ms Avila Chevalier backed abolishing ICE and cutting off US military aid for Israel – many of the hallmarks of the younger candidates who surged to prominence this year.
“Israel is probably the biggest dividing line within the Democratic Party right now, and it is one that divides very neatly along age lines,” said Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver.
“Older Democrats tend to be much more sympathetic to Israel, and younger Democrats, particularly those who came of age while [Benjamin] Netanyahu has been a prominent national figure, have a very negative view toward Israel.”
It was the same story in Colorado , when Melat Kiros, 29, ousted Diana DeGette, 68, who had spent longer in Congress than her opponent had spent on earth.
Both hailed from the progressive wing of the party, but it was Ms Kiros who had questioned Israel’s right to exist, called Oct 7 inevitable, and ultimately won to oust the 15-term incumbent.
The week before her victory, she held a rally with Hasan Piker, an anti-Israel streamer , with the tagline: “Young, bold & unbought.” The unsubtle implication was that Ms DeGette was old, timid and in the pocket of corporations.
On Aug 4, Donovan McKinney, the 34-year-old Left-wing ally of Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed , beat Shri Thanedar, a 71-year-old grandfather of three who represents Michigan’s 13th district.
Abdul El-Sayed stands behind a podium that reads ‘Michigan is not for sale’ on the Michigan primary election night Credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
The latest upheaval came on Tuesday, when John Larson, 78, a congressman since 1999 and a fixture in Connecticut politics since 1983, lost to Luke Bronin, a 47-year-old former mayor.
Age was sharpened into a potent attack line against Mr Larson, who suffered a partial seizure during a speech on the House floor in February last year.
Mr Bronin, who supports abolishing ICE and supports a “push” for universal healthcare, claimed his opponent had been in office “for about 50 years” and had “got stuck in a routine”.
“This is not a moment that we can keep doing the same thing,” he said on Monday, arguing that his party needed to bring “a whole new energy to this fight” with Donald Trump , the US president.
“There’s a laundry list of issues that would make people, and particularly the Democratic Party right now, look inward and make some real changes,” said Tamia Booker, a Democrat strategist.
“Israel is one. Climate is another. Healthcare is another. The economy is another,” she said. Older candidates are not flawed per se, she said, citing Bernie Sanders, the 84-year-old godfather of the progressive movement , as an example.
Bernie Sanders may be 84, but he is viewed as a godfather of the progressive movement - Photo Brendan Smialowsky/AFP
The figure of Joe Biden still looms large over the party as well, but for different reasons.
Many believe there is a backlash against the president’s disastrous attempt to seek a second term, which culminated in a debate in which he was frequently incoherent and tailed off in the middle of sentences.
In the three weeks before he ended his campaign, he referred to Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, called Kamala Harris “vice-president Trump” , and declared himself “the first black woman to serve with a black president”.
Then there is the fact that Mr Biden became the presidential candidate because he was viewed as the figure best placed to beat Mr Trump in 2020.
The collapse of his campaign and Kamala Harris’s subsequent defeat to Mr Trump, in addition to Democrats losing the Senate and failing to flip the House, shattered a contract between the party’s representatives and its grassroots, Mr Roth Smith believes.
“The proposition that was made to primary voters was: we need to keep around the people with experience, the people who might be moderating or modulating their positions because we need to know how to beat Republicans,” he said.
Losing elections changes that mindset: “Maybe we don’t need to defer to decades of experience in politics or government in order to know how to win and wield power. Maybe we do just need to try something new.”
Ironically, the figures who have been ousted by the Democrats’ young Turks are those who have proved, sometimes over the course of three decades, that they can win elections.
The US’s oldest political party is starting to look a lot younger. But that doesn’t mean they look like winners. – The Telegraph
