Here’s another way to see why the Republicans swept the 2024 election: It’s the fault, only in part, of course, of the Democratic Party’s gerontocracy. Going back in history, it is hard to find a time when the leadership of a party was so advanced in years. The founding presidents retired in their mid-60s. Andrew Jackson retired at 69, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at 56, and Ulysses S. Grant retired at 54. Theodore Roosevelt died at 60, Franklin Roosevelt at 63.

Quite a contrast to President Joe Biden, who was older when he was inaugurated than Ronald Reagan was on his last Air Force One flight to California. Biden, born in 1942, was installed as the Democratic nominee in 2020 by then-James Clyburn (1940), and was pushed out of the 2024 nomination by the still very active former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1940).

Neither Clyburn nor Pelosi reportedly tried in 2022 or 2023 to dissuade Biden from running for re-election, although both must have been aware that aging was waning his powers. Not an easy thing to do: A century ago, Chief Justice William Howard Taft said his hardest duty was telling 80-year-old Justice Joseph McKenna he had to retire.

Also, almost all of the elderly senators from the 19 states considered safe Democrats did not participate in this election: Richard Blumenthal (1946), Ben Cardin (1943), Tom Carper (1947), Richard Durbin (1944), Mazie. Hirono (1947), Angus King (1944), Edward Markey (1946), Patty Murray (1950), Jack Reed (1949), Bernie Sanders (1941), Charles Schumer (1950), Jeanne Shaheen (1947), Elizabeth Warren ( 1949), Peter Welch (1947) and Ron Wyden (1949). (Cardin and Carper did not seek re-election this year.)

They all appear to be in good physical and mental condition, so far as I know, but each must be aware of the decline of many of his contemporaries. As one of the latter (born in 1944), I am aware of how many of them, as well as Biden, have political roots in the years dominated by Vietnam and Watergate.

From Vietnam, they learned the lesson that America must extract itself from seemingly unwinnable military engagements. You can see this drive in Biden, who opposed military aid to troubled South Vietnam in 1975 and who pushed for what appears to have been a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

It is also visible in the records of them and many other Democrats who opposed, with equal vehemence, the 1991 Gulf War resolution and the 2002 Iraq War resolution, although the former is now considered non-controversial.

Since Watergate, they have kept the idea of ​​impeaching a Republican president for his actions. Reagan’s failure to pursue Iran-Contra in 1987-88 did not prevent him from pursuing against President-elect Donald Trump the farce of Russian collusion first created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign (1947).

These senators have harshly and, in my view, justifiably, criticized Trump for failing to prevent the January 6 attacks on the Capitol and for putting a stop to the legitimate transfer of power. But they themselves collaborated or passively enjoyed the anticipated political benefits of undermining the legitimacy of the transfer of power from former President Barack Obama (1961) to Trump, on grounds that proved, predictably in my view, to be utterly lacking of grounds.

They were also happy to bless, or at least not say a word against, the kangaroo court charges against Trump in Manhattan and Atlanta and the document possession charge brought against him. But not against Biden for the same offense, or against Hillary Clinton for creating an email system far more penetrated by the nation’s enemies than Trump’s Mar-a-Lago or Biden’s Delaware garage. The election of Trump by a clear plurality is proof that the majority of American voters consider this democratic law to be illegitimate and unworthy of respect.

Part of the blame for the Democrats’ overall defeat this year is that the Democratic gerontocracy has forgotten some of its own successes over the years. Clearly, one reason Hispanics and younger blacks have gone to Trump is Democratic misgovernance of central cities and entire states, misgovernance that has caused even California, with its extraordinary climate and beauty, to lose population. You have to misgovern to get people to flee California.

Now forgotten by Democrats, it seems, were the crime-fighting and welfare reform initiatives of the 1990s, pioneered by Republicans like Rudy Giuliani of New York and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, but imitated and adapted by many Democrats across the country, not least by the former president. Bill Clinton (1946). Instead, the Democratic gerontocracy bowed to demands to defund the police and denounce America as an inherently racist nation. Voters had something to say about that last week.

The other reforms that the Democratic gerontocracy forgot were the changes in the presidential nomination system that started just as many of their political careers. I was in the audience at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and checked the list of the proposal for a committee to reform the rules for selecting delegates. It was the only appeal that convention managers Lyndon B. Johnson lost, while New York liberals and Michigan United Auto Workers loyalists made decisive claims.

The delegate selection process was criticized and changed, but it replaced a system that was just a shell, dominated by party leaders with no real accountability to the wider electorate. At least in versions of the new system, Democratic and Republican voters had a chance to evaluate competing candidates and make choices.

Until recently, that is. Democratic gerontocracy allowed the system to be circumvented as Obama fended off Biden and effectively installed Hillary Clinton as the 2016 nominee, and Clyburn effectively ended the process by endorsing Biden in the black-majority primary in his home state of South Carolina.

Then, after the June 27 presidential debate this year, we saw Pelosi drop out of the race on July 21, with Biden three hours later endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, Pelosi’s fellow San Franciscan whose political career has was released by the still vibrant Willie. Brown (1934). Did Obama collude with Clyburn in 2020 to install Biden or with Pelosi in 2024 to remove him?
It’s not clear, but Obama is the only president since Woodrow Wilson to stay in Washington after his term, in a mansion 1.5 miles from the White House. How much influence he wielded is a subject only Tablet’s David Samuels explored in his interview with historian David Garrow, but perhaps journalists who have written hundreds of thousands of words about the non-existent Russia collusion farce could want to stab it.

The Democratic gerontocracy is unlikely to be able to block voters from deciding the party’s presidential nomination in 2028 — the first in 20 years. However, it is unfortunate that neither party has developed an alternative to the one-person election of vice-presidential candidates. Often, over the past half century, both sides have made good choices. But it’s increasingly difficult to say about Obama’s election of Biden in 2008, Biden’s election of Harris in 2020, and Harris’ election of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 2024. Republican gerontocrat Trump, as disruptive as he may be , did better by choice. Then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence in 2016 and Ohio Senator JD Vance in 2024.

Michael Barone is a senior policy analyst for the Washington Examiner, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a longtime co-author of the Almanac of American Politics. His new book, Mind Maps of the Founders: How the Geographical Imagination Guided America’s Revolutionary Leaders, is now available.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

See Other Political commentary.

See Other comments by Michael Baron.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of the Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.