More Democrats Need to Follow Pelosi’s Example and Retire

More than almost anyone else in Washington, Nancy Pelosi earned the right to consider herself indispensable. As speaker of the House — the first woman to hold that title — she was masterful at holding a fractious and heterogenous Democratic coalition together. Without her, we probably wouldn’t have the Affordable Care Act. She regularly showed excellent judgment, including on the Iraq war, which she was one of few leading Democrats to vote against. During Donald Trump’s first term, she proved skilled at getting under his skin, regularly goading him to lash out like a petulant child. Trump’s outbursts, one senior Republican complained to Politico in 2019, play “right into her hands.”

Yet Pelosi was correct to step aside from her leadership role in 2022 to make way for a new generation, even if Hakeem Jeffries, her successor, hasn’t been nearly as impressive as she was. And she’s right to retire now, setting an example for a party with a serious gerontocracy problem.

The most obvious example of that problem, of course, was Joe Biden’s catastrophic decision to run for re-election at the age of 81. But the trouble goes far deeper. Democrats used to be the party of youthful vigor: think John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Even Lyndon Johnson, no one’s idea of a fresh-faced tyro, was a mere 55 years old when he was sworn in in 1963. In recent years, the party got much older, and as it did, it became more stagnant.

There are more than 50 House Democrats who are 70 or older (including Pelosi, who is 85), compared to just over 30 Republicans. Since the beginning of the year, three Democratic members have died in office, padding Republicans’ minuscule majority. When Trump put Washington under a virtual military occupation, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s sole delegate to the House, was nowhere to be seen. As The Times has reported, Norton, 88, struggles to do her job and sometimes appears not to recognize people she’s known for years. Nevertheless, she’s insisting on running for re-election.

Senate Democrats are led by the 74-year-old Chuck Schumer, a staid institutionalist who is either unwilling or unable to speak frankly about America’s spiraling political crises. Instead, he wanly calls on Trump to respect the norms that the president spends virtually every day spitting on. Speaking of a government shutdown in September, Schumer said, “I hope Trump will come to his senses,” adding that Republicans should whisper to him, “It’s just not what a president should do.”

Schumer recently recruited Janet Mills, the 77-year-old governor of Maine, to run for Senate. If she succeeds, she’ll be the oldest freshman in the chamber’s history.

Age is not a perfect proxy for being in touch with the zeitgeist; perhaps no politician is more widely beloved by young people than the 84-year-old Bernie Sanders. But as we saw in this week’s New York mayoral election, younger candidates have distinct advantages in reaching the emerging electorate, for reasons that go far beyond identity politics.

Among the reasons for Zohran Mamdani’s triumph in New York was his intuitive understanding of new media — from quick viral videos to long-form podcasts — and equally intuitive grasp of the desperation of downwardly mobile young people clinging to their place in a city growing ever more unaffordable. According to an NBC News exit poll, he won young men — a demographic Democrats have struggled with — by 34 points.

Many aspects of Mamdani’s campaign may not be replicable outside a liberal metropolis. But one is: Democrats need charismatic young candidates who understand today’s fractured information ecosystem and know how to inspire hope in those who feel deeply disaffected. And to run candidates like that, older ones must make way.

It can be hard for longtime politicians who’ve grown used to the perks of office to give them up. In a New York magazine story this week about the Democratic gerontocracy, Rebecca Traister quotes the political consultant Jen Bluestein: “Many can’t imagine doing anything in which they won’t be heavily staffed and relevant all the time.”

Pelosi, however, has shown herself more willing than most to put aside her own ego for the greater good.

One of my favorite stories about her comes from Molly Ball’s 2020 biography, “Pelosi.” In 2005, Jack Murtha, a conservative Democrat from Pennsylvania and a former Marine, called a news conference to speak out against the Iraq war, which he’d initially supported. “Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk,” said Murtha. It was a turning point in public opinion about the war. As Murtha became a major face of antiwar opposition, Pelosi was relentlessly criticized for not being out front with him. “S.N.L.” even preformed a skit about her cowardice.

It was all part of Pelosi’s plan. “She and Murtha had orchestrated the whole thing,” Ball wrote. They “agreed that it had to look like a one-man crusade.” It’s part of the secret to her greatness: She’s obsessively attuned to public opinion about politics but surprisingly indifferent to public opinion about herself.

Now, as Pelosi surely knows, a frightened and furious Democratic Party has turned against its establishment. In a September Pew poll, 59 percent of Democratic-leaning voters disapproved of their party’s congressional leadership. There is a fierce longing for new voices. And so Pelosi is once again meeting the moment.