Buried by Bird Bones: How Democrats Lost the Plot

Gerontocracy is just the sagging face of a party allergic to urgency, vision, and generational power-sharing.

The last 8 members of Congress to die in office have been Democrats.

Maybe it’s just a grim coincidence — or maybe it’s the sign of a party rotting from within, clinging to seniority as its guiding principle, a death drive masquerading as order that keeps the status quo firmly in place.

To be clear, the Democratic Party’s leadership crisis is a result of choice, not just coincidence. Too many legislators are closer to retirement than revolution. Congressional Democrats' obsession with seniority makes one thing clear: gerontocracy isn’t the root problem — it’s just the sagging face of a party held together by little more than inertia and committee assignments. There’s no animating vision, no core belief system — just a dusty hierarchy allergic to new ideas and new people. Because even when Trump is busy reenacting dystopian thrillers — kidnapping civilians, jacking up prices, and threatening (starting?) war with Iran — Democrats aren’t seen as a better alternative.

They’ve failed to capture momentum — seen as out of touch, lifeless, even complicit.

And that should be so embarrassing.

But who can blame voters? No one wants to hang out at the senior home. Not when you can be doing literally anything else, anywhere else.

Without collective values that guide Democratic culture, progressives are dying a thousand deaths, buried under the bird bones that barely hold up the octogenarians serving in Congress.

This isn’t an abstract critique. Progressive ambitions have been suffocated by calcified leadership structures. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost a bid for a subcommittee leadership role to longtime Rep. Gerry Connolly, it was a clear message: we reward loyalty to seniority, not bold ideas. When David Hogg left his role as DNC Vice Chair for Youth Engagement after being blocked from supporting a strategy of primarying incumbents, he joined a growing number of younger leaders walking away. Two prominent union leaders have also resigned from DNC leadership posts in recent months, citing frustration and dysfunction.

We can see this discontent further reflected in polling. The Spring 2025 Harvard Youth Poll shows that views of the Democratic Party have collapsed from 48 percent approval in 2020 to 23 percent in 2025.

And the unifying theme, Harvard’s analysts find, is a growing distrust of government — and political parties in general — even as the general ideology and values that young Americans hold seem to be moderating a little.

Despite a youth-led political moment — from climate strikes to campus protests — the party barely moves. There is no cultural force propelling the party forward. No momentum, no mandate, just vibes and vibes alone. Without a shared language or story, disillusionment grows. Contrast that with movement spaces: even messy, they offer meaning. Look at The Sunrise Movement, March for Our Lives, Black Lives Matter, or your local DSA chapter. And to be clear, being messy is not disqualifying for this generation. If anything, it’s embraced! Millennials and Gen Z grew up in collapse: school shootings, financial crises, climate disasters, rent hikes. These voters are fluent in chaos and their politics aptly reflect as much.

When younger progressives are demanding urgency, clarity of purpose, and courage, senior Democratic leadership is operating from a fundamentally incompatible operating system that values seniority, bipartisanship, and institutional experience. Prestigious committee assignments no longer signal power to Gen Z and chronically online millennials. Who cares about long tenures, polished credentials, and seniority rules when more than 4 in 10 young Americans under 30 say they're "barely getting by" financially?

Younger voters are not necessarily becoming more conservative or embracing MAGA ideologies. Their values remain, but their faith in the Democratic party does not. The Democratic Party’s gerontocratic leadership and lack of ideological clarity have left it culturally dead, electorally unappealing, and structurally incapable of countering right-wing extremism—especially in the eyes of the younger generation it most desperately needs. Rather than getting caught trying and acting with an urgency that befits the moment, Democratic leadership spent $20 million to navel-gaze in Half Moon Bay about how they lost disaffected young male voters.

This isn’t a call for a rebrand. The last thing the Democratic Party needs is another consultant pitching message tests. It doesn’t need a new slogan — it needs a spine.

When the parade of elders finally shuffles out of the Capitol for their early bird specials, may no one applaud — let there be a reckoning. Because this isn’t a messaging issue. It’s a soul issue.

Democrats need clear values, not vague slogans. Power-sharing, not gatekeeping. Intergenerational solidarity, not generational condescension.

Let the elders retire with dignity. And let a new generation — born of collapse but fluent in clarity — build something worth believing in.