Quiz time, and the category is American gerontocracy. Here goes: how many sitting Democratic members of Congress have died in office since November 2022? The answer is a mind-boggling eight. While Republicans aren’t dropping dead at the same rate, they’re arguably clinging to power for longer than is dignified. Last year, a Texas journalist discovered Kay Granger, a high-ranking octogenarian Republican congresswoman, had stopped coming to work because she was in a senior living facility, suffering from “dementia issues”. And while he is not in a facility yet, Donald Trump’s nonsensical ramblings, including a recent weird and completely fictitious story about his uncle knowing the Unabomber, suggest he may be suffering some sort of issue with his mental acuity.
I’m not trying to be ageist here (the older I get, the more worried I become about ageism). I’m simply setting the scene. Behold: the US is ruled by out-of-touch elites who would rather die at their desks than cede power to fresh blood. Meanwhile, many Americans are frustrated with the status quo and desperate for change. You can see this in the excitement around Zohran Mamdani, the incoming Democratic mayor of New York City – unless the billionaire class can pull off an upset. You can also see it in a recent poll that found more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialism-aligned politicians such as Bernie Sanders (who, to be fair, is 84), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Mamdani to establishment figures like Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
