The Geriatric Party

Diane Feinstein in younger days.

 The Democrats, I hear, worry about whether Diane Feinstein, ranking Democratic member of the Senate Justice Committee, still has the mental acuity to handle the approval hearings for Trump’s pending Supreme Court nominee. Feinstein is 87. 

Why do senior Democrats all seem so old? Joe Biden, 77, is showing signs of senility. Ruth Bader Ginsberg hung on to her post until a few days ago at 87. Nancy Pelosi is 80; Bernie Sanders, 79. Michael Bloomberg, the other guy who looked possible for the nomination, 78.  Jerry Nadler, the Dem Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a youthful 73, seemed to pass out at a recent press conference.

Granted, there is a prominent clique of younger leaders: Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez and her “squad,” Pete Buttigieg. But they are quite junior in terms of their elected positions and electoral career: their very prominence suggests a lack of leadership above them. A mayor of South Bend? A first-term congresswoman? A recently failed senatorial candidate? A recently failed gubernatorial candidate?

Is it because the Democratic Party is dying?

This does not sound right. After all, they control one of two houses of Congress, and the split is close in the Senate. They just elected a two-term president, and when they have lost the presidency, it has been cardiac-arrest close.

Perhaps their problem is identity politics. Jonathan Kay just wrote a piece about how that is causing problems for Canada’s NDP. The Democrats, like Canada’s leftist New Democrats, choose candidates not for leadership ability, but for “intersectionality.” Because of this, while candidates may continue to be elected at more or less all levels, few leaders emerge. You get time-servers in safe seats. Leaders need to be exceptional, people of rare talents; more or less by definition.

In the recent Democratic presidential sweeps, there were candidates holding higher elected positions than the squad and “Mayor Pete,” who were still below retirement age. Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Steve Bullock, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper. Most of them barely caused a ripple. They were simply not personally impressive; just suits. Most occupied safe seats. Andrew Cuomo: more or less inherited his job from his father. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris: in California, where Democrats usually win in runoffs against some other Democrat. And Newsom just replaced 82-year-old Jerry Brown.

The same disease of terminal mediocrity in the middle seems to have infected academics, for the same reason. When you do not hire and promote for merit, it stands to reason that the entire enterprise soon begins to suffer.

The same disease is now spreading to all fields. Is it going to destroy our civilization?

God help us.