Since the start of the 119th United States Congress on January 3rd, three House Democrats have died. That’s three out of 215 Democrats, or a death rate of about 1.3%. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that logging is America’s most dangerous profession, with a fatality rate of about 99 loggers per every 100,000, or about one-tenth of a percent (0.1%). The Bureau of Labor may want to redo their charts, because being a House Democrat is now, statistically, the most fatal job in America.
These deaths, while undeniably tragic, are not surprising. They are a symptom of the Democratic Party’s transition from a political force into a Death Cult, a jobs program for otherwise frail and irrelevant Americans to hold onto power until it literally kills them. Just last week, the GOP passed a disastrous budget bill with a one-vote margin. With just one more Democrat voting no, the bill would’ve been defeated. The day before the vote, there were 213 House Democrats. News of Democrat Gerry Connolly’s death broke a mere day before the budget came to the floor for a vote.
Without confronting this very transparent issue head-on, Democrats have no hope of gaining back power. And although he has already been forcibly retired, the specter of Joe Biden, his age, and Democratic complacency is an albatross around any young Democrat’s neck. Biden is the very personification of old-school, establishment-focused politics, and he must be thrown under the bus. It frankly shouldn’t be that hard, because Biden is a deeply flawed and profoundly complex individual who has been given more grace, patience, and deference than anyone of his accomplishments should deserve. His capacity to fail upwards is astonishing, and Democrats must stop treating him — and the people like him — as anything but a mistake. Joe Biden’s record is bad. His career in public service, while certainly long and dedicated, was bad. It is time to say that.
Joe Biden was never really supposed to be President. In 1988, the first time he ran, Biden’s campaign started strong, but quickly fell apart after egregious examples of plagiarism were noticed in multiple of his speeches. He had to drop out of the primary in embarrassment, with many assuming that was the end of his Presidential ambitions.1
After returning to the Senate and climbing to high positions of power during the Clinton era, Biden helped to write such bills as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which greatly increased the rate of incarceration in America and led to the advent of Mandatory Minimums. Later, while running for President in 2020 with the backdrop of George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent national protests against police brutality and racist policing, Biden would be forced to apologize for his earlier bill.2
During the Bush era, as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, he enthusiastically supported both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He helped to draft the resolution which gave Bush unprecedented powers to wage war, and preached the importance of bipartisanship and moderation, stating, of Bush, that “he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation, and I believe he will continue to do so. At least that is my fervent hope.” We all know how that went, of course, and Biden’s support for the invasion of Iraq stayed with him for his whole career, becoming another thing he would need to apologize for time and time again.
In 2008, wanting to take over the reins of Bush’s failed wars, Biden decided to try for the top-spot once again. However, literally the same day he officially announced his intention to run, Biden spoke of his opponents and described his future boss, then-Senator Barack Obama, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” He apologized and clarified his comments that day, but the damage was already done, and his campaign never really got off the ground.
In 2015, after Biden’s eldest son Beau died of cancer, he made the decision to not seek the nomination for President in 2016. No one was particularly upset about this choice — most Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton anyways — and Biden did not have a great track record. When he left office as Vice President, he was 74 years old, and ready to retire. But as we all know, he decided to come back.
After running two times, and losing for much of his initial third run, Joe Biden finally secured his first victory in the 2020 South Carolina primary. A victory which was all but guaranteed to him not due to policy or personality, but the powerful South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn and his decision to boost Biden. Once Biden won in SC, the rest of the moderates dropped out and endorsed him. Obama, who up until that point had sat the primary out, made sure to force the holdouts to support his former VP. The establishment decided Joe Biden, for all his faults and past mistakes, deserved a promotion. They may have been right, considering he won, but their grip on the party doomed his Presidency before it even began.
His time in office very quickly proved how hard it is to be a President in 2020 when you are stuck in 2008. As President, Biden’s obsession with decorum led to slow-rolled projects, heavily compromised bills, and missed opportunities, a clear sign of an old playbook ill-suited for modern challenges. His Cold War mentality fueled an ineffective, unpopular, and failed foreign policy that took up most of the later half of his Presidency. This rigid adherence to outdated principles also defined his intense support for Israel, influenced by an entrenched ideology dating back to the early days of his Senate career when he was one of the first Senator to accept money from AIPAC and build a career around his support for Israel.3 His modern day stance led to ethnic cleansing of Palestine4, which beyond being the worst crime of the 21st century, further alienated a younger, more globally aware electorate. It was under this same rigid approach that Biden’s term would face its first real drop in popularity after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the very doomed war he helped to start decades prior—a new policy decision fumbled by old habits.
And of course, the one goal he had when he initially ran for President — and the ability he supposedly held which led him to gain the support of the party — was to save our Democracy by making sure Donald Trump was never President again.
Oops.
I have no interest in re-litigating what was or wasn’t a “cover-up” in terms of Biden’s mental acuity. I personally thought he seemed too old in 2020 to run. I was of course 17 at the time, but I do think that is valuable when considering my age group's swing to the right. For us, Biden was always kind of a joke, someone who was almost exclusively made fun of. When he dropped out in 2024, and the entire party claimed that this age thing shocked them and the debate was totally a surprise, it felt a little insane. Hadn’t they seen the same clips we had been watching? What else are they lying about? These questions naturally lead to conspiracy theories and accusations of cover-ups, although from what I can tell, even Jake Tapper’s new bombshell book doesn’t really suggest an overt plan, just egotistical, power-hungry people making the type of decisions that narcissists tend to do.
To be clear, my concern isn't whether there was some grand conspiracy or overt cover-up. The point is that the Democratic Party was already engaged in a massive act of self-delusion, refusing to see what was obvious to much of the country. They didn't need to be lied to; they were already lying to themselves about his acuity, choosing to ignore the signs for the sake of power and continuity. This self-deception is the true manifestation of the Death Cult’s blindness.
I do not think that Democrats can win back my generation — or the wider country — without at least tolerating talks about how clearly diminished he was, and about how unpopular his short time in office truly was. I loathe Trump with every fiber in my being, but I understand why people I know like him: they have grown up in a country which has failed to deliver anything to them, and Trump feels different. I acknowledge the contradiction in this considering his first term’s complete failure to do, well, anything, but in conversations with conservative co-workers, friends, etc., I have found that to be their main reason for supporting the GOP.5
They see the Democrats as the last vestiges of a corrupt, and failed, government. When Trump topples our institutions, they shrug, and think “what did those systems ever do for me?” And Joe Biden is the personification of old-school establishment style politics. I mean, just listen to him talk! People don’t bring it up a lot, but just last December, in one of his final speeches as President, he referenced his long friendship with famed segregationist and racist Senator Strom Thurmond! This was not even a unique Biden Blunder; he has a long record of randomly bringing up old racists he used to be friends with.6
Is it really that surprising people didn’t want to vote for a party who steadfastly stood by him? Or for a candidate who, as Vice President, swore up and down that her boss was more than capable, and refused to break from him even during her own campaign.7
Even for all of his achievements in office, for which I admit there were many, the American people were woefully ignorant of the legislation he passed. While that is somewhat the fault of a media less interested in covering news and more interested in covering drama, the fact remains that a President who is unable to use the “bully pulpit” even a little bit will not be popular. Defenders of the former President will be quick to point out how effective his short time in office was. The President passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Equality Act, the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Social Security Fairness Act. These are all great bills which would’ve helped a lot of people, but Biden’s inability to secure a second term for the party means that Trump is all but guaranteed to reverse all of Biden’s work. And even if someone did manage to hear about a bill, and Trump doesn’t reverse it, the way it was presented by the Biden White House was anything but compelling — often couched in language about bipartisanship, compromise, and strengthening our democracy. Rather than just outline how he himself had helped American people, Biden’s pathological need to defer to decorum and a norms-based Presidency sunk him. Now, if any good does come from Biden’s term, you can bet that Trump will be able to easily take credit for it.
But this is not a problem unique to Joe Biden. For every bad vote that Biden made in the Senate, every questionable speech he delivered, every gaffe, goof, blunder or blooper, there was the Democratic Party, ready to defend him, ready to elevate him, ready to die with him. Trump’s victory in 2016 happened in spite of the Republican Establishment. Since then, he has spent a considerable amount of time and energy transforming the party in his image. Democrats must be willing to make the same kind of big swings and take the same risks. They must be willing to throw out everything that worked before to meet the moment. This is not the same GOP. So why do we have the same Democrats?
Late last year, while still reeling from their defeat, and constantly fending off questions concerning Biden’s age and acuity, House Democrats voted on their new Ranking Members of Congressional Committees. The previous top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, 77-year-old Jerry Nadler8, announced his intention to pass the torch, declining to run again for the position and endorsing the much younger Jamie Raskin, who previously served as Ranking Member of the Congressional Oversight Committee. With a vacant spot for that important post, a somewhat publicized race between young progressive firebrand AOC and the 75-year-old Virginia Congressman Gerry Connolly resulted in Connolly easily won the spot, with support from much of the Democratic Caucuses, including leadership and establishment figures like Nancy Pelosi. At the time, many younger, more progressive Democrats criticized House Democrats’ decision to coalesce around Connolly, rightly pointing out that after losing a Presidential election largely based around the idea that the party was old and out-of-touch, choosing an unknown septuagenarian over the popular and media-savvy AOC may have been a mistake.
As we already know, Connolly died last week. Oops!
The Democrats must change or die. Right now, they seem content on dying, enthusiastic about it even. Nancy Pelosi, at 85, is still running for re-election, as is Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Maxine Waters, and Rosa DeLauro. These are all congresspeople who are over 80 years old. They have served their country admirably, and many have a long list of achievements to be proud of9. But the time to step down is now. For the future of the party, and the Republic.
The 1988 race was fascinating for a whole host of reasons. Highly recommend the book What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer.
Many Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, had to own up to their involvement here. Biden was one of the prime authors, however.
For more on his complicated history with Israel: An Untold History of Joe Biden's Support for Israel - In These Times
Not interested in debating this, read the report for yourself: Amnesty concludes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
That and the desire to make it 2016 again, by any means necessary.
Like, really, there are a lot of examples of this. It’s nuts.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book goes into Harris’ steadfast loyalty a bit. She honestly comes across as fairly kind and gracious towards Biden, which while admirable, is not how a politician should be!
Nadler is my Congressman, and as of now he is still running for re-election. Surely there is a younger democrat in MANHATTAN who can take over.
Except Clyburn, that guy sucks!
Well said. I can't wait for democrats to do "surprisingly" well in the midterms (over which older voters wield disproportionate influence) and learn absolutely nothing.