Latest news with #XavierBecerra
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
With Harris on the sideline, top Democratic candidates for California governor woo party loyalists
California's most loyal Democrats got a good look this weekend at the wide field of gubernatorial candidates jockeying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom at the state Democratic Party's annual convention in Anaheim, with a few chiding former vice president and potential rival Kamala Harris. The Democrats running for governor in 2026 hurried among caucus meetings, floor speeches and after-parties, telling their personal stories and talking up their bona fides for tackling some of California's most entrenched problems, including housing affordability and the rising cost of living. All the hand-shaking and selfies were done in the absence of Harris, who would be the most prominent candidate in the race, and who has not said whether she'll run for governor in 2026 or seek the White House again in 2028. The most visible candidates at the convention were former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former state Controller Betty Yee, with former Rep. Katie Porter, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa taking less prominent roles. With the primary still a year away, the gubernatorial race is still in limbo. Two prominent Republicans are also in the race: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton. Read more: Villaraigosa blasts Harris and Becerra for not speaking out about Biden's decline Many Democratic activists, donors and elected officials said they were waiting to make up their minds until Harris makes up hers, because her entry into the governor's race could push some candidates off the ballot or into other statewide races. "People are kind of waiting to see what she's going to do," said Matt Savage, a delegate from San Jose, as attendees ate chia seed pudding and breakfast burritos at a breakfast hosted by Yee. "She needs to decide soon." Yee told the crowd: "Regardless of who gets in the race, we're staying in." Surrounded by canvassers who chanted his name as he talked, Cloobeck, a political newcomer, scolded Harris for not coming to the gathering of Democrats after her loss to President Trump in the November presidential election. "If she decides to get in this race, shame on her for not showing up for the most important people in the party, which is the people who are here today," Cloobeck said. "And if she doesn't have the IQ to show up, she's tone deaf once again." In a three-minute recorded video, Harris told Democrats that with Republicans working to cut taxes for the rich and dismantle efforts to fight climate change, "things are probably going to get worse before they get better." "But that is not reason to throw up our hands," Harris said. "It's a reason to roll up our sleeves." Polling shows that if Harris were to run for governor, she would have a major advantage: A November survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that about 72% of Democrats would be very likely or somewhat likely to consider voting for her. Read more: Who is running for California governor in 2026? Meet the candidates Cloobeck said his campaign had spent "probably a couple hundred thousand dollars" on the canvassers, who wore royal blue shirts emblazoned with his name and distributed glossy invitations to a comedy night with "Roastmaster General" comedian Jeff Ross. One canvasser said he was paid $25 an hour and found the job on Craigslist. At the party's LGBTQ caucus meeting, Atkins, the only well-known gay candidate in the race, told the cheering crowd that she dreamed of making California work for others the way it had worked for her. Atkins, 62, was raised in southwest Virginia by a coal miner and a garment worker and moved to San Diego in her 20s. "California has given me every opportunity," Atkins said. "I want that promise to be true for everyone." At the Latino caucus, Villaraigosa said that the Democratic Party needs to focus on the affordability crisis facing working-class Californians, many of whom are Latinos, by tackling high gas prices, home prices, utility costs and other day-to-day cost of living challenges. Villaraigosa, 72, has been out of elected office for more than a decade. He last ran for for governor in 2018, placing a distant third in the primary behind Newsom and Republican businessman John Cox. He noted that he also lost the 2001 mayor's race before winning in 2005. "Sometimes it takes two times," Villaraigosa said to the caucus. "We're ready, we're not invisible. We're going to stand up for working people and our communities." Thurmond told the crowd during the party's general session on Friday afternoon that education is "the centerpiece of our democracy." It brought his grandparents to the U.S. and saved his life after his mother died when he was 6, he said. "We must continue to be the resistance against Donald Trump's misguided policies," he said. "We will ensure that every student in this state has access to good quality education. And while we're at it, we will not allow for ICE to be on any of our school campuses.' Read more: Trump threatens to strip federal funds to California over transgender youth athletes Four candidates made brief appearances before the party's powerful organized labor caucus, trying to make the case that they would be the best choice for the state's more than 2.4 million union members. In a 45-second speech, Cloobeck told the union members that he used union labor in his hotel development projects and promised that if he were elected, he would support workers getting "full pay, full wages" if they went on strike. Yee said she'd "protect and advance your precious pension funds." She took a passing shot at Newsom's now-infamous dinner at the French Laundry in Napa Valley during the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsom attended a lobbyist's birthday party at the upscale restaurant after he had pleaded with Californians to stay home and avoid multifamily gatherings. "I'm not about gimmicks," Yee said. "I'm the least flashy person. Hell, I've not even stepped foot in the French Laundry — but I can tell you, I grew up in a Chinese laundry." Kounalakis told the party's labor meeting that her father immigrated to the U.S. at age 14 and worked his way through college as a waiter at the governor's mansion before building a successful development company in Sacramento. Her vision of California's future, she said, is massive investment in water infrastructure, clean energy infrastructure, roadway infrastructure and housing: 'We're going to build the future of this state, and we're going to do it with union labor." At the party's senior caucus meeting, Becerra told Democrats that he was raised by working-class, immigrant parents who bought their own home in Sacramento, then questioned whether a couple without college degrees could do the same today. He touted his experience fighting GOP efforts to cut Social Security Disability Insurance as a member of Congress and work lowering drug costs as President Biden's health chief. "We're going to fight for you," Becerra said. At the women's caucus, Porter, who left Congress in January after losing a run for Senate, said she was concerned that Trump's budget cuts and policies will have a disproportionate impact on mothers, children and the LGBTQ+ community. "That s— is not happening on my watch," Porter said. Ann McKeown, 66, president of the Acton-Agua Dulce Democratic Club in Los Angeles County's High Desert, said she had wanted Harris to be the president "so badly," but Porter is her top choice for governor. "Kamala is nicer than Katie Porter," McKeown said, "and we don't need nice right now." Delegate Jane Baulch-Enloe of Contra Costa County and her daughter spread the contents of their bag of Democratic Party swag across a table, taking stock of the flyers and campaign memorabilia, including a Becerra for Governor button, a clear plastic coin purse from Yee and a blue Thurmond bookmark that read, "Ban fascism, not books." Baulch-Enloe, who teaches middle school English and history, said she originally thought she'd support Thurmond because he understands education. "But now that there's so many people in the race, I'm not sure," Baulch-Enloe said. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ex-Health Sec Calls ‘BS' on White House MAHA Report Excuses
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s predecessor has called him out for the bungled Make America Healthy Again report. The MAHA report, which HHS released to much fanfare this week, was riddled with errors and cited nonexistent studies to back its claims. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the mistakes as 'formatting issues.' 'I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report,' Leavitt said Friday. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who served under the Biden administration, was having none of it. 'This 'formatting' BS doesn't sell,' Becerra told Mother Jones. 'You're supposed to do that checking before you publish, at least if you're a rigorous publisher.' 'We caught this one,' Becerra said of the faulty report. 'Which ones didn't we catch?' Kennedy's MAHA report included a slew of errors in its citations, and a portion of the more than 500 cited sources do not even exist, NOTUS found. Becerra said Friday that he tried to hold back on criticizing the Trump administration until it got 'a chance to settle in.' But at this point, 'They got their chance.' 'I'm going to start talking,' said Becerra, who recently announced a run for California governor. 'We have an obligation to protect the health of the American people, and to be silent is to acquiesce. There are too many people acquiescing to what's going on right now.' Becerra further denounced Kennedy's longstanding refusal to promote the measles vaccine and his recent announcement that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for children or pregnant women. 'Two young children died in Texas this year from measles,' Becerra said. 'They should be alive today.' Both NOTUS and The New York Times reported that at least nine citations found in the MAHA report so far were fake, and that it largely misrepresented the findings of other existing studies. Several experts have connected the errors to the use of artificial intelligence. By the end of the day Thursday, the White House had updated the report and removed seven fake citations. In the last few months, at least 20,000 people have left HHS, with half getting laid off and the other half taking buyouts. Many of the expelled staff were dedicated to monitoring pregnancy outcomes and preventing health crises like opioid addictions, gun injuries, and intimate partner violence. Becerra slammed HHS for trying to 'muzzle' researchers and the 'folks that are underneath' Kennedy who are 'allowing this to happen.' 'As dangerous as the guy in the Oval Office is,' Becerra added, 'I think the big danger is those who enable him to do this, because that's how you end up with tyranny and dictatorship—when others follow and let it happen.'
Fox News
4 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Lone Biden official breaks silence on cognitive decline as cabinet stays mute
Only a single member of former President Joe Biden's cabinet responded to a massive outreach effort from Fox News Digital asking if the more than two dozen cabinet-level officials stood by previous remarks that Biden was mentally and physically fit to serve as president. And even that lone statement, from former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, skirted addressing head-on whether he had witnessed instances of Biden's now widely acknowledged cognitive issues. "I met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS," Becerra said. "It's clear the President was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic. And we delivered." Roughly four months after Biden's Oval Office exit, a handful of political books detailing the 2024 campaign and Biden administration have hit store shelves and are painting a bleak picture of Biden's health. Adding fuel to the fire, audio recordings of Biden's October 2023 interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau died of cancer. Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle's role in covering it up. Becerra's statement stood in marked contrast to the silence emanating from the rest of his former colleagues. Fox News Digital reached out to 26 Biden administration officials with cabinet-level positions — from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Chief of Staff Jeff Zients — asking whether they still believe that Biden was fit to serve as president, or whether they've had a change of heart amid the cascade of damning evidence and anecdotes portraying a mental decline. If a majority of those cabinet-level officials believed Biden to be unable to perform his duties, they could have attempted to remove him from office through the 25th Amendment. Instead, those officials repeatedly said at the time that Biden was competent and in command. That talking point hasn't abated among the former officials. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in on Biden's presidential health earlier in May during a town hall with veterans and military families in Iowa. When asked during the event whether Biden experienced cognitive decline, Buttigieg told reporters that "every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it." "The time I worked closest with him in his final year was around the Baltimore bridge collapse," he added. "And what I can tell you is that the same president the world saw addressing that was the president I was in the Oval with, insisting that we do a good job, do right by Baltimore. And that was characteristic of my experience with him." Buttigieg did not elaborate when responding to a separate inquiry from Fox News Digital. Biden's office recently revealed that the former president was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had metastasized and was undergoing treatment. The diagnosis sparked an outpouring of well-wishes from political leaders across both aisles, and shock from some doctors who said such cancer should have been caught before it advanced and metastasized. None of Biden's annual physical health reports as president tested for prostate cancer, Fox News Digital previously reported, with a representative confirming Biden's last-known prostate blood test was conducted in 2014. The 2024 presidential debate between Biden and President Donald Trump opened the floodgates of criticism surrounding Biden's mental acuity after the 46th president's poor performance, which included Biden losing his train of thought and stumbling over his words. Concerns over Biden's mental acuity had simmered for years among conservatives, but it wasn't until the June 2024 presidential debate that traditional Democrat allies and media outlets began questioning Biden's health and openly called for him to drop out of the race. Despite mounting concerns, members of Biden's cabinet vowed he was of sound health and mind. Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement in September 2024, for example, that he has "full confidence in President Biden's ability to carry out his job." "As I've said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting," he said. "In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions." Conservatives in 2024 floated calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Biden, which would have required Harris and the majority of the cabinet to declare him unfit to lead. Harris and the cabinet did not take such steps during the administration, and instead defended his health. In July 2024, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called Biden "one of the most accomplished presidents in American history and continues to effectively lead our country with a steady hand." "As someone who is actually in the room when the President meets with the cabinet and foreign leaders, I can tell you he is an incisive and extraordinary leader," Raimondo said at the time. Since Biden's exit from the White House in January, political journalists have published a handful of books arguing that, behind the scenes of the administration, staffers were concerned about Biden's health. "Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election," according to a new book written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." "Given Biden's age, (his physician Kevin O'Connor) also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery," the authors wrote. While another newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," investigated Biden's mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a "shell of himself." "All of them," Parnes told Vanity Fair in April of who in Biden's inner circle was most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office. "It's pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off," Parnes said. "He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours." "We'd been watching Biden's decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020," Allen added of Biden's mental decline. "And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought." Earlier in May, hours of Biden's October 2023 interview with Hur's office were released to the public and underscored the president's apparent mental decline from his days as a senator from Delaware. Hur led an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents after Biden's departure as vice president during the Obama administration. The then-special counsel announced in February 2024 he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Hur came under fire from Biden, Harris and other Democrats in 2024 for suggesting in the report that Biden could not remember when his son Beau died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. In February 2024, following the release of the report, Biden shot back at Hur: "There's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even a reference that I don't remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?" Harris called the report "gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate." The recently released audio recordings show it was Biden who brought up his son and could not remember when Beau died. "So, during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?" Hur asked Biden in the interview. "Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?" Biden responded. "Yes, sir," Hur said. "Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president," Biden continued. "I'm not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she (Hillary Clinton) had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn't, at this point — even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th." Others present during the interview responded that Beau Biden died in 2015. Trump has called an alleged cover-up of Biden's health a "scandal" and has argued that White House staffers were controlling the administration through the use of an autopen. Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden's signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature. "Whoever had control of the 'AUTOPEN' is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment," Trump posted to Truth Social in May.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
The Joe Biden scandal set off a Democratic civil war — that will tear the party to pieces
The long national nightmare that was Joe Biden's presidency is over. But the long political nightmare induced by Biden's final act in Washington continues to divide Democrats. 'Original Sin,' Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new tome about the former president's ill-fated re-election campaign, has opened yet another fissure in a party full of them. The book sheds further light on the conspiracy to pull the wool over voters' eyes and saddle them with a half-functioning executive. In the process, it indicts every major administration official who served under Biden by revealing that the president's decline has been in progress since his 2020 campaign. And that while they all but compared him to Superman, outsiders recognized his senility on sight. Some Democrats are rightly outraged by their peers' dishonesty — and ready to use it to their political advantage. Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor and current California gubernatorial candidate, has already turned his fire on two Biden alums: Xavier Becerra, who has announced his own campaign for the governor's mansion, and Kamala Harris, who is choosing between that race and a third presidential bid. 'What did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn't either of them speak out?' Villaraigosa railed in a fiery statement last week. Saying the two had 'betrayed' their party, Villaraigosa argued their 'cover-up' of Biden's condition led 'directly' to Trump's election victory — and called on Harris and Becerra to 'hold themselves accountable and apologize to the American people.' Similarly, Dean Phillips, the former Minnesota congressman who mounted a much-maligned primary bid against Biden, has argued the Democrats can only redeem themselves by making 'everyone that was aware of Biden's condition . . . come clean.' 'No more evasions. No more insistence that he was sharp when you met him,' Phillips wrote at The Free Press. 'The whole truth will come out, and they would be wise to get ahead of it.' Then he twisted the knife. 'If a relatively little-known congressman like me knew that Biden was incapable of leading the country in a second term, what does that say about the complicity of the real party bosses whose names we all know?' Phillips asked. The two Dems' rhetoric makes for an engrossing preview of a stark new dividing line within their party — one that's sure to play a role in not just upcoming governors' and Senate elections, but the 2028 contest to succeed Trump. Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters It's between those who would paper over the Biden scandal or even deny it entirely, and those who believe it should politically disqualify all those complicit in it. And it won't fade anytime soon: Early surveys of the 2028 Democratic primary field find Harris consistently on top, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg finishing in the top three. Both will be plagued by the lies they told in service of their old boss should they throw their hats in the ring. Harris famously smeared Special Counsel Robert Hur for informing the American people that their commander-in-chief had wondered aloud if he was 'still' vice president in 2009 — the very year he assumed the office for the first time. And Buttigieg vouched for the president's brain function by claiming he'd had to call in an Amtrak 'expert' to handle Biden's 'detailed' questions about trains. They'll have a lot to answer for on the primary debate stage when their rivals ask why they misled the American people — not to mention what else they might be willing to lie about. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, too, might face such questions should Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez choose to challenge him come 2028. The Democrats' internal reckoning over the Biden coverup is bound to be especially painful because it largely overlaps with existing cracks between the establishment and activist wings of the party. Progressives in favor of adopting an even more unabashedly leftist agenda have long accused party elites of selling out their voters and their values in pursuit of power. In turn, those elites have charged progressives with prioritizing ideological purity and factional goals over winning elections. For the former group, the coverup reinforces the first narrative. For the latter, continued recriminations against Biden and his team reinforce the second. It's said that time heals all wounds — but progressives in particular have an interest in keeping this one open and bleeding. Cold, hard proof that party insiders were lying about the condition of the man with the nuclear codes is a visceral demonstration of the rot that leftists have long described. It's the kind of disgrace that can destroy presidential campaigns — and compel the sweeping, party-wide transformation they seek. Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
How the Ravages of Age Are Ravaging the Democratic Party
Now is the time for the Democratic Party to get serious about its oldsters problem. The furor over President Joe Biden's cognitive issues is not going away any time soon. On Tuesday it bubbled up in the California governor's race, when one candidate, Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, accused two other Democrats eyeing the governor's mansion — former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra — of participating in a 'cover-up' of Mr. Biden's fading fitness in office. 'Voters deserve to know the truth. What did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn't either of them speak out?' Mr. Villaraigosa fumed in a statement, spurred by tidbits from the new book 'Original Sin,' which chronicles the efforts of Mr. Biden's inner circle to conceal his mental and physical decline. Mr. Villaraigosa called on Ms. Harris and Mr. Becerra to 'apologize to the American people.' Is Mr. Villaraigosa, who is 72 himself, exploiting the orgy of Biden recriminations for political ends? Probably. Does he have a point? Absolutely. Team Biden deserves much abuse for its sins. That said, last week also reminded us that the Democrats' flirtation with gerontocracy is not confined to a single office or branch of government when, on Wednesday, the House was shaken by the death of Representative Gerry Connolly. Mr. Connolly, a 75-year-old lawmaker from Northern Virginia, had been in poor health. On Nov. 7 last year, two days after his re-election to a ninth term, he announced he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would undergo treatments. Even so, in December he won a high-profile contest against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. The race was seen as a struggle over the future of the seniority system that has long shaped how Democrats pick committee leaders. Despite concerns about his health, seniority carried the day. On April 28, he announced that his cancer had returned and that he would not seek re-election next year. Less than a month later, he was gone. Washington being Washington, his death was greeted with sadness but also with chatter about the political repercussions in the narrowly divided House. It was not lost on Beltway pundits that if Democrats had had one more 'no' vote in their deliberations over President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' Republicans would have had to sway another of their holdouts to ram it through the House last week. Mr. Connolly was the third House Democrat to die in recent months, after the deaths in March of Raúl Grijalva and Sylvester Turner, both septuagenarians. All three seats are vacant for now. Axios pointed out that eight members of Congress have died in office since November 2022. All were Democrats, with an average age of 75. Cold political musings about the failing health or cognitive troubles of elected officials can feel heartless, if not aggressively ageist. And there is a difference, of course, between lawmakers who succumb to deadly illnesses and those who think they can simply defy the ravages of age. But time takes its toll on everyone, and even among Washington's hard-charging, well-maintained masters of the universe, precious few weather it as well as Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders. Neither major party is immune to the practical challenges of aging leaders. (For Republican drama, see last year's long, mysterious absence of the now-retired representative Kay Granger.) But the problem has been extra-sticky for Democrats for years, in part because Ms. Pelosi and her equally senior lieutenants, Steny Hoyer, now 85, and Jim Clyburn, now 84, sat atop the caucus for so long that younger members started leaving in frustration — or plotted to oust them. It took a coup threat or two to get Ms. Pelosi et al. to relinquish their grip, and tensions between younger members and the old guard remain. The Ocasio-Cortez and Connolly struggle was just one of the generational matches to kick off this Congress, and the party has yet to find a good way to balance experience with energy. Among other challenges, Democrats do not put term limits on committee leaders, unlike Republicans, and plum assignments are doled out based heavily on length of service. Concerns about America's aging political leadership are longstanding. But the Biden debacle has given them new urgency — especially as the Democrats struggle to win back younger voters. If talking about age feels too icky, think of it more in terms of revivifying the party's ideas and approach to meet the moment. Among Democrats at all levels, there is much debate over rebranding and rebuilding and reconnecting with voters who feel alienated from the current system. Figuring out how to elevate new voices needs to be a part of the process. Last month, David Hogg, the 25-year-old recently elected as a vice chairman of the national party, announced that his group Leaders We Deserve would spend $20 million to get more young blood into the party — and to support primary challengers against the party's older incumbents — with an eye toward dismantling a 'culture of seniority politics.' The Democratic establishment is unamused, and it feels unlikely to be pure coincidence that the Democratic National Committee will vote next month on whether to redo the election of Mr. Hogg and his fellow vice chair, ostensibly because of questions about whether their original election adhered to the committee's complex gender requirements. Whatever happens with Mr. Hogg, young Democrats are increasingly in the mood to tussle. If the Democratic establishment doesn't want to face a generational attack from within its ranks, it needs to convey that it understands there is a problem. Obviously, there is no easy fix. But that makes it all the more vital to tackle this issue now. If the sorry state in which the party currently finds itself isn't enough to jolt it into action, it is hard to imagine what it would take.
