So old, so coastal in a geographic and metaphorical way, so detached from the young and Midwestern, so at peril. That's the national Democratic Party.
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a 46-year-old-old moderate in a tight re-election race in a Michigan district barely won by Joe Biden two years ago when Democrats had Donald Trump to save everyone from, went on "Meet the Press" on Sunday and said what everyone is thinking.
"We need a new generation," she said, perhaps on edge amid the big race. "We need new blood, period, across the Democratic Party in the House, the Senate and the White House."
Whatever could she mean?
Could it be that President Biden is 79, imminently 80, and, if running for re-election, would be asking the American people to trust his vibrancy to 86? Or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 82 and San Franciscan when Democrats have the west and northeast coasts locked down but need to connect with the battleground of the Midwest? Or that Pelosi's two key deputies--Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn--are 83 and 82, and from Maryland, solidly blue, and South Carolina, solidly red, and not from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota or Iowa, where elections are won, along with, now, Arizona and Georgia?
Could it be that U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer at 71 is what passes for a spring chicken in national Democratic leadership, but a New Yorker at that, unless you count the 57-year-old Kamala Harris, against whom the charge is that she's plenty energetic but nothing to write home about otherwise--and from California, taking us back to the opening reference to the Democrats' problem of detachment by age and geography?
One must be mindful of age discrimination and geographic stereotype. But one also must be mindful of the blue shrinkage on the national map and the importance not to go all-in for coastal octogenarians.
One also must seek self-awareness. You could say the newspaper is loaded up with old white-guy columnists. But any idea of being put to pasture tends to bother a guy who thinks he's still cutting the mustard, and who argues that at least his situation is market-driven, about paying customers and their preferences, not one of a political imperative to have a responsive, in-touch government of all the people.
But the embattled Michigan Democratic congressman is exactly right. Democrats need to get busy getting younger and more solidly blue in the upper-middle region, even to the point of risking a loss to a dangerous right-winger before their best and smartest prospect, Pete Buttigieg, can outlive any largely generational lingering aversion to his sexual orientation at least in the context of being president.
They need to figure out how to pass over Harris without losing Black voters. They need to ponder whether California Governor Gavin Newsom is something new, or geographically and philosophically old.
Through all their concerns and strategizing, they'll need to accept that the presidential game is mostly about a single talent you can't coach, but merely behold.
They didn't plan for Jimmy Carter to drawl his way out of Georgia and live in Iowa exuding post-Watergate decency the nation longed for. They didn't raise up Bill Clinton from Arkansas, of all places, to present a new kind of Democrat. They were worried his womanizing would ruin him, only to find years later that getting impeached for it would boost him in the polls. They were locked down on Hillary Clinton when Barack Obama came up from behind with hope and change, then blew past.
And one more thing: Beware of the resistance to pushing out the old pols. There is a reason the old pols got where they are.
Consider the Little Rock microcosm: Young Frank Scott blew in as a 30-something mayor promising a brand new day. The 70-plus-year-old city board members are still there. We'll soon see about him.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.