Late-night comedians love to joke about Congress as a retirement home. Last week, it looked like no joke.
Two elderly Democratic House members — 71-year-old Rep. Debbie Dingell (Mich.) and 80-year-old Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) — made TV news after they were caught on camera dozing off during a long hearing. For the record, 44-year-old Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah,) also nodded off.
Such talk about the age of politicians is being boosted by President Trump’s plan for a brassy celebration of his upcoming 79th birthday. He is coordinating his party with a huge military parade in the nation’s capital. Trump is now older than former President Biden was at this point in his presidency.
Meanwhile, the 82-year-old Biden’s age is currently at the forefront of charges that his staff downplayed his failing mental acuity during the 2024 campaign, allowing Trump to win a second term. And just yesterday the former president revealed that he is suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
A new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” reports that White House aides put more effort into hiding Biden’s age than into stopping Trump from returning to power with a far-right agenda.
Attention to the age of Washington’s top power players is also at the center of a push by 25-year-old David Hogg, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. He is calling for younger, more energetic Democrats to take seats in Congress and better challenge the Trump agenda.
Hogg has yet to name the older Democrats he sees as ripe for being replaced. He denies trying to oust a trio of well-known Democratic House members, Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), both 85, and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), 84.
Hogg supports his call for more youth in the Democrats’ congressional caucus by noting that the party has a low approval rating with voters across polls (around 27 percent) and is “losing ground in every demographic except the elderly and people with PhDs.”
Hogg’s focus on aging politicians fits with last year’s call by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) for mandatory cognitive tests for politicians over age 75. As she ran against Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries, Haley wrote on FoxNews.com, “Failing a mental competency test would not result in removal. It is about transparency. Voters deserve to know whether those who are making major decisions about war and peace, taxation and budgets, schools and safety, can pass a very basic mental exam.”
It was a clever way to call attention to Trump’s age. But Republican voters turned a blind eye to the issue, even as Trump famously had moments of confused rambling — which he refers to as “the weave.”
Trump also once stood on stage and swayed to music for 30 straight minutes while attracting puzzled looks from his supporters and a rush of online ridicule. When is a book going to be published about his cognitive decline?
Attention to the advanced age of so many Washington powerbrokers comes as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a 55-year-old stroke victim, is facing on-the-record reports by former aides that he is showing behavior associated with being cognitively impaired in dealing with his staff. News stories also report some erratic public outbursts by Fetterman.
The Democrats’ leader in the Senate, 74-year-old Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been in Congress since 1981, also faced attention to his age when he was criticized for not aggressively opposing Trump’s plan for a budget deal to keep the government open.
The number-two Democrat in the Senate, 80-year-old Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), is retiring next year after 40 years in Congress. Former Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now 83, stepped down from Senate leadership last year.
But age is a non-issue for some Democrats.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is 83, is drawing massive crowds for fierce speeches opposing Trump. He is appearing on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with a young, social media-savvy and high-energy 35-year-old, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Two other Democrats generating excitement with opposition to Trump are elderly. Rep. Shri Thanedar (Mich.) is 70 and introduced the first articles of impeachment against Trump in his second term. Rep. Al Green (Texas), who was physically removed from the House chamber after disrupting Trump’s address to Congress in a cane-shaking act of defiance, is 79.
But attention to the advanced age of so many Democrats in Congress became a point of urgent political concern after the recent deaths of two sitting House members. Both 77-year-old Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and 70-year-old Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) died in March.
The absence of those Democratic votes is boosting the GOP’s slim majority in the House. That gives Speaker Mike Johnson (R- La.), a better chance to wrangle enough votes to pass a bill to please the president.
Part of the reason young Democrats like Hogg are so fired up about the age issue is that their party needs to attract young voters to win congressional and presidential elections.
Yes, both parties have their share of older people. And elderly people in both parties dominate as voters and as audiences for newspapers and cable news.
But the unfair reality is that the age issue is hurting Democrats more than it is hurting Republicans at the ballot box. Young people in the Democrats’ base have been slow to turn out. Democrats would be wise to listen to Hogg instead of chastising him for ageism.
Turn up those hearing aids. The message needs to be heard.
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”