Why was it the Democrats who got stuck with a doddering candidate?

It’s not wholly a random coincidence that it was the Democrats rather than the Republicans who got stuck with a flagrantly superannuated candidate. As the California example shows, the Party of Diversity was always more at risk of winding up with an old white person in charge too long.

Back in 2014, I pointed out that California’s experiment with diversity has led to a historic phase in which the most diverse state’s most powerful Democrats were elderly whites. I cited Alexander Burns’ 2014 article in Politico:

For decades now, Democrats and Republicans here have experienced statewide politics as an interminable waiting game, thanks to a gang of 70- and 80-somethings from the Bay Area who have dominated government for a generation.

In a state famed for its youth and vitality, home to Hollywood and the Silicon Valley gospel of economic “disruption,” boasting an ultra-diverse population that presaged the country’s larger ethnic transformation — California’s leadership looks much the same as it did in the late 20th century.

Rising stars in both parties have come and gone, but the state’s chief power players have remained the same: Jerry Brown, California’s 76-year-old governor, is running for reelection this year to a post he first won in 1974.

A post his father Pat Brown had first won election to in 1958.

The two senators — Barbara Boxer, 73, and Dianne Feinstein, 81 — have held their jobs since the early 1990s.

The most prominent member of the congressional delegation, 74-year-old House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, started out as chairwoman of the California Democratic Party when Ronald Reagan was president. The current party chairman, 81-year-old John Burton, is a former congressman who first went to Washington in the 1974 post-Watergate revolution.

Of these five Democrats:

Gov. Jerry served into 2019 when he was 80.

Senator Boxer retired in 2017 at a not unreasonable 76.

In contrast, the increasingly senile Senator Feinstein ignominiously held on to her seat until her death in 2023 at 90.

Feinstein and Biden way back in 2013

Nancy Pelosi still retains her House seat at age 84, but she gave up her position as leader of House Democrats in 2023 at age 82.

And John Burton served as chair of the California Democratic Party until 2017 when he was 84.

Why did antique white Democrats cling to power so long in California? I suspect they didn’t have much trouble convincing themselves that the new and multitudinous Diverse Democrats of California were not ready for prime time.

And were they wrong? The most celebrated of the next generation, Kamala Harris, was rocketed into the Vice Presidency, where she quickly made herself an unpopular dud. At this point, many Democrats would apparently prefer to run her very white Bay Area rival Gavin Newsom instead of her in November.

Newsom, by the way, is no longer a spring chicken either: he’ll turn 57 before the election. If he has to wait eight years to run for President when he’s 65, he might be rather like 65-year-old Mitt Romney was in 2012: still looking young on the outside, but maybe having lost something off his fastball on the inside.