(2025-03-14) Young Democrats Anger Boils Over As Schumer Retreats On Shutdown

Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Chuck Schumer Retreats on Shutdown. And they are demanding that the party develop a bolder policy agenda that can answer the desperation of tens of millions of people who are struggling financially at a time when belief in the American dream is dimming.

Senator Chuck Schumer’s sudden decision on Thursday to support a Republican-written bill to avert a government shutdown so enraged his fellow Democrats that some were already talking about primary challenges to the 74-year-old Democratic leader from New York.

Younger Democrats are chafing at and increasingly complaining about what they see as the feebleness of the old guard’s efforts to push back against President Trump. They are second-guessing how the party’s leaders — like Mr. Schumer, who brandishes his flip phone as a point of pride — are communicating their message in the TikTok era, as Republicans dominate the digital town square.

Each younger lawmaker’s prescriptions for the party may be different. But many of them speak of an imperative both to fight and to act. (Maybe this lack of agreement is the problem, if not driving unity from hate/fear?)

Some who argue for more militancy in opposing Mr. Trump say the party’s elders tend to be less comfortable with the type of unbending political warfare that is called for.

“The generation that got us to this point does not have the skills or stomach to get us to the next point,” said Amanda Litman, who leads Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits younger and more diverse Democrats to seek local office.

That urgency is also driving younger Democrats to try to usher their elders out of the way. Some older House Democrats have already been pushed out of key congressional posts. Younger primary challengers are laying the groundwork to try to oust more senior lawmakers from office entirely, with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, among those targeted.

A Joe Biden hangover

“I would not be surprised to see, if not quite a Tea Party equivalent, a wave of challengers against old Democratic incumbents in particular,” Ms. Litman said. “It is not going to be ideological. It’s going to be style.” (I think it's both.)

A party that fatefully banked its fortunes in 2024 on an 81-year-old standard-bearer now sees reminders everywhere of the perils of relying on older leaders:

“It hangs a shadow over everything,” Tyson Brody, a Democratic strategist, said of the age issue. “And it becomes a very neat explanation for why we lost, and what needs to be fixed, that people of all ideologies can get behind. It’s a shortcut for ‘How do we rebrand Democrats?’”

Age, of course, is an imperfect way to measure all the varied Democratic disagreements.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 83, has been among his party’s most vigorous voices

*On Thursday, Mr. Schumer explained his decision to vote to keep the government open in an opinion piece in The New York Times, a version of which he read on the Senate floor.

“As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse,” Mr. Schumer wrote.*

Neither party has a monopoly on the gerontocracy: Senator Mitch McConnell, 83, the former Republican leader, recently announced he would not seek re-election

younger Democrats tend to communicate with voters in ways that are more authentically online

David Hogg, a 24-year-old recently elected as a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee who has said since the election that Mr. Biden should not have run in 2024, said Democrats needed a youth movement.

A group of newer Democratic senators have disagreed with his approach, including Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, 48, whom Mr. Schumer had pushed to deliver his party’s response to Mr. Trump’s congressional address this month.

Representative Sara Jacobs of California, 36 — who said she recently had to explain what a podcast was to a Democratic colleague she would not name — has started posting “get ready with me” videos on Instagram discussing complex policy issues while applying makeup.

‘Old versus the young’

A fourth House Democrat, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, lost her bid to lead Democrats on the Oversight Committee to Gerry Connolly of Virginia, 74, a month after he said he was battling esophageal cancer.

Of course, youth is relative in Congress: The top Democrat on Judiciary is now 62, instead of 77.

The frustrations of younger House Democrats boiled over even before Mr. Trump took office, when three of them successfully challenged older, more senior colleagues for the posts of ranking member on the powerful Judiciary, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committees.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 shocking upset of a senior House Democrat was “painted as left versus center,” he said. “It’s not that anymore. It’s change versus status quo now. It’s old versus the young.”

Mr. Ryan said the biggest factor in a lawmaker’s effectiveness was not age but length of service in Washington, with newer lawmakers more willing to take risks and able to present themselves fully and authentically.