The Gerontocracy Is Dead

Inside the gerontocracy's quiet war on yours truly

Pelosi announcing her retirement

Nancy Pelosi’s formal announcement today that she will not seek reelection shows the era of political dinosaurs is coming to a close.

If you think I’m overstating how much things have changed, consider the hysterical reaction in 2023 to a social media post in which I put Senator Dianne Feinstein’s staffers on blast for covering for their ailing 89 year old boss. I posted their names, roles, photos, and bloated salaries, calling for them to be “named and shamed.”

Feinstein’s staffers had devised an elaborate system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone, I knew, an open secret on the Hill that was only later reported. I found this grotesque not just for the country but for Feinstein herself, who clearly wasn’t all there. The idea that her elite-educated staffers who surely had other job prospects were “serving” their country with this charade was obscene to me.

The backlash against me was swift. In my decade or so of being a reporter, it was the first time I ever thought I might lose my job. Democratic as well as Republican congressional staffers closed ranks to condemn me, with several contacting my employer in attempts to extract a public apology or get me fired. Some were even brazen enough to make their threats public, suggesting they would cut off access to the news website at which I worked.

In another show of bipartisan unity, major media outlets across the political spectrum circled the wagons around me. Fox News called my post “deranged” while The New York Times assured readers that I had been widely condemned by both sides of the aisle. Privately, of course, it was a very different story, with lots of people thanking me for being willing to stick my neck out, including other congressional staffers and Washington types who said they couldn’t do so themselves.

The pressure campaign continued.

“I am writing to ask you to please take down your posts that has [sic] jeopardized the safety of Senator Feinstein’s junior staff members,” Peter True, then the Democratic communications director for the House Transportation committee, said in an email sent to me thereafter my then-boss, The Intercept’s then-Bureau Chief, Ryan Grim. “There’s no place for targeted harassment in politics, and normalizing asking 500k people to ‘name and shame’ the entry-level aides who are doing their best in an extraordinarily difficult situation that they are in ZERO position to control sets a dangerous precedent.”

A dangerous, precedent-setting tweet! Lol. Ridiculous as it was, the major media Wurlitzer was blasting the same message, lending it an air of seriousness.

A Kafkaesque back-and-forth email chain ensued where True kept asking my boss to act. To The Intercept’s credit, I was never formally reprimanded; though Annie Chabel, its CEO, later griped to me about having “doxxed” Feinstein’s staffers. How one doxes public servants with publicly available information is beyond me. In fairness to her, I imagine she had gotten an earful from party commissars like Peter True.

Congressional staffer Sharon Eliza Nichols tweeted at Grim that “we have the right to work with our bosses to find professional reporters with solid judgment to give stories and interviews to.” This is DC-speak for: fire him or good luck getting us to answer your calls. Heavy handed as it might seem, this practice is common in Washington and a huge part of the reason the news you get is such toothless slop. Officials threaten to withhold access and the edges of reporting get rounded off — sometimes down to nothing.

Grim heard the threat loud and clear, replying that “threatening to take away something we don’t want or need for our reporting isn’t going to work.”

Then and now, Nichols serves as director of communications for DC’s 88-year-old congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, once an impassioned civil rights leader and now the face of the gerontocracy. Holmes Norton can hardly put two words together and is a doddering shell of her former self. After having been scammed out of a few thousand dollars by conmen allegedly posing as housecleaners, the police report said she was suffering from dementia.

Then there was that bizarre period during the Joe Biden presidency when his own staffers, along with a pliant media that relied on them for scoops, covered up or ignored his obvious decline. I posted time and again, facing the wrath of the usual party commissars who smeared me, accusing me of being ageist, MAGA or both. (I would do the same about Republican gerontocrats like Sen. Mitch McConnell, but they never seemed to mind that.)

It’s a very different political environment today, barely a year-and-a-half later. After Kamala Harris lost the run against Donald Trump, and with eight members of Congress having died in office since 2022 — all Democrats — people are fed up.

Pelosi’s announcement is a high-profile one, but far from the only example. This year, the second-highest ranking Senator, Dick Durbin (80), announced that he won’t be seeking reelection, along with Senators Gary Peters (66), Jeanne Shaheen (78) and Tina Smith (66) On the House side, there’s Representatives Jerry Nadler (77), Jan Schakowsky (81), Lloyd Doggett (78) Chuy Garcia (69), Maxine Waters (87), and Danny Davis (83).

Oh, and remember the New York Times story that said I had been condemned by both sides? Its author, Annie Karn (who never gave me an opportunity to comment by the way — interesting how fungible media “standards” are!) has since shifted to the gerontocracy beat, including dispatches on the decline of none other than Eleanor Holmes Norton.

“Ms. Norton’s story is a familiar one in Congress, an institution littered with towering figures who have stayed around well past the prime of their lives,” Karn reported for the Times in June A sentence like that used to be almost unthinkable; but nowadays, it’s commonplace.

On the night of Mamdani’s victory, CNN’s Jake Tapper observed the shift. “I can’t help but notice that Governor-Elect Sherill is 53, and Governor-Elect Spanberger is 46, and Mayor-Elect Mamdani is 34,” he said.

That night, Mamdani posted a campaign video with the Bob Dylan song, The Times Are A-Changin’. They sure are. Finally!

— Edited by William M. Arkin