{"id":24202,"date":"2025-10-26T14:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/24202\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T14:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:21:11","slug":"senior-politicians-discuss-the-democratic-party-youth-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/24202\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior politicians discuss the Democratic Party youth movement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Barbara Boxer decided she was done. Entering her 70s, fresh off reelection to the U.S. Senate, she determined her fourth term would be her last<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just felt it was time,\u201d Boxer said. \u201cI wanted to do other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, she knew the Democratic bench was amply stocked with many bright prospects, including California\u2019s then-attorney general<\/a>, Kamala Harris, who succeeded Boxer in Washington<\/a> en route to her selection as Joe Biden\u2019s vice president<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Boxer retired in 2017, after serving 24 years in the Senate, she walked away from one of the most powerful and privileged positions in American politics, a job many have clung to<\/a> until their last, rattling breath.<\/p>\n

(Boxer tried to gently nudge her fellow Democrat and former Senate colleague, Dianne Feinstein, whose mental and physical decline were widely chronicled <\/a>during her final, difficult years in office. Ignoring calls to step aside, Feinstein died at age 90<\/a>, hours after voting on a procedural matter on the Senate floor.)<\/p>\n

Now an effort is underway among Democrats<\/a>, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, to force other senior lawmakers to yield, as Boxer did, to a new and younger generation of leaders. The movement is driven by the usual roiling ambition, along with revulsion at Donald Trump<\/a> and the existential angst<\/a> that visits a political party every time it loses a dispiriting election like the one Democrats faced in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi<\/a> has become the highest profile target.<\/p>\n

Last week, she drew a second significant challenger to her reelection, state Sen. Scott Wiener<\/a>, who jumped into the contest alongside tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who\u2019s been campaigning against the incumbent for the better part of a year. <\/p>\n

Pelosi \u2014 who is 85 and hasn\u2019t faced a serious election fight<\/a> in San Francisco since Ronald Reagan was in the White House \u2014 is expected to announce sometime after California\u2019s Nov. 4 special election<\/a> whether she\u2019ll run again in 2026.<\/p>\n

Boxer, who turns 85 next month, offered no counsel to Pelosi, though she pushed back against the notion that age necessarily equates with infirmity, or political obsolescence. She pointed to Ted Kennedy<\/a> and John McCain<\/a>, two of the senators she served with, who remained vital and influential in Congress well into their 70s.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Boxer said, \u201cSome people don\u2019t deserve to be there for five minutes, let alone five years … They\u2019re 50. Does that make it good? No. There are people who are old and out of ideas at 60.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is, Boxer said, \u201cno one-size-fits-all\u201d measure of when a lawmaker has passed his or her expiration date. Better, she suggested, for voters to look at what\u2019s motivating someone to stay in office. Are they driven by purpose \u2014 and still capable of doing the job \u2014 \u201cor is it a personal ego thing or psychological thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy last six years were my most prolific,\u201d said Boxer, who opposes both term limits and a mandatory retirement age for members of Congress. \u201cAnd if they\u2019d said 65 and out, I wouldn\u2019t have been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art Agnos didn\u2019t choose to leave office.<\/p>\n

He was 53 \u2014 in the blush of youth, compared to some of today\u2019s Democratic elders \u2014 when he lost his reelection bid<\/a> after a single term as San Francisco mayor. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the middle of my prime, which is why I ran for reelection,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, frankly,\u201d he added with a laugh, \u201cI still feel like I\u2019m in my prime at 87.\u201d<\/p>\n

A friend and longtime Pelosi ally, Agnos bristled at the ageism he sees aimed at lawmakers of a certain vintage. Why, he asked, is that acceptable in politics when it\u2019s deplored in just about every other field of endeavor?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat profession do we say we want bright young people who have never done this before to take over because they\u2019re bright, young and say the right things?\u201d Agnos asked rhetorically. \u201cWould you go and say, \u2018Let me find a brain surgeon who\u2019s never done this before, but he\u2019s bright and young and has great promise.\u2019 We don\u2019t do that. Do we? <\/p>\n

\u201cGive me somebody who\u2019s got experience, \u201c Agnos said, \u201cwho\u2019s been through this and knows how to handle a crisis, or a particular issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pete Wilson also left office<\/a> sooner than he would have like, but that\u2019s because term limits pushed him out after eight years as California governor.<\/a> (Before that, he served eight years in the Senate<\/a> and 11 as San Diego mayor<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that I had done a good job … and a number of people said, \u2018Gee, it\u2019s a pity that you can\u2019t run for a third term,\u2019 \u201d Wilson said as he headed to New Haven, Conn., for his college reunion, Yale class of \u201955. \u201cAs a matter of fact, I agreed with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, unlike Boxer, Wilson supports term limits, as a way to infuse fresh blood into the political system and prevent too many over-the-hill incumbents from heedlessly overstaying their time in office.<\/p>\n

Not that he\u2019s blind to the impetus to hang on. The power. The perks. And, perhaps above all, the desire to get things done.<\/p>\n

At age 92, Wilson maintains an active law practice in Century City and didn\u2019t hesitate \u2014 \u201cYes!\u201d he exclaimed \u2014 when asked if he considered himself capable of serving today as governor, even as he wends his way through a tenth decade on Earth.<\/p>\n

His wife, Gayle, could be heard chuckling in the background. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s laughing,\u201d Wilson said dryly, \u201cbecause she knows she\u2019s not in any danger of my doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barbara Boxer decided she was done. Entering her 70s, fresh off reelection to the U.S. Senate, she determined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9557,18762,18760,7,1751,4194,48,52,51,47,50,49,346,592,14049,18765,18761,18764,18763,315,72],"class_list":["post-24202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-age","tag-art-agnos","tag-barbara-boxer","tag-california","tag-democrats","tag-job","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-office","tag-people","tag-pete-wilson","tag-procedural-matter","tag-reelection","tag-senate","tag-term-limit","tag-time","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}