The death of an octogenarian House Democrat has prompted another round of grumbling this week among liberal activists about the party’s gravitational pull toward elderly leadership.

David Scott, 80, in his 12th term, died Wednesday, becoming the fourth House Democrat in the 119th Congress to pass away while in office. Three other Democrats died in 2024, and all seven deaths from the past two years were among lawmakers more than 70 years old – well past the normal retirement age for most Americans.

But the pining for “generational change” – a clarion call after many Democrats felt Joe Biden stayed in the 2024 race too long and after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at 87 in 2020, allowing President Trump to replace her on the Supreme Court – misses an important transformation well underway for House Democrats.

Their caucus is getting younger, much younger, and it will be very noticeable in January at the start of the 120th Congress.

The median age for House Democrats and Republicans is almost exactly the same, both coming in at about 57.5 years old at the start of 2025, according to a little-noticed report by the Pew Research Center. That was driven by a crop of 31 mostly younger Democrats elected to the House for the first time, with a median age of 50.2 years old, compared to 51.7 years old for freshman Republicans.

“I think this next one, we’re going to start to start to trend younger,” Rep. Eugene Vindman predicted for Democrats in the next Congress.

The Virginia Democrat, who just turned 50 and won his first race in 2024, is right. That Pew data, published 15 months ago, does not include the age differentials for three Democrats who died last year.

Those three Democrats – Gerry Connolly, 75; Raul Grijalva, 77; and Sylvester Turner, 70 – have been replaced by Democrats whose combined age is more than 75 years lower.

Moreover, 11 House Democrats over the age of 70 have announced they aren’t seeking re-election – 12 if you include Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 88-year-old nonvoting delegate representing the District of Columbia.

The leading candidates to replace Rep. Steny Hoyer, 87, are 31 and 42 years old. Two frontrunners to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 86, are 55 and 40 years old.

Internal polling in the race to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, has given the edge to Jack Schlossberg, 33, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy. Two other leading candidates are under 45.

Most Democratic lawmakers are careful to applaud the service of veteran leaders like Pelosi and Hoyer but are cheering the transformation.

“We’re losing a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge, institutional and legislative, but I think there’s got to be a balance with the energy and the new ideas and vigor, frankly, that younger members bring,” Vindman said.

Veteran Democrats are frustrated that this question continues to loom over their caucus.

“There is generational change. Hakeem Jeffries is going to be the next speaker,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, 72, first elected in 1998. “Joe Neguse is going to be in leadership. So, I think, just like on any team, you have veterans, and you have new players, and you integrate the two to get the best of all.”

Jeffries, the minority leader, who will turn 56 in August, would become the youngest Democrat to assume the speakership in more than a century. Neguse, 41, in just his fourth term, is already one of the top five leaders of the House Democrats.

But this transformation is happening too slowly for some lawmakers and, particularly, for the younger crop of liberals who are heavily online.

Scott’s death came the day after another Democrat resigned amid a corruption probe by the House Ethics Committee, leaving their caucus down two seats as Republicans try to unify ranks on a party-line effort at passing border security legislation next month.

House Speaker Mike Johnson now counts 217 Republicans in his conference, with an additional independent who caucuses with the GOP.

Democrats now have 212 members in Jeffries’ caucus, giving Johnson the wiggle room to lose two votes on his side of the aisle and still pass legislation if all lawmakers are present and voting.

Last May, Johnson suffered three defections in the first version of the massive domestic policy bill but still won on a 215-214 vote, sending it over to the Senate. At that point Jeffries was down three Democrats from the deaths of Grijalva, Turner and Connolly.

“It has real costs to have these people stay in these seats longer than they should,” Brian Derrick, CEO of the Democratic fundraising platform Oath, said Wednesday in a social media post.

“We need a fighter in every single seat,” Derrick said.

Oath released a report this year showing that 85 percent of the House Democrats over 65 years old are running for reelection. This online group has been helping raise money for the more than 100 Democrats under 50 who have challenged these retirement-age incumbents in a primary.

Democrats came within less than 10,000 votes in races in Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania of claiming a 218-217 majority in the 2024 elections. Had they won those three seats, Jeffries would have become speaker — and then had to surrender the gavel, at least for a few months, until those vacancies from death had been filled.

Republicans now have their share of age issues, but they are largely ignoring them in the manner that Democrats did a few years back.

Two of their most prominent committee chairs, Reps. Tom Cole, 76, and Virginia Foxx, 82, are running for reelection without much competition.

Rep. Hal Rogers, the dean of the House as its longest-serving member, is running for reelection to a two-year term that would end when he’s 91. He oversees a panel controlling more than $80 billion worth of annual funding for the departments of Commerce and Justice and other federal agencies.

The newest member of the House, Rep. Clay Fuller, 45, who got sworn in less than two weeks ago, has not been able to figure out which side of the aisle looks older. But, Fuller said, he thinks Republicans have been successful at appealing to younger voters through humor in the footsteps of Trump.

“They know he’s going to be having an influence on the movement going forward, but there’s other people who are going to have to pick up the torch and run with it at this point,” Fuller said.

On Sunday he posted a video poking fun at a Maryland hotel’s climate control restrictions filled with intentionally wrong facts (“Georgia is named after George Washington”), in a homage to a social media fan account of the University of Georgia’s football team.

“The only difference between the left and the right, right now, is that we can actually bring humor into the political discussion to actually show larger truths. And so everybody on our side just thought it was a great way to talk about larger truths,” he said, referring to Republicans of all ages, not just the newly elected ones.

Democrats have recruited their share of younger candidates, particularly in the key swing districts that will determine the majority in November. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, 45, is trying to win back a seat Democrats held for decades, until Rob Bresnahan, 34 at the time, defeated a 62-year-old incumbent with six terms of service.

Vindman believes these types of Democrats will point his party toward a better future and is not worried about losing so much experience from people like Pelosi and Hoyer.

“Not at all,” he said. “We have plenty of experience remaining in the House.”