It won’t be official until the 2020 Democratic National Convention—brought to you (perhaps) by Cisco Telepresence—but it is very nearly so: The Democratic Party’s leadership vacuum will persist for, at the least, a few more years.

The left-of-center party of the richest and most powerful nation in the world has plenty of people in what you could call leadership positions, all of them well known and exceptionally experienced. But of the three who would broadly be considered party “leaders”—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and, now, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee (and, thus, the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer) Joe Biden—only Schumer is younger than 70. Pelosi is 80, and Biden is 77.

Their ages matter less than their histories. Each of these people has been not just in politics but a leader of the mainstream wing of the Democratic Party for decades. The nomination of Biden will ensure that, for the foreseeable future, the party will be run by people who haven’t had a new idea since 1992.

Since Barack Obama’s departure from office and Hillary Clinton’s shocking 2016 loss, Pelosi and Schumer have borne the burden of representing and leading the party at the national level. They did, to their credit, decisively win the 2018 midterms—in the House, at least (though if we’re doling out credit, the current president probably deserves the lion’s share). But Obama’s purposeful retreat from public life (besides his occasional forays into influencer culture) has exposed how ill-suited these congressional leaders are for the role of spokesperson, national strategist, or mascot.

In normal times, their jobs are to be none of those things. What makes Pelosi’s and Schumer’s grip on power so secure is, in fact, their parochialism. They don’t offer up grand visions for the future. Their jobs, at least as they understand them, are to protect the members of their caucuses, especially those in the most vulnerable seats. Protecting them does not mean making sure they are associated with a popular and ambitious political project. It mainly means keeping them well funded, secure from primary challengers, and safe from potentially dangerous votes.