Youth is on the rise and, in places like Hong Kong, taking a brave, new activism to the streets. That trend seems like good news for Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, 37, and explains why Joe Biden, 77, is putting out word he’s seeking only one term. Yet, for all the “ OK Boomer ” contempt out there, I think there’s still a good chance that, in this country, power will stay in the veiny hands of the nation’s senior citizens. At least for one more cycle.


The Washington establishment is old and not anxious to leave the political stage. Indeed, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, 77, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 79, are too old even to be considered baby boomers. So is Biden. At 73, President Trump just makes the boomer cut.

Former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, 77, addresses a crowd in South Carolina. Sean Rayford/Getty

According to a new poll, Buttigieg and Biden are running neck and neck in the New Hampshire primary, setting up a generational showdown on the presidential campaign trail — if that holds. If it doesn’t, that leaves Bernie Sanders, 78, or Elizabeth Warren, 70. Biden’s age, meanwhile, is a problem, even with some fellow oldsters. According to a recent New York Times report, Buttigieg is gaining support from older white Americans, who, on paper, were considered Biden’s base. Yet, Buttigieg’s readiness for office is also questioned, because of his lack of experience in higher office.

Contrast the image of power here with the recent news that in Finland, Sanna Marin, 34, just became the world’s youngest prime minister. As Johanna Kantola, a professor of gender studies in Finland, explained to The New York Times, “She doesn’t come out of nowhere.” Actually, she came out of the city council in Tampere, located in southern Finland — a launchpad similar to Buttigieg’s gig as mayor of South Bend, Ind., population 102,000 She went on to Parliament in 2015 and was just voted in as her country’s next leader.


If youth is not an obstacle in Finland, neither, apparently, is gender. According to the Times, the other four parties in the government are led by women, three of whom are younger than 35. “I have not actually ever thought about my age or my gender,” Marin said in an interview given to a Finnish news outlet.

Yet in America — a relatively young country — young people, and young women, taking charge are often sneered at. Sweden’s Greta Thunberg has mobilized millions around the dangers of climate change and, at 16, is Time Magazine’s youngest ever person of the year. After Thunberg gave an impassioned speech at the UN Climate Change Summit earlier this year, the president of the United States mocked her on Twitter.

In a video that went viral, French President Emmanuel Macron, 41, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 47, were seen laughing over Trump’s bumbling performance during a NATO conference meeting. The “Saturday Night Live” skit that followed up on it imagined them as high school airheads, sitting at the cool kids lunch table.

This country has its youthful activists — for example, the Parkland, Fla., high school students who raised awareness about gun violence — and a rising new generation of politicians, like US Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. They are celebrated by supporters and belittled by detractors. Some of the pushback is over deep ideological differences. But some of it is more visceral: How dare these kids take up the revolution?


As a boomer, I get it. We don’t look in the mirror and see an old person. We see someone who wanted to change the world, and still does, as long as it doesn’t involve night driving. We wear jeans, do boot camp workouts, and fondly recall the days when the elderly believed we were troublemakers and rebels. Our longevity irks the young. But they can take solace in the fact that at some point nature takes away the choice of a voluntary exit.

Joan Vennochi can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @joan_vennochi.