Recently, I was asked by an older ex-colleague, “Why do you support Bernie? What I mean is—well—why do young people support Bernie? Is it because of his ‘schtick’?”

Here it was, the phenomenon that journalists had been harping on for weeks—the young-old divide within the Democratic Party. It was playing itself out before my eyes, with me being asked to (impossibly) voice the opinions of an entire generation. How was I going to react?

Badly, apparently. Having been put on the spot, I started to stutter about random policies. I confused the FAMILY Act with child care grants, muttered something about single-payer health care, and in general exhibited the very inexperience he was tacitly criticizing (at some point, I may have quoted from “I’m Just A Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock!).

As I returned to my desk, I scolded myself for my inability to defend my positions. But what upset me the most was that I had probably confirmed my colleague’s suspicion that young people are attracted to Bernie not due to any concrete reasons, but rather because we had fallen for some gimmick about a revolution—a “schtick.”

Understanding why Sanders is leading among millennials is a discussion worth having—in the Iowa Caucus, an overwhelming 84 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for him, and another 84 percent did the same in New Hampshire last night. However, the implication that I supported Sanders because of youthful ignorance, rather than a dozen other reasons he might have come up with (we did, after all, work at a policy think tank), was grating. The idea that I had assessed each candidate’s platforms, the practicality of implementing them, and the stakes, and had decided that Sanders was the best candidate to fulfill my political goals and aspirations, had not occurred to him.