Young peo­ple are bad­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed in the U.S. gov­ern­ment. The aver­age age of Sen­a­tors is cur­rent­ly 63, a full 25 years old­er than the medi­an U.S. res­i­dent. In the House, it’s 58. The four lead­ing pres­i­den­tial con­tenders, includ­ing Trump, are all in their 70s. Joe Biden was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 1972 — he has been one of the planet’s most pow­er­ful peo­ple for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry, longer than most have been alive.

An aging elite is refusing to “pass the torch”—and using that torch to set the planet alight. As Greta Thunberg asked: How dare they?

Pol­i­tics is often con­strued as noble pub­lic ser­vice, but it is also a tremen­dous priv­i­lege. Fed­er­al office­hold­ers wield pow­er over not only U.S. vot­ers but also many who have no say in our elec­tions, includ­ing res­i­dents of oth­er coun­tries and those under 18. In fact, cli­mate change, nuclear war and envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion have the poten­tial to affect all life on this plan­et for cen­turies if not mil­len­nia to come.

Prob­a­bly no sin­gle gov­ern­ment should have such pow­er. At the least, a sup­posed democ­ra­cy should share this pow­er as wide­ly as pos­si­ble. In real­i­ty, most ordi­nary peo­ple nev­er get near it.

Over time, this pow­er cor­rupts. As Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) reports: ​“Behind closed doors, your arm is twist­ed, the vise pres­sure of polit­i­cal pres­sure gets put on you, every trick in the book, psy­cho­log­i­cal and oth­er­wise, is used to get us to aban­don the work­ing class.”

“As a con­se­quence of my fundrais­ing I became more like the wealthy donors I met,” wrote Barack Oba­ma of his 2004 Sen­ate cam­paign in The Audac­i­ty of Hope. ​“I spent more and more of my time above the fray, out­side the world of imme­di­ate hunger, dis­ap­point­ment, fear, irra­tional­i­ty and fre­quent hard­ship of the oth­er 99%. … I sus­pect this is true for every sen­a­tor: The longer you are a sen­a­tor, the nar­row­er the scope of your interactions.”

The youth coun­ter­cul­ture of the 1960s used to claim that you can’t trust any­one over 30. Obama’s words sug­gest that you can’t trust any­one who’s held fed­er­al office for over 30 years.

The ancient Athe­ni­ans would have agreed. They believed elec­tions favor the wealthy and influ­en­tial, instead appoint­ing (male, non-slave) cit­i­zens to polit­i­cal posi­tions for one-year terms through ran­dom selection.

Despite high-pro­file suc­cess­es such as the vic­to­ry of Oca­sio-Cortez (age 30) over Joe Crow­ley (age 57), most Con­gres­sion­al incum­bents can rest rel­a­tive­ly easy, with well above an 80% like­li­hood of reelec­tion. What we get is an insu­lat­ed class of pro­fes­sion­al politi­cians, propped up by a rel­a­tive­ly wealthy and old donor class. As Astra Tay­lor argues in the New York Times, struc­tur­al obsta­cles from age lim­its to eco­nom­ic pre­car­i­ty to the Senate’s rur­al-state bias hin­der young peo­ple (who dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly live in cities) from enter­ing politics.

On the sur­face, this may seem only a mod­est injus­tice — can’t mil­len­ni­als just wait our turn? But the impor­tance of youth rep­re­sen­ta­tion becomes clear when you begin to con­sid­er cli­mate change: The old folks in Con­gress will die before the worst impacts hit. (While the elder­ly poor are already get­ting slammed by heat waves and storms, the elder­ly poor are not who sit in Con­gress.) They can dis­miss youth-led calls for a Green New Deal as a ​“green dream, or what­ev­er” (Nan­cy Pelosi, 79), know­ing they will be safe­ly in the grave while future gen­er­a­tions strug­gle to make a life among the wreck­age. An aging elite is refus­ing to ​“pass the torch”—and using that torch to set the plan­et alight. As Gre­ta Thun­berg asked: How dare they?

Of course, age should not be the only fac­tor in mak­ing our pres­i­den­tial deci­sions. It is per­haps iron­ic that the old­est can­di­date, Bernie Sanders, has the most ambi­tious plan to rein in cli­mate change, stu­dent debt and war, all issues dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ing the youth; he also eschews cor­po­rate fundrais­ing and, accord­ing to Oca­sio-Cortez, who recent­ly endorsed him, has main­tained ​“con­sis­tent and non­stop advo­ca­cy” for the 99% despite his 34 years in elect­ed office. This is prob­a­bly why the vast plu­ral­i­ty of mil­len­ni­als plan­ning to vote in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry — this author includ­ed — back him.

It is prob­a­bly not coin­ci­dence, how­ev­er, that the long-tenured Sanders has been reluc­tant to embrace such insti­tu­tion­al reforms as abol­ish­ing the fil­i­buster or expand­ing the Supreme Court. Sev­er­al younger can­di­dates, such as Pete Buttigieg (37) and Kamala Har­ris (55), are much more open, as is Eliz­a­beth War­ren (70). Their rel­a­tive youth and new­ness to pol­i­tics may give them a fresh­er per­spec­tive on how gov­ern­ment should be oper­at­ed. (War­ren, although just eight years younger than Sanders, has only held elect­ed office since 2013.)

In fact, Buttigieg, the youngest can­di­date at 37, intro­duced ​“inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice” as a cam­paign theme and has voiced the strongest sup­port for court pack­ing. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the details of his court-pack­ing plan are need­less­ly con­vo­lut­ed and, like his whole cam­paign, leave much to be desired.)

Sanders’ oth­er elec­toral weak­ness­es — his improved but imper­fect mes­sag­ing around race and gen­der; bag­gage and old grudges from 2016 (not total­ly his fault); con­cerns about his heart — also cor­re­late with age and length of time in pol­i­tics. All of this sug­gests that ​“pass­ing the torch” to a younger, more diverse suite of left politi­cians will need to hap­pen soon­er than later.

It is to his cred­it that Sanders is doing this, both direct­ly and indi­rect­ly. The orga­ni­za­tion that came out of his 2016 cam­paign, Our Rev­o­lu­tion, is active­ly work­ing to build up new pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship at every lev­el of gov­ern­ment. And many of the young peo­ple mobi­lized by that cam­paign have gone on to hold office, from Oca­sio-Cortez to social­ist Chica­go alder­man Andre Vasquez (now 40). Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn., age 38), too, says she was inspired to run for Con­gress by the Sanders campaign.

We may have seen a glimpse of the future in New York this Octo­ber, where Sanders and Oca­sio-Cortez shared a stage before an audi­ence of 26,000.

“Are you will­ing to fight for young peo­ple drown­ing in stu­dent debt, even if you are not?” Sanders asked to close his speech. ​“Are you will­ing to fight for a future for gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple who have not yet even been born, but are enti­tled to live on a plan­et that is healthy and hab­it­able? Because if you are will­ing to do that, if you are will­ing to love, if you are will­ing to fight for a gov­ern­ment of com­pas­sion and jus­tice and decen­cy … [then] togeth­er we will trans­form this country.”

Lat­er, in a joint inter­view, Oca­sio-Cortez was asked whether she would work in a Sanders admin­is­tra­tion. Bernie jumped in: ​“Yes, you would!”

This is part of a debate about whether age mat­ters in a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Read the first entry, ​“Ageism Has No Place in a Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion,“ by Susan Dou­glas, here.

Views expressed are those of the writer. As a 501©3 non­prof­it, In These Times does not sup­port or oppose any can­di­date for pub­lic office.