One aspect of American politics I've paid attention to is the stark reverse agism that has resulted in the average age of a federal politician to be the average starting age for retirement for regular Americans (early 60s). If I had a pile of cash to spend on politics, I would invest in not just engaging Americans of my own generation in the political process, but encouraging younger people to run for office and to challenge the establishment in both parties, as well.
We need a "rising generation" of politicians under 40. (Ok, for Senators I'll let that be 50, seeing just how many senators are older than 75 right now.)
With luck, however, in this last election, some of our most important and hard fought victories (from Virginia to Ohio to Alaska) were won by some of the youngest candidates running for Congress..
Take Senator Mark Begich (D-AK) - he's the only freshman Senator under 52 (at a spry senatorial age of 46, no less), and he knocked off one of the oldest and longest serving Republicans in history in a ruby red state.
Now, consider a list of all incoming House Democrats at or younger than the age of 40:
Dan Maffei (D-NY) - age 40
John Boccieri (D-OH) - age 39
Martin Heinrich (D-NM) - age 37
Ben Lujan (D-NM) - age 36
Glenn Nye (D-VA) - age 34
Tom Perriello (D-VA) - age 34
Jared Polis (D-CO) - age 33
The House Democrats dominated in the Generation X/Y department in this election, but even the Republicans have young turks. Look at Aaron Schock - at 27 years old, that Illinois Republican is barely two and a half months older than me. I need to get cracking! Hehe.
At any rate, we're making progress. These 7 House Democratic freshmen are being added to a group of nine other House Democrats under the age of 40.
Oh, and about Mark Begich? He'll be nearly the youngest Senator in the entire body, second only to Mark Pryor, who is just 9 months younger, at age 45. That's progress, too!
I'm especially proud to see my current home state of Virginia send two promising young Democrats to Congress. Perriello will represent faithful, populist Democrats of the south-central part of the state well, and Nye will finally bring some effective representation to Norfolk.
I look forward to another good year of electing younger - and better - Democrats to Congress.
UPDATE: Let me clarify that I'm not calling for any older Democrat to be primaried, and I'm not saying we should only support someone because they're young. (That Republican I mention is ultra-right-wing, for example, and I'm surprised he won.) What I am saying is we should do whatever we can to help and encourage younger Democrats to make brave decision to run for Congress, and then back them up when they're fighting for a progressive agenda in the election against the Republicans.