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Notes -
Missing Petes - Where are the 30-something liberals?
This write-up was prompted by Zohran Mamdani’s rising popularity in the NYC mayoral race.
Pre-2016, American politics was run by boomers. As the youngest boomer, Obama was expected to pass the baton to the next generation of Democrats. Alas, geriatrics returned with a vengeance, and Gen-X tapped out for good.
Of the dominant American political groups, I'm most sympathetic to neo-libs with a YIMBY flavor. Therefore, I’ve kept an eye out for Millennial newcomers who fit into this mold. 'Left of center with accommodations for changing times' is a tried and tested formula for fresh Democrats. It started off great. Tulsi and Pete had respectable presidential runs for their age.
Then began the woke revolution and the COVID crisis. During this period, I expected radicals to be ascendant, and they were. Progressive Millennial faces were introduced through 'The Squad,' prison abolitionists, and protest movement leaders. All positioned in opposition to the neo-lib incumbents, all terrible policymakers. Thankfully, the progressives haven’t won anything at the national level just yet.
Their mortal enemies, the Boomer neo-libs (Kamala, Biden, Blinken, Pelosi), ran the nation for four years. Most of it was in a post-woke era where the nation was shifting to the right. Yet, we saw no new neo-lib faces during that time. At both the national and local levels, less-progressive democrats like Tulsi and Ann Davidson were pushed out despite their popularity, as proven by their rise in the Republican camp.
Train-man Pete is the obvious exception. But where are the other Petes? If boomer Democrats dislike AOC’s allies, why haven’t they groomed any young leaders of their own? Have boomers reinforced the stereotype by once more pulling up the ladder behind them?
I ask rhetorically, of course. The answer is yes. Boomers crushed the political prospects of an entire generation behind them. Millennials weren't going to have it any easier. The sheer greed of 80-year-old geriatrics is embarrassing. No policy goals left to pursue, just a legacy of corruption and unmet promises.
I dislike Zohran. Among my fellow Indians, he is what we call a 'chutiya' (hard to translate; the closest synonym would be wanker). Yet, I feel dirty saying anything positive about Cuomo. Do the two options have to be a corrupt neo-lib boomer versus a Millennial wanker? As the boomers die off, who will take their place in Democratic power structures? Because from my perspective, all the young leaders are socialist wankers.
So I ask again: Where are the other Petes?
Where are the 30-something conservatives? If you look at the US House members in their 30s, there are 21 Democrats and 14 Republicans. There are only two people under 40 in the Senate, one Democrat and one Republican. Considering that of the 435 members of the House, 400 of them are 40 or older, I think the correct answer is that there just aren't that many people in their 30s involved in politics.
Yeah but you'd expect conservatives to trend older inherently as standing for vested interest and conservatism.
A brief search suggests that the average Democrat in the House is two years older than the average Republican. And the last 8 members of Congress to die in office have been Democrats.
Although it's quite possible those numbers are pretty dynamic and shift with major elections though: I couldn't trivially find a time series.
This is the kind of thing that AI should theoretically be good at, since members of congress and their dates of birth aren't too hard to find. Actual AI, however, seems to have a hard time with this. Gemini is evidently only capable of repeating what was already published as an article, so if there isn't some website that specifically says what the average was in, say, 1995, then it can't figure it out. Deepseek is slightly better in that it actually gives the answer, though it gives contradictory results within the same prompt. Based on the crappy results I did get, it seems like the Democratic average age has consistently been a couple years higher than the Republican average age for some time.
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