60 Has Become The New "Young Blood" In Washington

Most Americans agree that our politicians are too old, with the average age of lawmakers in the Senate being 64 – that’s one year away from retirement age. But new, slightly younger leadership could be on the way after this year’s election. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Most Americans agree that our politicians are too old. You think? With the average age of lawmakers in the Senate somewhere being around 64, that's a year away from retirement age. But new, slightly younger leadership could be on the way to change all that. What do you think?

You know, I really like this story. Politico put this out, said, hey, we got two almost octogenarian guys running for president here, but hey, don't worry.

Old man. Old man versus old man. I mean, that's just the truth. One of 'em is orange. The other one's bumping into walls. I mean, look at these guys. McConnell. Is he alive? You look at the guy, is he really alive? Pelosi, Jesus, she has been shellacked or I don't know what she's done to stay preserved. But the point is, this is it. This is it. And the story says there's younger people coming, but they ain't that young.

Exactly.

They're in the sixties. And that's young. Right?

Right. They're like, hey, don't worry. We've got people in their mid fifties to mid sixties to usher in this younger generation of politicians, which I guess technically it's still better. But at the same time, we need the 30 year olds. We need the 40 year olds. We need the people to represent a majority of the people that went through the same things coming of age that they did. And that's the difference. These are the people who sat in office, except for Trump because he didn't get into 2016. They oversaw the financial disaster of 2007, 2008. They got us into Iraq. They got all of these endless wars. All of these financial problems. All of this deregulation.

Climate change.

Exactly. They were all in office while these disasters were shaping our lives. And we don't really have voices in there.

Have we been unfair or are these, have we doctored these pictures at all?

A little bit. A little bit, little bit. Yes, we did.

Yeah. The truth is this is who they are.

It is.

And we're looking at it and we're saying, this is the future. Oh, but don't worry about it, we got some 60 year olds coming too. What about the 30-year-old? What about the 40-year-old or the 50-year-old that says, you know, I got some good ideas? Get outta the way Pelosi. Get outta the way Biden or McConnell, get outta the way. Let us try something new because we sure couldn't screw up as bad as you have. Isn't that kind of the argument here?

Exactly. And what's remarkable too is that when you get to those younger generations, there actually is a lot more agreement than you have with some of these folks. You've even got younger conservatives that say, yeah, I'm for all of these traditional conservative things. But I also think climate change is a very big threat and we should do something about it. So there's more common ground with these younger generations than there is with the older ones.

What do you think these people have in common with a generation Z or millennial that can't even afford a house? Okay. That the goal, their big goal, God, I hope I can afford a house. Instead, they're living with mom. They're living with mom and pop. What do you think they have in common with that person? Nothing. And so that new blood has got to come in and people have to say, I gotta listen to what this young person, this young woman is saying, this young man is saying. And I guess what we thought is we thought, well, we're gonna revolutionize politics if we just let women in. Well, it did help. But now we need to move to the next stage. We gotta revolutionize politics by letting some young women, some young men, some more people of color in. And let's mix it up a little bit. because these folks, they've created a disaster.

They really have. And part of the reason we don't have many.