Election Brings In a Less Geezeriffic Senate

Our next Senate is going to be
as fresh-faced and new as a midlife crisis, a youthening down of
the crankypants “Get off our lawn!” current class. Once upon a
time, our leaders in Congress tended to be middle-aged. But they’ve

aged along with the rest of the country and refused to die or
just go away and get a fancy consulting or lobbying gig in the
private sector. Now the average age in the Senate is 62. This new
crop voted in Tuesday though averages 16 years younger, as more Gen
Xers make their way into the corridors of powers as elected
officials, not just aides and consultants. From the
Associated Press:

Four of the new senators are under 50, boosting a small
contingent of Generation X members in the upper chamber. Gen Xers
follow baby boomers and were born from the early 1960s to the early
1980s.

At 37, Republican Sen.-elect Tom Cotton of Arkansas is the
youngest incoming senator, while Republican David Perdue of
Georgia, 64, is the oldest. The average age of the new senators is
50, compared with 66 for the lawmakers they are replacing. All but
one of the 11 are Republicans.

I love how they feel the need to explain who Gen Xers are
because nobody talks about them or remembers anymore. The younger
blood in Congress is not limited to the Senate:

Elise Stefanik, a 30-year-old New York Republican, is the
youngest woman ever elected to the House. Also making history is
Mia Love, 38, whose election to a suburban Salt Lake City district
made her the first black female Republican to win a seat in
Congress.

The Washington Post wonders how the newcomers, some of
whom say they’re more interested in problem-solving than partisan
bickering, will deal with the
current nature of Senate politics:

After a series of wave elections, retirements and deaths, there
are far fewer veterans who saw those dealmaking times up close.
When the new class takes office, half of all senators will have
joined since 2008, in an era dominated by partisan gridlock.

The leaders who presided over the Senate’s descent into inaction
— Sens. Mitch McConnell (R) and Harry M. Reid (D) — will also be
its leaders yet when the freshmen arrive. All they will probably do
is switch places, with McConnell taking over Reid’s role as
majority leader and Reid becoming leader of the minority.

Still, McConnell has said that he will restore the Senate to its
old ways. And the makeup of the new class was enough to make some
current senators hopeful that things would really change.

The possibility of a Senate that actually “gets things done” is
a good excuse to remind that we might not actually want some of
these things to get done. Just prior to the election, Veronique de
Rugy detailed some of the conservative love for big government from
these Republican Senate freshmen. Read up on them
here.