The Youth Walk Faster But Age Knows The Road

For a while now, there’s been a debate simmering beneath the surface in political circles, provoked primarily by those seeking to sow division where none exists, hoping to pit leaders like House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Rep Jim Clyburn against each other.

You see, they can’t find any daylight between them on political strategy or the issues that matter most to everyday Americans. So they focus on the one difference they can find: Age. So instead of ignoring the false hype and creating an environment where the naysayers and dividers can impose their own special brand of conspiracy theory, let’s talk about it.

The facts are clear: Congress is old.

The 119th Congress is the third oldest in American history. The median age across America is roughly 39-years-old while the average age in Congress is nearly 59. Two-thirds of Senators were born before the Voting Rights Act and, of the 24 Senators and House Members who are 80-years-old or older, more than half are running for re-election.

Congress is old and some folks have legitimate concerns about that. But, let’s be honest, that’s not what we’re talking about here. I mean, I don’t see anyone pretending Rep. Clyburn has some sort of diminished mental capacity. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If you listen to MAGA, Rep. Clyburn is some kind of devious mastermind thwarting President Trump’s agenda at every turn.

So instead they try to insinuate a division based solely on age thinking that it’s impossible for people to support the 55-year old Rep. Jefferies and the 85-year-old Rep. Clyburn at the same time. 

Generations are bound to clash after all, right?

Wrong.

You see, while we in the Democratic Party are so often spurred and inspired by the energy, innovation and optimism of youth, we’re also supported by the foundational experience and wisdom of age. We love new ideas and the fresh blood that drives them forward. But we also know better than to reinvent the wheel when unnecessary, unreliable and downright counterproductive.

We believe in that old African proverb: The youth walk faster but age knows the road.

After all, when the 52-year-old Rep. Clyburn first came to Congress in 1993, it was the 67-year-old Rep. Louis Stokes who first showed him how to turn the wheels to our national government to serve all the people. When Dr. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, he was following the roadmap Mohandas Gandhi had written in India a generation earlier. The No-King’s rallies are based on the Anti-war movement of the late 60s, the fight for labor and income equality is more than a century old and so on and so on. 

But the dividers don’t want us to realize that. They don’t want us to build on the victories of battles past because if we combine the proven strategy with progressive aims and unified ideals, we can do more than we’ve ever dreamed.

You see, they want us arguing about one or the other because they’re scared to death we’ll choose both. That’s why they do their best to convince us that either we can have racial equality or gender equality. That’s why they preach to working families the false gospel that raising the minimum wage would cut their bottom line. They want us arguing this or that, fighting over crumbs because they know we deserve a piece of the pie and they’re terrified that if we chose both, then together we could take it.

We don’t have to choose between walking faster and knowing the road. We choose both. That way we get where we’re going…and we don’t waste time getting there.

Of course, with age comes experience and, over the years, that experience has been awfully useful. At 88-years-old, Rep. John Conyers was the longest serving Black Member of Congress. But he was also the genius whose mastery of the infrastructure of the House Judiciary protected civil rights and voting rights despite repeated attacks until his retirement. Rep Maxine Waters is 87. But her fearlessness and command of the microphone and congressional procedure means her comments during committee meetings and public hearings still go viral today. Not to mention, she knows the regulatory rulebook better than anyone else in the room. As a result, her very presence on the House Financial Services Committee protects all of us.

If you want to see how it looks when someone with no experience, regardless of their age, is running the show, look no further than the Trump Administration. How are things going at the FBI these days anyway?