Welcome to the grand old Democratic Party

Well, that was fast.

In less than a day, the average age of the candidates vying for the White House jumped by some seven years, from about 68 to 75.

That’s because on Sunday, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (38), who was the youngest candidate in a crowded field, suspended his historic campaign for the Democratic nomination. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (59) will officially do the same on Monday night. (Both are expected to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden.)

Remaining in the contest for the Democrats are Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (70), Biden (77), former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (78) and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (78). For the GOP, there’s President Donald Trump (73) and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (74). (Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, 38, has been excluded from our average since she’s won no pledged delegates despite having competed in multiple races — Bloomberg has been included despite his lack of delegates because he wasn’t on the ballot in the states that have voted thus far).

It’s perhaps more striking to see this sort of gerontocracy on the left. For more than half a century, Democratic presidential bids have stood out for their promise of something or someone new: John F. Kennedy (43) in the 1960s, Bill Clinton (46) in the ’90s, Barack Obama (47) in the ’00s. (In 2017, at 70 years old, Trump became the oldest president to be inaugurated.)

Buttigieg, too, had focused his campaign on mining (or attempting to) a youth-centered vein of politics.

“When you take one look at me, my face is my message,” he said in 2019. “A lot of this is simply the idea that we need generational change, that we need more voices stepping up from the generation that has so much at stake in the decisions that are being made right now.”

Buttigieg continued, somewhat archly: “It’s why I often talk about how the world is going to look in 2054, when I get to the current age of the current President. It’s to remind us that this isn’t just about one election. This is about an era. The decisions that are being made in our politics right now will decide how the next 20, 30 or 40 years will go.”

With the shrinking this week of the Democratic primary field, the party’s bigger ambition of meeting changing times — Census Bureau data released in 2019 showed that voter turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds ballooned by 79% from 2014 to 2018 — feels as if it’s been blunted.

Of course, this isn’t to wander onto the jagged shoals of ageism (though, as other journalists have pointed out, there are fair questions to ask in regard to age, cognitive fitness and the ability to meet the pressures of the White House). Neither is it to suggest that septuagenarians can’t promote a vision of politics inspired by their own notions of novelty (see: Sanders’ resonance among younger voters on the left).

Rather, it’s to look at how even with the recent gains the Democratic Party has made purely in terms of representation — the 2020 contest began as the most broadly diverse field ever — there’s still a very long way to go.