The Disconnect

Xcentricdiff's first law of politics:

A body in Congress tends to stay in Congress

Unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
(Apologies to Sir Isaac.)

This won't come as a surprise to any of you, but the U.S. Congress is getting old. By the session. I'm not certain where this ranks on the list of things wrong with Congress – it's a long list – but it must assuredly contribute to its demise as a political force, emasculated by both executive and judicial branches, and its failure to comprehend the aspirations of its younger electorate.

In the figure above I have plotted the proportion of Senators, binned by generation, divided by the proportion of the general population in the same generation, excluding Generation Alpha (ages 0-12). If the proportion of "Boomers" (ages 61-79) in the Senate were the same as the proportion of "Boomers" in the general population, then the bar for that age bin would be 1.0 as a relative representation. That's the threshold marked by the dashed red line. "Boomers" at 1.0? Not close. "Boomers" are over represented in the Senate by over 2.5 fold. Citizens ages 13-44 have essentially no peer-age representation in the Senate.

Part of this is structural, of course; a Senator must be at least 30 years old by Constitutional design. But 2.7 times more "Boomers" in the Senate than out on our streets, or in the park, in the grocery store? That seems a bit extreme to me. There is a disconnect here.

"But, but! But that electorate is the electorate that elects them!" you argue. And you argue so correctly.

The trick is inertia.

"Inertia is the inherent property of a body that makes it oppose any force that would cause a change in its motion."
– Merriam-Webster 2026

There are vast geopolitical enterprises devoted just to the promotion of that inertia. In the past it was political party bosses in smoke-filled rooms. Nowadays it is moneyed oligarchs confabbing at retreats in Appalachian faux "rustic" cabins, or Aspen Mountain estate opulence. Or in Dialog at off-shore foreign resorts.

Once these enterprises have the body they want in place, they act, they pay, they work to keep that body in place. It is called "incumbency" and it opposes any force that would cause a change. And since 1980 they have gotten considerably better at growing incumbency.