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New_Evening_2845 t1_iqo1swo wrote

I'm curious: are most of them that old because one has to climb up the political ladder to be a senator? Are most senators incumbents?

If serving as senator is the crowning achievement of a long career in politics, it makes sense that they'd all be geezers.

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northgrave t1_iqptymv wrote

That is probably at least partially right. Most Senators have previous government experience, either directly or relatedly, and many made the jump from the House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_senators).

In an imperfect system, this is probably a reasonable situation. Having people with little to no knowledge of how government agencies work making decisions about them is probably not the best idea. This is not to say that this experience is always put to the best use, but the alternative is to pick people without any track record.

A second factor is that incumbents are hard to displace, so at 6 year terms, you win a few elections and it's decades in office. If you start at 50, three terms gets you to age 68. And many serve far more than that (https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm - Bold indicates still serving). The senate certainly is not likely to implement term limits on themselves.

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SenecatheEldest t1_iqpxjgv wrote

There are 100 senators for a country of 330 million. The Upper House of Congress is more prestigious than the lower one.

In fact, unless you plan to run for President or are selected as VP on a ticket, a Senator is the highest political office one can hold in the US government.

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