Keller @ Large: Generation Gap
BOSTON (CBS) - From 44-year-old Marco Rubio to 74-year-old Bernie Sanders, the candidates for president cover a lot of generational ground. And the generation gap has proven to be a potent factor in the race.
We saw it in the Iowa caucus results Monday night, where younger voters mostly turned their backs on the older baby-boom generation candidates. And every time you turn on your TV or laptop you can see generation gap politics on display.
"I come from the '60s, long time ago," said Hillary Clinton in a 2015 debate, a clip that immediately turned up in a Rubio web ad where he follows that comment by saying: "This election better be about the future, not about the past."
It's a tactic Rubio has also used to set him apart from the 50- and 60-somethings crowding the GOP field. "This election is actually a generational choice," he's fond of saying.
That pitch helped Rubio and Ted Cruz, who's only five months older, mop up among younger voters in Iowa.
On the Democratic side, the battle for younger voters is an uphill struggle for 68-year-old Hillary Clinton.
Even though he's six years her senior, Bernie Sanders' anti-establishment rhetoric is bridging the generation gap far more effectively; he beat Clinton by more than five to one among under-thirty Iowa caucus-goers.
And when a YouTube celebrity at an earlier debate, after gushing over how popular Sanders was among the young, asked the Democratic candidates "how are all of you planning on engaging us further in this election?" her effort to close the gap was awkward at best.
"Congratulations on five million viewers on YouTube," she said, without a trace of a smile. "That's quite an accomplishment."
Will the generation gap be a key factor in who gets the major party nominations? It all comes down to who can walk the highwire across it, and who can't.
