Criticizing friends is no fun. However, it is sometimes necessary if one purports to be an honest broker and fair-minded columnist.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette has been a longtime friend, even as the chill from her of late has been downright icy. We boast the same college alma mater. She did some routine legal work for me long ago. My daughter was born just two weeks before her eldest sibling, and we shared a great deal of family time during those years.

My connection with U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper is not quite as longstanding. But we have enjoyed cordiality and a handful of jovial conversations.

All of that is preamble. The point of this column is that it is time, arguably past time, for both Hickenlooper and DeGette to pass the torch.

Beyond classifying politicians as progressive or conservative, inspired or dull, insider or outsider, I have added a new dichotomy. That being the distinction between those who know when it is time to walk away versus those who stick around past their time.

This is a bipartisan ailment. Congressmen Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley are notable examples of leading Republicans. The latter is a not-so-spry 91 and has been in the Senate for nearly half those years. McConnell, to his credit, is not running for reelection when his term ends in 2028.

However, the affliction seems particularly acute among the Democrats’ overly large gerontocracy caucus. Until recently, the three leading Democrats in Congress averaged well over 80 years of age. California Senator Dianne Feinstein died in office at age 90, her faculties having withered over her final years. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is 88 and in evident cognitive decline even as she insists on running for a 19th term.

Democrats paid a severe price, arguably the nation as well, for Joe Biden’s ditching of his pledge to serve as a generational bridge and his pretense, along with that of his family and palace guard, that everything was fine. That was far from the case as voters saw with their own eyes.

Perhaps we should establish the Joe Biden Prize for Staying Too Long to be given annually to the politician most intent on their irreplaceability.

None of this is to say that Hickenlooper or DeGette are dying lights or that their capacities are in retreat. Instead, the point is that each has had a good run, but that it is now time, maybe past time, to hand off the baton.

DeGette is in her 15th term and will soon enter her 30th year in Congress. She was first elected at the dawn of the internet and now seems intent on extending her stay into the age of artificial intelligence.

Hickenlooper did nearly eight energized years as Denver’s mayor before serving another eight years in the governor’s office and now a full six as a U.S. senator. The freshness he first brought to the political scene has long since waned.

Denver being Denver and given Colorado’s new shade of cobalt blue, neither seat is in danger of falling into Republican hands. Frankly, the notion peddled back in 2020 that only Hickenlooper could reliably defeat GOP incumbent Cory Gardner was also a fallacy. Any of a half-dozen Democrats already in that race would have handily triumphed.

Generational change is always difficult, whether it involves the old guard giving way to new leaders, as seen with Dick Lamm and Federico Peña here at home, or the entrenched Clinton establishment yielding to Barack Obama.

For Hickenlooper, nearly age 75 come the 2026 election, to take another six-year term is to implicitly assert that the likes of Jason Crow, Joe Neguse, Brittany Pettersen and Mike Johnston are unprepared or don’t have what it takes by way of judgment and leadership.

For DeGette to extend her occupancy of this congressional seat into a fourth decade is to effectively quash the ambitions and voices of James Coleman, Julie Gonzales, Emily Sirota, and many others.

To be clear, not all potential contenders would be my cup of tea. A number are significantly to the left of my moderate orientation. I might miss Hickenlooper’s more centrist bearing, even as that mark is hard to discern in the ever-more-polarized senate.

But, this I know: Turnover is healthy. Baby boomers, my generation, have had an extended run with a notably mixed track record. The generations that come after us will inherit America’s problems as well as its opportunities, and they should be handed the keys sooner rather than later.

Some will counter that Democrats must hold the fort and that this is not the time for such retirements, given the excesses and threats across the aisle. In truth, this is precisely the moment to be seized. Lord knows, the long-in-the-tooth Democratic formula of recent years has been found wanting.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann.