The Washington Post has a story this morning (www.washingtonpost.com/...) outlining what it considers the Top 15 Democratic prospects for 2020.
Most of these names leave me cold, but I’m particularly down on two: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Biden would be nearly 78 on election day 2020, and Bernie will be 79.
It’s time to say it: no one need apply who was born before January 1, 1950. If you were born in the 1940s or before, go home. Rest. Take your blood pressure meds. Call your grandchildren.
This rule would eliminate two others on the Post’s list.
One is Gov. Jerry Brown (born in 1938). He would be 82 on election day. For heaven’s sake, he was governor of California when I graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1974 — 43 years ago!
The other is Elizabeth Warren, born in June 1949. Tough luck, Warren fans, she’s out.
Sorry, but our last four presidents were all Baby Boomers, three of whom were born in 1946. (Yes, Obama is technically a Boomer, though because he was born late in the boom, 1961, he doesn't quite relate like most Boomers, who see everything through the lens of Davy Crockett, the Beatles, the Summer of Love, and the endless Vietnam war.) In fact, Clinton, Bush and Trump were all born within two months of each other in 1946. Enough is enough with these guys.
I really should suggest, as the headline does, that no Boomers at all need apply. I say this as a Boomer myself (born Nov. 1952). It’s not that we’ve ruined the country or anything, despite what some of you young whippersnappers think. (Did they teach you about Jim Crow, Vietnam, Stonewall and the Mad Men-style prefeminist workplace? The country was a pretty messed up place when we found it.) But you can argue my generation has definitely had our turn. However, this ban would eliminate a few other contenders on the Post’s list:
* Sen. Sherrod Brown (1952)
* Gov. Andrew Cuomo (1957)
* Sen. Tim Kaine (1958)
* Gov. Deval Patrick (1956)
As I noted, most of the names on the Post’s list left me feeling meh. Some are too old, like Biden and Bernie, some too young and/or inexperienced, like Kamala Harris or Chris Murphy, and some just dumb, like Oprah Winfrey or Mark Zuckerberg.
I do like Sherrod Brown a lot, but disagree with his position on trade (comparative advantage, and all that). Tim Kaine is great but — is it just me? — seems like too nice a guy to win. Deval Patrick has gone to work for the archenemy of the people, Bain Capital, so seems problematic. That leaves Cuomo. I don’t know enough about him, other than he seems to irritate the progressive left of the party, which I would ordinarily consider a good thing, being a practical, triangulating, center-left kind of person myself. But I get the idea he’s kind of abrasive. Am I right?
My own list of potential nominees also contains a number of Boomers:
* Sen. Al Franken (1951)
* Gov. John Hickenlooper (1952)
* Sen. Amy Klobuchar (1960)
* Sen. John Tester (1956)
* Sen. Mark Warner (1954)
Also on my list is Sen. Michael Bennet (1964), the only one to qualify as an authentic non-Boomer (suggested slogan: “Give Gen-X a Chance!”), though Klobuchar, like Obama, is a Boomer in demographic name only.
We Boomers have dominated American commerce and culture for a long, long time. Until just recently, when the Millennials passed us by, we were the largest generation ever. As a proportion of total population, no generation will ever match us. I feel we ought to step aside, finally. But when I look around, it seems the best candidates right now are still Boomers. Perhaps we need one more run at the roses.
Sorry about that, chief. (“Get Smart,” NBC-CBS, 1965-1970.)