The same 32-year span separated Kennedy at the top of the ticket from New York governor Alfred E. Smith, that harbinger of the New Deal. And, yes, another 32 years takes the party back to the start of its populist era, led by the fresh face from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan.
Those who will not make way for the next generation will be swept away. President Biden had hoped to slip past this iron rule of both biology and politics masked by time-defying Ray-Ban aviators. But the voters knew better; they could read a calendar, and they’ve been asking to turn the page for a year or more.
By sounding the retreat of America’s elderly boomers and members of the Silent Generation — an inevitability foreshadowed last week when Republican Donald Trump chose a running mate half his age — Biden might well be accomplishing a second renewal simultaneously. The Democratic Party is suddenly neck-deep in democracy, as ambitious younger leaders splash wildly after the ultimate prize in politics. For years, the party has passed its nomination dully and dutifully to the next person in line, the candidates aging inexorably in sluggish entitlement.
It is reliably reported that Biden has carried a chip on his shoulder for years over being told in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was next in line when he was sure it should have been him. As though party politics were a family minivan and Joey called shotgun but his sister got the seat.
Now, perhaps, Americans will be reminded of the jolt that comes from a fresh candidate with a bright new message. True, we are accustomed to long primary seasons of grinding repetition (when we are lucky enough to have any real competition at all). But veterans of the best, most surprising, momentous campaigns can usually pinpoint a span of a few weeks, or even days, when the eventual winner tipped the scales and victory began to feel like a matter of when, not if. Let the Democrats distill the coming weeks into a magic moment like that, and they can redefine the race to November.
What happens next, in other words, is what should have happened months ago, and what had to happen sooner or later. The Democratic Party is rebooting; the rest of its gerontocracy will soon follow Biden into retirement. A month from now, the party will have updated software running on new hardware.
A little democracy is not to be feared. In fact, to hear Democrats talk in public you’d conclude that they are great believers in democracy and nobly dedicated to saving it from Trump. Only in private do they wring their hands over the unlovely fisticuffs of popular government, the splits and rifts and factions and that stubborn curse of who’s next in line. Let bright, ambitious people toss their hats into the ring — as Vice President Harris did shortly after Biden dropped out of the race. Let them make their cases and attempt their bargains and show what they are made of. By securing Biden’s prompt endorsement, Harris took an early lead, but let the delegates choose. No matter how this sprint to the nomination plays out, it will make for more compelling television than 81-year-old Lee Greenwood and 70-year-old Hulk Hogan flattering the oldest major party nominee in American history.
Yes, oldest. Trump is enough of a TV star to know what it means to flip the script, which is what Biden has done to him. For nearly a month, since Biden’s disastrous debate performance finally made the age issue undeniable and unavoidable, Americans have pushed back hard against the idea that, in a nation of 333 million people, our only choices to lead us were two stubborn old men. This energy won’t vanish overnight, and who’s the old guy now? For all his apparent vigor — the fist-raising and the fight-fight-fight — Trump, at 78, would soon make the presidency octogenarian again.
Voters hungry for a superannuated boomer president still have that option. Voters ready to move on are about to have their opportunity. With Biden out of the race, Trump can go rambling on sleepily through hard-to-follow anecdotes of long-gone yesteryears. Remember the late, great Hannibal Lecter? Where’s my Roy Cohn? Trump’s the one now pushing his dresser against that leaky door, behind which the tide of time irresistibly rises.
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