Next Generation

Democrats are feeling confident and relieved after Joe Biden gave the speech of his life last night. It was all about hope, trust, honesty and decency. The contrast between Biden and Donald Trump couldn’t be sharper. The Democrats are painting the election as a race between a good, decent guy, who grew up in a struggling middle class family, who’s dealt with terrible loss, and who’s spent his life serving the country versus the man they feel is the worst human being to ever sit in the Oval Office. Next week, at the Republican National Convention, Trump and his party will get their chance to make their case about how great things have been under his leadership. They will paint Biden as weak, old, and a tool of the extreme left who will destroy America as we know it. We all know the issues, and it’s unlikely many people are undecided about who will get their vote. But I see this election as an end and a beginning.

These are two 70 something white men from a generation that is fading away. This election will be the last hurrah for them. There is a good chance if Biden wins, he will only serve one term because he will be 82 years old in November 2024. If Trump wins, he will be 78 when his second term is up. The immediate crisis is the damage Trump will do to the country if he’s re-elected. If that happens, it’s hard to imagine the state of the country and the years it will take to repair the damage done by the country’s most incompetent and dangerous president. A Biden presidency is vital to heal and restore the country back to the envy of the world, not the joke that has the rest of the world wondering what the hell is going on over there.

There’s been two elections in my lifetime where the generational passing of the torch has changed the country, Kennedy in 1960 and Obama in 2008. The Democratic Party bosses didn’t want Kennedy to be their nominee. He was too young. He was Catholic. There where other men ahead of him in the pecking order. Kennedy was the first president to master the use of television and sold himself to the American people by traveling across the country and winning primaries, and he had the benefit of a family fortune. He forced the powers in the party to support him. Obama was historic. He did represent a new generation of political leadership that appealed to young and diverse voters. I would argue that Trump’s election was the result of reaction to Obama by white middle class voters who felt left out and were traumatized by 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Great Recession, and the election of a liberal, black Democrat was too much for them.

This election is one of the most important in our history. We need Biden to start to clean up the Trump train wreck. We need the Republican Party to finally end this cult of personality and rid itself of the spineless leaders who refused to stand up to Trump in order to keep their jobs. 2024 will be the year when we will be looking for the next generation of leaders who learned from the mistakes of the past and will have bold new ideas to make the idea of America a reality for our children and grandchildren.