20 February 2019 — 0748 mst

The Old Men and the Presidency

Bernie Sanders, now 77 years old, is running for President again. Although hale, he’s not immortal. On average, a man his age (born 8 September 1941) can expect to live another ten years, according to the online life expectancy calculator at Social Security’s website. As he enters his eighties, the probability of being weakened by various infirmities, such as cognitive decline, increases significantly.

The outlook for Joe Biden, a year younger than Sanders, is much the same, with the caveat that with his history of aneurysms in the back of his head, his old veins and arteries may be ticking time bombs.

Both men are older than Harry Truman’s Vice President, Alben Barkley, who, at 74, sought the 1952 Democratic nomination, but was thwarted by the United Auto Workers’ Walter Reuther, who wanted and got a younger candidate. That was 52-year-old Adlai Stevenson, who lost to Eisenhower by a landslide (and in 1956 again lost to Ike by a landslide). Barkley died of a heart attack in 1956 while delivering a speech. Stevenson died in 1965 of a heart attack at age 65.

At the Daily Intelligencer, Ed Kilgore argues convincingly that nominating men as old as Bernie and Joe would be a tremendous risk for the Democratic Party. I agree. Ergo, I’m not supporting either man. Neither am I supporting Elizabeth Warren, who turns 70 this spring, nor Sherrod Brown, 66.

It’s time for a new generation of Democratic candidates such as 47-year-old Beto O’Rourke. Democrats win the White House when they nominate younger, more vigorous, candidates. But a gerontocratic Democratic Party that nominates a lion in winter for President, a lion still roaring but just south of eighty, is a political party that will condemn our nation to a second term for Donald Trump.