With the 2020 election approaching and Donald Trump's approval rating stubbornly stuck in the fortieth percentile, there has been a veritable stampede of Democratic candidates who are eager to run against a man who's administration has been chaotic and corrupt since day one. The two top contenders right now are Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden (who hasn't officially entered the race, but appears to be leaning that way). Although political issues are an important factor to Democratic voters, the ability to beat Trump is understandably their number one priority. And to many people, electibility means nominating an old white guy, like Sanders (age 77), or Biden (age 76) to match the old white guy (Trump is 72) in the White House.
Personally, I don't get this: Firstly, I do think that both Biden and Sanders are bit too old to be president. Is that ageist? I should mention that my mother, who's 79, agrees with me. The fact of the matter is that being president and making decisions that often affect the entire planet is extremely stressful. Just look at these pictures of Barack Obama at his two inaugurations in 2008 and 2012:
It's really hard to believe that that's only four years later! Even Donald Trump has complained about the difficulty of the job, and this is a president who spends most of his time watching TV, playing golf, holding rallies and ignoring cabinet meetings. Is it wrong for me to think that being leader of the free world is something that should be left to people under 70? I don't think so, I just think it's common sense (although if Biden or Sanders get the nomination, I'll certainly vote for either of them over Trump).
Part of the prevailing wisdom is that the Democrats must run a white male to attempt to lure some 2016 Trump voters over to their side. Again, I don't quite get this; white people in this country have been voting majority Republican for decades now, blatantly playing the race card with a candidate is probably not going to change that. A quick Google search reveals that Bill Clinton did not win a majority of the white vote in either of his victories. Neither did Obama, although his 44.2% of the white vote in 2008 bested both of Clinton's elections.
My point is, why should the Democrats chase after a demographic that has rejected them for years? Bill Clinton and Obama's victories show that Democrats can win with different coalitions of voters. Remember this, Hillary Clinton lost because of a number of reasons: from Trump being given enormous amounts of free media coverage right from the start, to her overblown email scandal, to Russian hacking, to Green Party candidate Jill Stein siphoning off votes, and, perhaps most importantly, James Comey's memo to congress ten days before the election. And even with all that working against her, she still got three million more votes, with Trump winning because of a crazy Electoral College bank shot accumulation of votes in just the right states.
At the end of the day, while I personally like Biden and Sanders (I particularly admire Sanders), I still think that the future of the party lies with younger candidates who can bring the same energy and appeal to younger voters that Obama did back in 2008. And I really think that someone who isn't an old white guy, like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, can win.
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