I even tried to put it in a chart (imperfectly).
Age of Incoming Democratic Presidents since 1932
FRANKLIN rOOSEVELT |
|
50 |
HARRY TRUMAN |
|
61 |
jOHN KENNEDY
|
|
43 |
lYNDON JOHNSON |
|
55 |
JIMMY CARTER |
|
52 |
bILL CLINTON |
|
46 |
BARACK OBAMA |
|
47 |
Age of incoming Republican Presidents since 1932
Dwight eisenhower |
62 |
richard nixon |
55 |
gerald ford |
61 |
ronald reagan |
69 |
george h.w. bush |
62 |
george w. bush |
54 |
donald trump |
70 |
Some notes:
* Truman and LBJ, of course, became president upon the death of the incumbent president and I hesitate to even include them. And even there, when LBJ took office following the assassination of JFK, he was younger than all of these incoming Republican Presidents (he was even slightly less younger than Nixon).
*In the case of FDR, I always forget that FDR was the VP nominee in 1920...at the age of 38!
Even though the Democrats had little chance of winning in 1920, Julian Castro was pretty much as qualified to be on the ticket as FDR and even a little older.
Ageist...maybe.
But when the Democrats win the White House, it seems to be representative of something (a changing of the guard? a new generation) that, in some ways, Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders, for that matter) did not or could not represent.
It’s past time for the Democratic Party to move on in more ways than the ones being discussed here at Daily Kos lately