Comments on: this is pretty much as bad as it should be allowed to be

By: Gene

Gene — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:49:57 +0000

I’m going to stop watching MSNBC and just browse the comments of this blog. That last paragraph by gray pretty much is all you need to know about pre-convention election politics this year.

By: Gray

Gray — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:47:22 +0000

True, McCain’s no boomer himself (though, as a Vietnam vet, many would still claim him as one), but it seems pretty clear he’s the boomers’ candidate, at least spiritually (among the remaining candidates, that is). Of course, the only non-boomerish candidate the Republicans threw out there this year was Paul, and that’s just because he’s too crazy even for them.
I suppose I should explain that I don’t define “boomers” chronologically, but in terms of how they tend to react to things. It just so happens that the particular worldview for which “boomer” is now shorthand originated with and predominates in a particular chronological generation. But there are people far too old and far too young to be members of that generation who I would nonetheless categorize as boomers. Similarly, there are a lot of people the right age who don’t qualify as boomers, in my view. Howard Dean is one of them.
Obama is a very un-boomerish candidate, and his support reflects this. I think this is why so many Democratic boomers are having such a hard time with this election: they’re pissed off that their candidate was beaten by their children’s candidate, and they recognize that McCain is closer to them, worldview-wise, but that his policies are abhorrent to them. So, unable to decide which choice is more unappealing to them, they just sit back and gripe about Obama while playing various what-if games centered on Hillary Clinton, and McCain gets a free pass.

By: Kariann

Kariann — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:03:42 +0000

Ah Gray… you forget that McCain is WAY too old to be a boomer. He’s of that generation before boomers that Clinton’s 92 victory was supposed to erase. I think the only boomer(s) in this election will be the VP nominee(s).

By: Gray

Gray — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:02:03 +0000

Y’know, that’s one thing I resent Howard Zinn for: ruining my image of FDR, and dispelling what little idealism about Presidents I was was still carrying. When I learned that the labor reforms of the New Deal weren’t so much about recognizing workers’ rights, but were more about co-opting the leadership of the AFL and CIO and persuading them to piss away the political power of unions, I died a little.
Still, I do know what it’s like to passionately vote for a candidate (sort of. You don’t really vote at a caucus). In 2004, I ran back and forth between the Kucinich and Dean camps: knowing Uncle Denny couldn’t possibly win our precinct, I wanted to make sure he had viability. Dean was supposed to walk away with it, but I wasn’t sure, especially when the Kerry people scooped up the supporters of each candidate that failed to get viability, one at a time: first Sharpton, then Moseley Braun, then Clark, then Lieberman, then Gephardt, and finally Edwards. Suddenly, it was pretty close between Kerry and Dean, and after making sure that Kucinich would get and keep his single delegate, I sat with the Dean camp. At the end of the night, we were relieved: Dean had a small delegate lead over Kerry at our precinct, but our caucus had lasted especially long, and by the time we got to the car, the state had already been called for Kerry. The next couple of weeks were awfully hard to take.
The lesson I took from that experience was to hate the boomers even more. The Dean people were almost all under 40, and the Kerry people were mostly over 50. As each candidate lost viability, you could be certain that the boomers would gravitate to Kerry. The Kerry camp had a very smug air about it, as if these people were gonna show those punk Dean kids who really runs things. And they sure did. And then, in November, they showed us all again. This, more than anything else, is why I still have some enthusiasm for Obama left: he was able to beat the boomer candidate, something nobody has managed to do for a very long time. And I think he’ll do it again in November.