A New Generation of Leadership

Or perhaps, still the same old song

“It’s been a helluva week. I went from being a communist on Thursday to a Nazi by Monday.”

— Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D), quoted by Drop Site.

In a recent Substack chat exchange, following a Two Joes (that is, me and Trippi) podcast, I received a coveted “Ok Boomer” response from a young woman who apparently was unable to converse in language other than left-wing jargon. It was “obvious” to her that we had reached “late stage capitalism,” but I was too thick, and old, to recognize that. OK, Millenial! It was the first time I’d ever been on the receiving end of “OK Boomer” sobriquet. I took it as a badge of honor. Sort of.

I mean, I came into this game taking potshots at elderly liberals because of their unwillingness to move quickly enough against racial segregation or the Vietnam War. I never went so far as some. I never said, or thought, don’t trust anyone over thirty. David Dellinger, the most saintly of the antiwar leaders, was way over thirty. And I was soon to meet, and fall under the influence of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, it seemed, was born old. There were other ancients to admire, but we Boomers assumed we would do better than our elders, that we had unlocked the door to progressive nirvana…especially when it came to tearing down social and cultural barriers, and utilizing new technologies like the birth control pill.

We were wrong. Arrogantly, ignorantly so. And now the Democratic Party’s generational police are coming after us. The party’s leadership is too old, it is said—correctly. Boomer pols have passed their sell-by date—also largely correct. And now, suddenly, we have several races to demonstrate the energy and creativity of youthful candidates v. the woozy exhaustion of the elderly. There is Zohran Mamdani v. Andrew Cuomo in New York. And the 2026 Maine Senate race in which the very-elderly party hacks have encouraged the 77-year-old governor Janet Mills to run against the preppy-oysterman Graham Platner. In Massachusetts, Rep. Seth Moulton has decided to primary the ancient Ed Markey (I mean, Markey’s my age, approaching 80).

I have all the time in the world for Seth Moulton. I’ve know him for 15 years. We met, introduced by General David Petraeus, as Seth was leaving the Marines. In Iraq, Petraeus had seconded him to the Army from the Marines—an inter-service rarity—because Moulton had shown an uncanny ability to get things done, using Iraqi workers. In one instance, Petraeus challenged Seth to put together an Iraqi team of contractors and workers to build a fortification on the border with Iran.

“Petraeus was an amazing boss,” Moulton told me at the time. “Our mission was to defeat the military bureaucracy. We were able to build border forts, using Iraqi engineers and work crews, for one-fifth the price that the American contractors were charging and in one-third the time. Our proposals went right to his desk, rather than through the bureaucracy. The only thing he demanded of us was success.”

That story, in itself, seals the deal for me with Seth. Actual real-life experience, cutting through red tape—and under fire. A Democratic Party stocked with candidates like that—Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss is another, as is Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin—would be, I believe, an electoral juggernaut. I’m ready for them to take charge, to displace the Boomer generation—or I would be…but I’m old to fall for knee-jerk “truths,” and I’ve learned that youth, especially the idealistic lefties who gravitate toward the Democratic Party, is not always the wisest state of grace. It helps, as in Moulton’s case, if you’ve served a cause greater than yourself, and been forced to do hard work under adverse conditions. In other words, if you’ve served and sacrificed. I’m biased toward military veterans, yes, but also toward Teach For America veterans and former Peace Corps volunteers and people who served as cops and fire fighters.

Trouble is, the Democratic Party doesn’t swing that way. At least, not since my father’s generation. Too many of the new crop of candidates come from academic-lefty backgrounds, or from upper middle class professional families, or from “interest groups” blinded by their self-interest. Zohran Mamdani, a perfect dilettante, is one such. One wonders if Zohran could last a week under Seth Moulton’s command on the Iran-Iraq border. But, in its munificence, the Democratic Party has granted him Andrew Cuomo—a really good governor, but burdened by a garbage barge of baggage now—as his opponent.

And then, there is Graham Platner in Maine, a perfect candidate for our showbiz era, a rich kid—he went to Hotchkiss; his father was a prominent. architect—who pitched up as a fisherman on the Maine coast, a faux proletarian. He is also a Marine, though one who sports a Nazi tattoo—-which he had inked over recently—and once described himself as a communist. Sounds like a really stable guy. Moulton has endorsed him, out of generational solidarity: “as a Marine veteran myself, he is far from the first Marine I’ve met who got a tattoo that he didn’t fully understand.”

Which is generous. I’m not ready to give Platner the benefit of the doubt just yet. He seems eager to play on the Bernie Sanders-AOC team, which portends a disastrous electoral future for Dems. Again, I wish the Democrats had been able to find a fresher candidate than Janet Mills to oppose him, but she was a good governor. And their opponent is the geriatric Susan Collins, a mere babe of 73,, a Republican who promises independence but delivers vapors.

I had, and still have, great hopes for two other Democrats this year, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively. Both served our country: Sherrill as a Navy helicopter pilot and Spanberger with the CIA. Both are running standard-issue, plain-vanilla Democratic campaigns, though, unwilling to step away from the party’s cultural orthodoxy. Perhaps they’ll govern more boldly—if given the chance (Sherrill is getting shredded by her Trumpist opponent’s ads).

So yes, bring on the next generation, some of them. Show the Boomers the door, most of us. We’ve earned a brusque exiting. But the fact remains: even the new Democrats are out of step with America, still playing 20th century politics. They are nowhere having candidates who don’t speak consultant-pureed English; they have few candidates willing to defy the “groups” that run the party, who are willing to break the party’s identitarian straitjacket—Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of a Person “of color” or a woman (except Laura Loomer) or a gay person or any self-identified grievance processor. Trump won, and dominates, because he smashed the Main Street culture of the Republican Party. He just about called John McCain a coward for “getting shot down.” People shook their heads: Well, that’s not true, they said. McCain’s a hero. But you got to give it to Trump, they also said: He speaks his mind, however pestilently.

How important is the fact that Trump sounds different from other politicians? There was an interesting story in the New York Times over the weekend about Iowa farmers, whose livelihood is being crushed by Trump’s thoughtless, notional tariff policies. You might expect some righteous Middle American indignation. I mean, these were the sort of folks who spewed vitriol at Joe Biden, even as he pursued economic policies that benefitted them. But no. For example:

Doug Keller, 63, who farms about 15 miles southwest of Waterloo, said he was hopeful the president will reach a new trade deal with China that will benefit farmers in the long run. Matt Wyatt, 51, who also voted for Mr. Trump, agreed.

“Money is tighter than it should be,” said Mr. Wyatt, who works with Mr. Keller to grow corn and soybeans on close to 1,500 acres of land. “But we try to stay optimistic around here.”

As a journalist, I can tell you that you go into a story like this looking for contrast, looking for Trumpers pissed off at their man because he has wrecked their economic lives. But they’re just nowhere to be found. These farmers, some of whom have been on the land for more than 100 years, are being crushed. China has discovered that Brazilian soybeans are plumper and cheaper than those from Iowa. A way of life—a mythic American way of life—is threatened. But that is not nearly as important as the negative feelings that Iowans—famously nice people—have cultivated for Democrats, because the Dems evince an endless support for an unconventional, permissive culture that they consider unfair. Democrats seem blind to this, including too many of their next generation of candidates. But ditching the identitarian baloney is where their task begins.

Blacks at Harvard

Part of the Dems’ problem is that they’ve been awash in a media culture whose practitioners were marinated in the turgid slop of the Ivies and other palaces of self-satisfied ideology. So you will find a story like this one from The Times, all too often:

Asian American Students Increase at Harvard, as Black Students Decline

Oh dear! Heaven forfend! Can segregated water fountains be far behind?

Except when you read into the story. You don’t have to go far, just a few sentences:

Harvard College said that 11.5 percent of its first-year students identify as Black this fall, down from 14 percent last year and 18 percent in 2023, before the Supreme Court ban took effect.

Wait a minute. That’s not so bad, in fact it’s pretty good. Blacks represent about 12% of America’s population, a slice disproportionately weighted toward the working poor and underclass. Harvard is as elite as you can get—but despite that, blacks are throwing proportionate weight there. 11.5%! In my book, that’s a triumph! (Indeed, one wonders about the quality of the 2023 matriculants. I’ll take this year’s non-affirmative-actioned candidates any time.). (Though I fear a disproportionate number of them are legacies.)

In my experience, the creativity and intelligence and resilience—and humanity—of our black population has been an American blessing. We white folks don’t deserve this sort of treatment; we deserve far worse. The very least we can do is acknowledge the achievements of our black neighbors, rather than constantly emphasizing the roadblocks and brickbats we throw at them. People like Ta Nehisi Coates can make a fine living playing off white liberal guilt, but they do not reflect the ever-ascending quality of black life in America. Boy, are we lucky to have these folks working their butts off to become part of our great mongrel society.