This is why the Presidential Debate didn’t feel “unprecedented” to Millennials and GenX voters

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, not just within our Republic but also internationally. Should Trump win, that victory would produce catastrophic results nationally and globally. The wars that are raging now in Gaza and Ukraine will undoubtedly worsen under a far-right administration, leaving the most vulnerable people in these conflicts exposed to extreme danger and death. On the home front, economists fear what a second Trump presidency would do to the gains we have made during the post-Covid rebuild. The former president has made it no secret that he will use a second term as a revenge campaign to go after everyone who has attempted to hold him accountable for his egregious actions on January 6th, his Supreme Court picks, extensive abuses of power, and repeated lies. There is no question that our nation and the world would be worse off with President Trump behind the wheel again.

Listen, I am not trying to brag, but I am almost certain that I am on Trump's revenge list. Should I have missed that list for some reason, there is no question that I am on Putin’s long list of adversaries. I am fully aware of what is at stake here should Trump win again. Within my immediate friend group are such notorious people like Stormy Daniels, Steve Hofstetter, Nadya Tolokonnikova, and David G. McAfee: all of us have gained the ire from the likes of Putin, Trump, and their acolytes who, without question, would love to see any of us behind bars or worse. Outside of the fact that Trump reclaiming the Oval Office would have tangible consequences within my own life and the lives of my friends, it would have unimaginable effects on nearly every minority community in the country. Not only would his regime end any attempts to police reform, he would likely declare groups like Black Lives Matter terrorist organizations; but everything from a national abortion ban to undoing marriage equality is on the table if Trump is gifted, yet again, the highest office in the land.

I understand what is on the line here, personally and intimately.

I am not so sure that the Democratic National Convention does.

Over the years, we have been blistered with campaigns like “Vote Blue No Matter Who” in an attempt to steer the Titanic away from the iceberg of fascism on the horizon. I understand the play, but could we possibly have some better players?

When my dad turned 74 this year, I quipped, “You are almost old enough to run for president!”

The joke landed well with my largely conservative family because it’s a neutral jab at both candidates. I’ve learned over the years how to tiptoe around our familial differences while still sending a little zinger in there now and again. I love my dad, and as much as we disagree on many things, he is a gentle man, and to look at him work, you’d never guess his age. Yet, as someone who has known him for forty years now, I can see how age has affected him in different ways. You know why I can? Because I am not a spring chicken myself. I am old enough to remember all the Over the Hill parties my parents attended when their friends turned 40. I also remember the myriad of jokes on sitcoms about what being in your forties looked like. Guess what? A lot of them are correct. My kids were teasing me the other day about the fact that I lost my train of thought while telling a story. When we went to pick my 13-year-old up from camp, my oldest daughter, who is 19, told me, “Dad, I will pick up the trunk because I don’t want you to hurt your back.” I spent half an hour looking for my keys that morning. Nothing is working like it used to. I spent the better part of June shoving suppositories up my rectum and sitting on a cushion while driving around town. You know, just like in my youth.

I know my dad is getting older because I am getting older, and my kids are getting older. I also do not believe that age alone should be used against anyone when running for public office. There are, without question, people under 35 who are well-equipped to lead our nation, and those in their 70s and 80s are sharp as a whip. To me, the debate about the debate has nothing to do with age and everything to do with agility.

Make no mistake, Trump did worse than Biden. He lied through his teeth while also having his own wondering moments. The problem is, we already knew that. Trump did nothing novel on that stage; he was the same grotesque abuse of power monster that he has always been. Worse than that, I believe that Trump was lying more on purpose. A colleague of mine, Heather Cox Richardson, recently wrote on the debate and exposed that Trump was using a rhetoric technique known as the gish gallop. This tactic is defined by someone abandoning typical debate norms, instead choosing to lop on so many lies that it stuns and disorients their opponent, leaving them confused as to which of these examples of misinformation to attack first. The debate stage that Trump and Biden shared the other night was the perfect formula for this trick to work: two minutes to confound his opponent with lies and only one minute to respond. Even on Biden’s best day, what Trump did would have been difficult for anyone to overcome. Worse of all, the results in this case gave the appearance of Trump being in control and Biden feeble.

The calls for Biden to exit the race were so swift that even I was shocked. Not because I disagreed with the sentiment but because of how uniform the response was. Just a few weeks before the debate, I floated the idea of Biden stepping aside during a Q&A at a public event, and I was nearly booed off the stage. Post the debate, the cries from Democrats calling on the President to hand over the reigns were deafening. As I’ve taken the last few days to re-watch the debate, listen to the voices of experts, and attempt to find some context for what must be done next to avoid us driving directly off the cliff, I came to a realization. The demands for his stepping aside isn’t simply some arbitrary issue with age; it’s because Biden failed the test that his own campaign set up. There have been concerns for a while now that the President was not up for a second term. The whole reason this debate happened is because there were doubts, but those within the Biden Campaign assured us all that he was fit to serve, that our concerns were invalid, and that we would see that during the debate.

We didn’t.

The Democratic Party caught itself in its own mousetrap and is now attempting to gaslight everyone into thinking we didn’t see what we just saw. We were told that his previous moments of freezing on camera, glitching out, and losing his train of thought were of no concern. We were repeatedly assured by those closest to the President that what we were all seeing wasn’t a genuine representation of “the Joe we know,” and he was ready to “prove that” at the debate. I was one of the countless millions who sat there in front of my television, hoping for exactly that. I wanted Dark Brandon to walk out on stage and mop the floor with Trump. Don’t forget that it was Millennials who made the Barry and Joe memes so popular. There is a familiarity with Joe licking his ice cream behind avatars that always made him seem a little edgy, and we liked it. I genuinely believe that if he had not lost Beau and chosen to run in 2015, he would have swept the races, and we would have avoided the first four years of Trump. Instead, Joe Biden made the type of decision that has endeared him to so many; he chose not to seek power so that he and his family could heal from a tremendous loss. He became the example of the Elder Statesmen, using his voice and power to promote democratic causes and candidates. It almost looked like the old guard was ready to pass the baton.

Psych!

Screenshots of popular the popular Barry and Joe memes in 2016

When he returned to the political stage, he promised to “defeat Trump.” While he succeeded at the ballot box, Trump is not a defeated candidate; he is currently winning or narrowing losing (within the margin of error) in nearly every national poll. Biden didn’t defeat Trump; if anything, Trump is a greater threat today than he was in 2020. Trump said as much from the debate stage. When he wasn’t lying, he espoused ideas that should scare us all. He is a danger and a menace to society. Have I made it clear enough yet that I really, really, really, promise, really, don’t f+cking like Trump? Are my street creds now validated to such an extreme by my acknowledging that not only are all Americans but also my close friends and family, are in real danger under another Trump presidency? Do you believe me yet? Okay good. Because it’s true.

I hate Trump.

I hate his policies.

I hate what he has done.

I hate everything he stands for.

I hate Trump. I hate Trump. I hate Trump.

Furthermore, I will not vote for Trump. You know why? Because I hate him. I think he is about as god-awful a person as I’ve ever laid eyes upon. I cheered when Biden said that he had the morals of an alley cat. I immediately thought Biden should apologize to the alley cats; they don’t deserve that. I am ashamed of how much I hate Trump. I wish I was a better Christian and could force myself to love him in spite of himself, pray for those who persecute you, and all that business, but I really, truly, genuinely do hate him with every fiber of my being. I hate how he has made us treat each other. Should we end up with Trump for a second term, I will not become silent or complicit. I will remain a vigilant voice against every atrocity he commits. I will take whatever punishment his administration would bring against me with great pride. I would consider it my patriotic duty to serve whatever sentence given for my defiance in the face of tyranny. I understand what is at stake here.

Yet, over the last few days I have been called an agist, alarmist, and unpatriotic simply for asking if it is time for a changing of the guard. How can it be unpatriotic for us as Americans to ask for the system to be used as designed? Did the founders not set up a clear line of succession should be president be reposed, removed, or resign? Did our nation not set within the Constitution a means for removal of the president should they become unfit to serve and give that power of decision-making to their cabinet within the 25th Amendment? I believe that our most sacred document as a nation predicted a moment such as this and prepared us as a people to do something remarkable: continue to be the masters of our own destiny by securing the nation from the individual egos of any man or women who ascend to neither a throne nor alter but a desk where they are tasked with doing the work of the American people, ever mindful of our impact on the rest of this planet we all collectively call home.

The talking points now being thrown at us imply that the founders were somehow agist for acknowledging the natural course of time and saying maybe we should have a backup person just in case the president ever dies like other humans do.

Last week, my dad got an idea for a business. He is prone to this and has done so his entire life. Some of them have failed, many have succeeded, and he is a smart man. I told him I didn’t believe it was a good idea, “Dad, I think it’s time to begin sunsetting some things, not putting more on your plate. Don’t you want to enjoy the fruits of the labor you have already done?” He told me he agreed, “It’s just fun to still dream,” and then took my mother on a vacation instead. Because that’s what he should be doing. My dad has worked hard his whole life; he brought our family out of poverty and homelessness and now runs a lavender farm in Florida. He should enjoy that, spend time with his grandkids, and, one day, be ready to hear the words, “Rest well, good and faithful servant.” Now, as a result of that conversation, my siblings and I will be meeting soon to discuss how we will begin together, as a family, collectively dividing up the responsibilities that used to rest on my parents, like who will plan Thanksgiving this year and, I am sure, even more grave discussions that none of us are looking forward to. Because that is what grownups do, we prepare, plan, and have tough conversations.

This is a conversation that many of my friends, mostly comprised of fellow Millennials and esteemed GenXers, are now having as we are now tasked with the difficult job of becoming the adult children to aging parents.

Biden failed the debate differently than Trump because the expectations weren’t the same. No one expected Trump to tell the truth or suddenly be indued with a conscience. We did hope to see Biden hold his feet to the fire, hit back with tough questions, and walk off into the night with his head held high. This simply didn’t happen, and now we are being hit back with the same responses we were given before the debate: that we don’t know “the Joe we know,” and he was ready to “prove that” at a later date. I’m sorry, Mr. President, this was your moment. This is what the debate was built up to be by his own team. He failed the test by every metric known to man, and yet we are being gaslit from both sides as if that night was a shining moment for America, pitting fascism and democracy against each other. But we already knew that; we just aren’t sure anyone else in power does.

Forgetting that the majority of Millennials and GenXers overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders (82), we are now being lobbed as agists for our concerns surrounding Biden specifically. I guess my question becomes: is science agism? Is it agist to look at the fact that Biden is frail and acknowledge that reality? If this is all agism, why are David Axelrod (69 nice!) and Carl Bernstein (80) asking these same questions? Are they agist when they ask them? Is it agist that we have an age limit that you must be 35 to run for President? By that action, are we saying that people between the ages of 18 and 34 have no stock in the governance of our nation? Or is it possible that with age comes wisdom, and we are all older now, so the same gaslighting techniques don’t work on us in our 40s and 50s the same way they did when we were teenagers? We know Biden is old because we are old. Calling us children doesn’t make you middle-aged any more than saying Biden can beat Trump will make it so.

Nothing happening now isn’t something Millennials and GenXers have experienced for decades: sit down, it’s not your turn, you’ll understand when you are older, the adults are talking now, go back to your room. Well, I am sorry, but we are the grownups now, and frankly, another reality of age is that neither candidate for president will be around long enough to see the consequences of their actions, but we will. As one of the largest voting blocks in our country, we are being faced with some tough decisions about what the future will look like for our children, your grandchildren, and it’s not looking great. Currently, we are facing a time without access to abortion, and it seems that contraception is next. Many of us are facing having our marriages invalidated, no hope for retirement, and a planet that is on the brink of self-destruct. None of that accounts for what is happening on the world stage and how we are also standing at the edge of a potential global war should any one piece fall apart.

I do not want my children to grow up in this world.

I am a voter who wants to see something done.

I am not a child.

I am not even a spring chicken.

I am on daily medication because my insides don’t work right anymore.

I take fiber gummies every night to help me poop.

I am old.

You are old.

Get the f+ck over it because the emperor doesn’t have any goddamn clothes on, and if we don’t just say that, then this country might not make it to its 250th birthday. Because though our president is old, our nation is young, and whether or not the great American experiment is to last rests on his shoulders. But it also rests on the ability to live according to the very documents, examples, and precedents left for us to follow. Some of that includes lines of succession and a clear path forward for the tragic day any president can no longer serve in the capacity in which they once stood.

There is no doubt that President Biden has the most experience of anyone currently in the race, a point driven home ad nauseam by pundits since the debate. Biden is the most qualified. But who’s fault is that, really? Shouldn’t the leadership of our country been equipping the next generation instead of telling us to wait our turn? Wasn’t it the responsibility of the grownups around us to take us under their wing, mentor us, and then step aside so that we could become the next leaders to bring our nation into the new frontier of what is possible? In so many ways, we are being blamed for what will happen if Biden fails, but I think this is a moment for personal accountability for what hasn’t happened that led us to a moment such as this. I’m sorry that too many millennials have dirty laundry to run for president, like selling pictures of our buttholes online; I guess y’all should have given us a better economy. Yes, you can blame everyone from Bush to Trump for the failures of our nation, but what have the grownups done to stop them? Now, we are the grownups, and it has become incumbent upon us to reshape the nation as we see it. Part of the responsibility, the missing component in it all, is that this only works if those in power are willing to step aside to make room for us.

As Millennials, we have felt pushed aside, unheard, and increasingly frustrated with the status quo of the lesser of two evils pendulum. The real problem here is that Democrats have used the fear of existential threat to win races for far too long; they stopped inspiring and started strongman-ing their way for decades. It’s not a question of if Republican policies are bad but not providing an inspiring alternative message to the type of Star Trek future we could have if we just stopped sucking so much. They’ve been appealing to our fears instead of our hopes, forgetting that the idea of HOPE is precisely what got Obama into office at 47 years of age. It is that very problem of feeling unheard that has made two generations of citizens feel less disempowered, and now here we are about to lose it all over bravado.

What a message of hope instead of fear looks like

But what if we were heard? What if the Democrats did something unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime and actually listened? Imagine a world where Biden stood up before the American people and said he listened. Then, instead of walking away in shame, he threw his entire weight behind someone ready to lead us into a bright and hope-filled future. Wouldn’t that be amazing? It would contrast us against the Republicans as digging their heels behind Trump despite all his flaws but us as willing to make drastic changes for the sake of the Republic. That, I believe, would be a defining moment of the American story: that when faced with the real fear of totalitarianism, Biden was the better man, the stronger man, the elder statements, willing to step aside for the greater good of the people he has diligently served for longer than we have been alive.

I think it would result in the largest turnout for any election in American history, and we would avoid the oblivion we all fear.

In the spring of 1797, the first president of these United States made a decision to step down. At this time, there was no constitutional amendment dictating the number of terms a president could serve, but a precedent was created when Washington ultimately chose to lead by example for the sake of the nation he helped found. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone at the time that he was the best equipped to serve, but he knew in his own heart that it would be in the best interest of the nation for him to make way for someone else, lest we become a monarchy again. Today, we are faced with a similar challenge: on the one hand, we have an elder statesman who has, for better or worse, served his nation, and on the other, a tyrannical would-be dictator who wishes to full steam ahead crash our Republic into that iceberg.

President George Washington (65) enlisted the aid of his much younger compatriot Alexander Hamilton (39) to inscribe the words that he would address the nation with to allow them time to realize that he would, in fact, not seek a third term. His remarks have built a lasting tradition of presidents attempting the type of leadership that, to the best of their ability, puts the country ahead of their own pride and ambitions. So, at the risk of being accused, yet again, of agism, I will leave you with these words, pinned by Hamilton at the discretion and direction of the sitting president, as he prepared our nation for the truly unprecedented: a leader choosing to step aside of the good of the nation.

(🎵I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do, I wasn't aware that was something a person could do. I’m perplexed, are they going to keep on replacing whoever's in charge? If so, who's next?🎵)

“Friends and Citizens:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made…

…Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”

Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)