Is Martin O'Malley Ageist?

Does Martin O'Malley have a problem with old people?

No, this picture of O'Malley isn't him responding to such a loaded question.  But I'm still asking it.

We all remember how O'Malley dismissed Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as being tied to the politics of the past - i.e., they're old.  O'Malley's slogan for his 2016 presidential campaign was "New Leadership," which was his way of saying, "I'm not old."  And I don't need to tell you again about how he got booed during a presidential debate in saying he wanted to offer "a different perspective from my generation" on foreign policy in response to his over-65 competitors.

So yes, I think he does have a problem with older people.  He looked at the two Medicare-age people running for the Democratic presidential nomination and decided to run himself because they'd been getting long in the tooth, the way the punks and the grunge rockers thought that it was time for the older generations of  rock and rollers to hit the showers.  But this distrust O'Malley has for anyone over 65 who's not his mom (his mother Barbara worked for five-term U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski [D-MD] until the very day Mikulski retired; Barbara O'Malley was in her late eighties when her boss stepped down) goes back a long way.  In the summer of 1983, many liberal Democrats looking for an alternative to Walter Mondale, the front-runner for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, turned to Alan Cranston, the senior U.S. Senator from California, and his presidential campaign, which was centered around nuclear disarmament.  O'Malley preferred Gary Hart, who was more of a long-shot presidential candidate than Cranston.  Of course, Hart won the 1984 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, giving Mondale a run for his money, while Cranston was the first 1984 Democratic presidential candidate to quit the race.  When O'Malley himself was a long-shot presidential candidate in 2015 and 2016, he cited Hart and how he came out of nowhere at a time when people were talking about Cranston, and he dismissed Cranston's presidential bid in retrospect.

Cranston was 69 years old in the summer of 1983, when the Democratic presidential hopefuls for 1984 started campaigning in earnest in Iowa and New Hampshire; Hart, who promised a "new generation of leadership" (sound familiar?) was 46.  Also, Cranston was three years younger than President Ronald Reagan but looked a hundred years older.   Maybe O'Malley didn't mean to scoff at Cranston's advanced age when he was talking about the 1984 campaign, but that's how it came across.  O'Malley is obviously drawn to youth and vitality; he has little tolerance for age and tradition.

And that's a good thing. Because the Democratic gerontocracy is getting ridiculous.  The party elders have gotten too elderly, and they are too set in their ways.  Nancy Pelosi is 77; her fellow San Franciscan, Dianne Feinstein, is 84. Neither one of them have quite come around to single-payer health care yet - and at their ages, we shouldn't expect them to.  Joe Biden will be 78 years old in 2020 - and he's thinking of running for President again?  Give that man a Harold Stassen bumper sticker!  And Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 in 2020, may also run?  Seriously?  There's no one under 65 who can go after that dotty septuagenarian Donald Trump?  The very fact that Bill Maher is still talking up Sanders as a potential presidential candidate for 2020 and complaining against ageism (while ignoring younger presidential prospects like, well, O'Malley) doesn't make sense until you realize that Maher will turn 65 in January 2021.   

What some may see as ageism, I see as a healthy reaction to an encrusted, tired Democratic establishment that has no new ideas and no new blood, and I see that this establishment must be retired. Not that they'll go quietly.  O'Malley has urged young Democrats to go out and try to challenge and wrest power from the old guard, because they have to understand that they're not going to be handed power by the old guard.  And that's the right attitude for a young, multiracial party rank-and-file when it's run by a bunch of old white people.

I just hope O'Malley stops talking about his beginnings in the 1984 Gary Hart campaign, because that ironically only shows his age (54).  You see, millennials neither know nor care who Gary Hart is.  The number of people who remember him are few, and those few don't remember him too fondly (and given the political climate around the "sex issue," who could blame them?).  So if O'Malley wants to be taken seriously, he has to stop reminiscing about his own past and stay focused on the present.

In case you're wondering, Martin O'Malley turns 65 in January 2028 - which, if he is elected President in 2020 and re-elected in 2024, would mean he'd be getting ready to retire himself.

I have more about O'Malley - and his latest endeavor - coming soon.