Old age has acquired a bad name during this year’s presidential race. Three weeks ago, the two major party candidates were to be the oldest ever to appear on the ballot for the nation’s top job. After watching President Biden and former President Trump struggle on the stump, nearly 80 percent of Americans said that there should be age limits for people in national office.
Now, millions of Americans are giddy with optimism because Biden passed the torch to Vice President Harris. Chronologically speaking, we can’t call her young. She will turn 60 just before the election — but she exudes youthful energy, idealism and joy. After nearly a decade of Trump darkness, it’s as though Harris has uncorked a bottle of sunshine.
But regardless of any future age limit on elected officials, there will be no age limit on political activism. These final months of the 2024 election are shaping up as an opportunity for the baby boom generation to leave a historic legacy related to the social and environmental progress it forced in the 1960s and 1970s.
Most Americans older than 60 are baby boomers. Many, mostly college students, were the social and environmental warriors of 50 years ago. They helped spur Congress to pass historic laws on civil rights, voting rights, equal rights for women and environmental protection.
But that legacy did not last. Most of the laws still exist, but racism, misogyny, xenophobia and ecological ruin are ascendant again. Swastika-toting racists march in the streets. Armed militants hope for a new civil war. America’s highest court is turning back the clock on women’s rights and environmental protection. And while Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 proved that presidents could be held accountable under the law, the Supreme Court has decided that’s no longer true. Republicans are methodically suppressing voting rights. Millions of Americans are devoted to a would-be dictator running for president, with open aspirations to destroy democracy.
The future looks grim for the children and grandchildren of baby boomers. Two months ago, a CBS News-YouGov poll asked Americans under 30 about the boomers’ legacy. The young respondents said they are inheriting a bad environment (61 percent), less opportunity (55 percent) and a more dangerous world (51 percent).
In June, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that millennial and Generation Z voters (those between 18 and 43) are pessimistic about critical problems like economic inequality, climate change and the future of democracy. The study found that “a sense of fatalism extends across the right, center, and left.”
Elders have the power to do something about this by organizing to decide the election. Today, the baby boom generation consists of more than 76 million Americans between the ages of 60 and 79. They are not the biggest generation — millennials have taken that title — but they are reliable voters. Since 1988, more than two-thirds of citizens over 65 have voted in presidential elections, consistently higher than any other age group.
Nearly 72 percent of eligible elders voted in the last presidential election, well ahead of other Americans. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the elder turnout in this year’s six battleground states ranged from 73 percent in Georgia to 79 percent in Arizona.
The elders’ influence could be even more significant this year. The CBS/YouGov poll found that 94 percent of Americans 65 and older say they definitely will vote in November.
However, there are some challenges. Americans have been found to lean more Republican as they age. In 1998, sociologist John B. Williams at Boston College concluded, “It is unlikely that there will be a sharp increase in political activism among the baby boomers as they move into old age.”
Conversely, this is an exceptional time and an unusual election. Trump stands against virtually everything boomers tried to achieve 50 years ago. He is primarily to blame for America’s regression into racism and sexism, the attack on environmental protections and the threat to our democracy. He lacks the character, intelligence and policy knowledge to be president. Defeating him and consigning MAGA to the proverbial ash-bin of history would be a worthwhile gift to the future.
Taking to the streets is not the only way boomers can assert influence. They can engage in cyber-activism and checkbook activism. They can vote for Democrats up and down the ticket so that President Harris has a supportive Congress to repair the damage Trumpism has done by pressuring Republicans in the House and Senate to kill immigration reform, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights bill, repairs to the Voting Rights Act and women’s reproductive rights.
They can support initiatives like the Third Act, created by Bill McKibben, 63, one of America’s leading climate activists. It is “a community of Americans over 60 determined to change the world for the better” by harnessing “unparalleled generational power to safeguard our climate and democracy.” Or they can back JanePac, the political action committee created by the activist and actress Jane Fonda, 87, to raise money for young climate-action candidates running for state and local elective offices.
However, the top priority is to elect America’s first female president and second president of color. It’s time. The United States is suffering from a toxic dose of testosterone. A woman in the Oval Office — this woman — might be the cure. And Harris’s election would be a clear rebuke to today’s ugly impulses.
Speaking about his dream, Martin Luther King Jr. said we are “confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” Today, that urgency applies to the planet’s stability, democracy’s fate and what may be the last chance for baby boomers to create positive lives for those who follow. If they revive the spirit of the ’60s and ’70s in this critical election, future generations will think of them forever as good ancestors.
William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and contributor to “Democracy in a Hotter Time.” He is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.