07 Feb Talkin’ ’bout Their Generation
Most of the student leaders of the New Left movement are long gone. Abbie Hoffman died in 1989. Jerry Rubin died in 1994. Mario Savio died in 1996. And Tom Hayden died in 2016. Of those who are still alive, perhaps the most interesting is Jack Weinburg, who is well known and interesting primarily for one reason, an interview he gave to The San Francisco Chronicle in November 1964, which he later described as follows:
I was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter, and he was making me very angry. It seemed to me his questions were implying that we were being directed behind the scenes by Communists or some other sinister group. I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.
“Don’t trust anybody over 30” became a mantra of the New Left, of the anti-war movement, and of politically active Boomers in general (despite the fact that Weinberg, like the rest of the New Left leaders, was not a Boomer himself). Almost exactly a year after Weinberg’s famous interview, The Who famously put his and the New Left’s sentiments to music with one the most influential songs of the 1960s (and of the rock era, to be honest), “My Generation.”
People try to put us d-down(Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Ever since, and for a variety of reasons, the Left in Western politics has largely been seen as the ideology of the young. Democrats consistently pander to younger voters and even pre-voters. Likewise, every election season they and their friends in the media fret constantly about whether the nation’s youth will be swayed more by their political leftism or by their inherent apathy and lethargy. Every election, it seems, hinges on the “youth vote” and how motivated it is.
Given all of this, it was more than a little entertaining to watch the Democrats this week, out in the streets protesting. There, in the center of it all, leading the chant of “We will win!” was the oldest 74-year-old in the history of ever, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He was flanked by the 86-year-old Maxine “Mad Max” Waters and the 76-year-old New Orleans Congressman Al Green, who was literally waving his cane. I’d tell you to watch the video, but I know some of you have weak stomachs and/or a low tolerance for cringe. It’s as horrifying as you can imagine.
But then, that’s the Democratic Party today – not suitable for voters with weak stomachs and/or a low tolerance for cringe. It wasn’t just Joe Biden who was old and incoherent. He was merely a symptom of a much bigger problem. The Democrats in Washington today are ancient. They are o-l-d, old. In addition to Schumer, Nancy Pelosi is 84. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, DC) is almost 88. Silent Generation Democrats (those born in 1945 or earlier) outnumber Republicans 13-4. Sure, the oldest member of Congress is 91-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, but Republicans are supposed to be old. Democrats are the party of youth. Yet the average age of a Democrat in his Congress is one year older than the average Republican. Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry may not have died before they got old, but at 79 and 80, respectively, they’re still kids compared to half the Democrats in Congress.
To be fair, there are some younger Democrats in Congress. The problem is that many of them are borderline insane. It may be unwise at this moment to hitch one’s political wagon to the octogenarian Democrats, but is it any less unwise to hitch it to the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Rashida Tlaib?
The bottom line here is that the Democrats, generally, are represented in Washington by two basic types of people: the painfully old and the painfully out of touch. I know that AOC is a social media superstar, and I acknowledge her general politico-marketing skills. Still, it’s pretty clear that she and most of her Democratic generational cohort embrace an ideology that was roundly rejected by Americans this past November – including young Americans:
Since 2008, winning Democratic candidates have received at least 60% support from young voters, but Harris did not meet that threshold, getting 54%, according to early exit polls.
It was a loss especially pronounced in the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – where the vice president’s margins dropped significantly from President Biden’s commanding leads four years ago.
Michigan had the most sizable change. Harris and Trump received equal shares – 49% to 49% – of youth support in the state, a sobering 24-point drop from 2020.
Oh.
To top it all off, the Democrats and the media have been running around all week screeching that President Trump and Elon Musk have hired a bunch of “children” – 19, 21, 23, 24, and 25 years old, respectively – to torch the Washington establishment. It’s worth remembering, I think, that these are the same people who spent the last decade insisting that we all had to drive electric cars and surrender our air conditioners because a 16-year-old high school dropout from Sweden would get red-faced and yell at us if we didn’t. But that was then, and this is now. And now, she is more concerned about Jewish conspiracies to control the planet and they’re more concerned about whether the Old Country Buffet opens at 4:00 or 4:30 and whether they’ll have chocolate pudding or chocolate mousse.
C’est la vie, I suppose.
As for Jack Weinberg, he’ll be 85 in a couple of months. He’s lived a long and, hopefully, happy life. One final irony is that he was the guy who sparked the famous Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley 60 years ago last fall. All of his allies in the movement are long since departed, and the people whose politics he inspired are much older than 30. Just as importantly, they loathe free speech and detest those who defend it. There’s a reason we shouldn’t trust them, I guess.
