Don’t worry

It is the last Saturday in July, and I’ve got to say that I’m feeling much better than I did the last Saturday in June. And not just because I’m off pain meds, which you may question after reading this blog post. Thankfully, I’m walking without a cane, climbing stairs and driving. (The new knee’s healing nicely, thanks. And the left one feels great, too, because I’m never doing that again. Hella no. Ask me in six months.) As I was saying, I’ve been a little worried this week because since last Sunday afternoon, I’ve stopped being very worried, and that concerns me.

Honestly, I swear to you I drafted this post long before Stephen Colbert used an “I’m not as worried” joke with a similar punchline on Wednesday’s “Late Night.” Colbert blamed his diminishing angst on Kamala Harris, calling her “our next president.” I also blame her for easing my worries. Amen, sister.

Before Sunday afternoon, I struggled with what to tell fresh-faced, first-time voters casting their ballots in the November election. Not that any of them have asked me for advice. Yet.

Indeed, I have several great-nieces and nephews who are or will be eligible to vote in their first presidential election this November. I figured I could at least offer them a bit of wisdom as someone who has voted in every election since 1978.

But I’m afraid all I could come up with was this: “Between the two candidates, Joe Biden’s the better geezer.” Hmm. Not very convincing. Or, old man vs. con man. Again, unhelpful to my cause.

Oscar Wilde famously said that “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.” What he forgot to add was that with age sometimes comes replacement parts.

Anyway, as a lifelong Democrat, that rather lame example as a show of support certainly wouldn’t have changed my mind if I were on the fence. And so, here’s what I would say instead:

I believe that a more inclusive democracy empowers young voters. In the United States, they already have strength in numbers: Voters aged 18-34 will make up more than 40 million potential voters in 2024. That’s nearly one-fifth of the American electorate.

While we’re on the subject, here’s more from Statista Q’s research department:

• Four years ago, in the 2020 presidential election, about 55 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 participated in the election.
• It was a significant increase from the previous election year (2016), when about 44 percent of youths voted.
• In the last 48 years, the highest youth turnout rate was in 1972, when 55.4 percent of these youths voted. (Can you say Richard M. Nixon?)

Back in the day – from 1988 to 1995 – I lived and worked as a journalist in Delaware at the (Wilmington) News-Journal, a Gannett-owned newspaper. One of my esteemed colleagues, Celia Cohen, was a longtime Wilmington reporter who covered Delaware politics better than anyone. She wrote about Biden in her 2002 book Only in Delaware, a political history of the nation’s First State.

(Aside: I tried to buy a copy online, but it sells for $321.32 on Amazon. I’m not making this up. Maybe it’s signed. That’s a bit steep, even for 500 pages of your stellar prose, Cohen. Jeff Bezos can stuff it.)

Anyway, her book was cited in a May 2 New York Times article headlined “Joe Biden, the Ultimate D.C. Veteran, Has Never Seen a Campaign Like This.” The gist? In 30 years of Senate bids, Biden never encountered a serious threat to his office. He easily swept challengers aside. His GOP opponents were underfunded, little-known, inexperienced or some combination of the three. From 1973 to 2009, “Incumbency gave him a staggering advantage.”

Let me say this about Joseph R. Biden: The senator I remember from my short time in Delaware was quick on his feet during interviews and debates and among constituents. Opponents never wanted Biden to speak first at a public forum because he would likely use up all of their time as well as his. That man could talk the feathers off a chicken. Most often, his re-election bumper stickers simply said “Joe,” as Delawareans called him, even if they didn’t agree with his politics.

But that was the old, albeit younger Joe Biden, before he became President Barack Obama’s running mate, serving as vice president from 2009-2017. Before he was elected our 46^th U.S. president in 2020. Now at 81, it’s apparent that Joe has lost some of that vitality and vigor. It’s hard to watch. It’s upsetting that it went ignored. And it angered me that he became the butt of late night TV host jokes.

Yet in one single act of clarity, Joe created his legacy: to protect America by putting his country before himself.

And that is something TFG would have never thought of in a billion years.

Back to last Sunday. When President Biden announced that he had decided not to run for a second term, I was partly sad, mostly grateful and somewhat relieved. By Monday, I was feeling optimistic and less worried. Tuesday brought more enthusiasm than I had felt in months. On Wednesday, a close friend of mine declared herself “almost giddy.” By week’s end, another said she felt as if she were on a Dove salted caramel chocolate high.

I’m hoping to experience that in November. No sugar necessary.

I can now say this with certainty to anyone – whatever age – who asks: I’m with Kamala Harris. And not just because she’s a smart, trailblazing woman who served as a U.S. senator and attorney general in California, and is the first Black/South Asian American woman ever to lead a major party ticket and run for president. It’s because she’s on the right side of the issues that are important to me as an American. Women’s reproductive health care. LGBTQ+ rights. Social Security and Medicare. Economic policy. Climate change. The U.S. border.

That’s the Democratic Party, my friends. It’s a big tent with room for everyone.

Pretty “brat,” if you ask me. (Google it, Boomers. Brat is the buzzword of the summer. It’s not just a noun anymore and doesn’t only mean spoiled child. Be bold. Take risks. Wear chartreuse. Hence the use of that ugly, distorted image at the top of this blog post.)

And to all eligible youths: Get yourself registered to vote, do your homework on the issues and the candidates, and cast your ballot – either via absentee or in person – on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Bring your ID. And every vote counts is not a cliche.

As Harris’s mother Shyamala Gopalan said, “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.”

Too much for a bumper sticker, but I’m not worried. If four blurry letters centered on a puke-green square is brat, then so am I.