Sorry Republicans, insulting Boomers won't make Millenials love you

The first shots were fired this week when The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol charged right at Hillary Clinton, basically saying she was too old to be president. Sure, he couched it in the usual “Baby Boomers suck” language (which is revealingly adolescent of the 62-year-old pundit) but basically he’s making the case that Gen-X Rubio or Walker are the better choices for GOP voters:

He writes:

The boomer presidents [Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama] were indulged as young men. They then indulged themselves with the fancy that they should be president. The voters indulged them, too, passing over the question of their qualifications—and, indeed, excusing several manifest disqualifications.

So Hillary Clinton would fit right in. She would be a worthy successor to the boomer presidents who have stood at the pinnacle of American politics for almost a quarter century. Hillary’s would be the echt-boomer presidency. She would be our second affirmative action boomer president (after Obama), our second boomer legacy president (after Bush), and our second reflexively dishonest boomer president (after her husband).

It may be that every generation gets the presidents it deserves. But enough already. Surely it’s time—to use a phrase associated with the Clintons—to move on.


In other words, just die already.

One is left to imagine what the “accomplishments” of the younger Republicans he envisions becoming president might be. If it’s Walker, you’d have to say successfully evading an indictment and surviving a recall election are his main claims to fame. Marco Rubio has also managed to evade an indictment, and ran for Senate and won, so that’s something too. The rest of the pack are all … Baby Boomers. Every last one of them, from Huckabee to Fiorina to Santorum to Bush were born during the ’50s or early ’60s. Even Rand Paul (whom Kristol is definitely not endorsing) comes in right under the wire.

But again, this is really about the inevitable right-wing narrative that Hillary Clinton is an old hag. You knew they couldn’t resist it. And that’s when you run right up against a different demographic group, and it’s a doozy: Baby Boomer women. Take for example, the angry reaction to Kristol’s smug screed by Republican columnist Kathleen Parker in Tuesday’s Washington Post:

Is it the Clinton in Hillary he doesn’t like? Kristol led the charge to defeat her efforts to reform health care as first lady. Or is it the woman in Clinton he finds so offensive? Perhaps he prefers women in flirty skirts and high heels to sturdy women in pantsuits? It was he, after all, who pushed Sarah Palin as the worthiest running mate for John McCain.

Probably all of the above and something more. Implicitly — and rather coquettishly, I might add — Kristol just defined the terms of his assault on Jeb Bush. Rather than say that Bush is merely another of those indulged boomers, he laid it all at Hillary Clinton’s feet, damning the past three presidents, insulting millions of his own cohorts, and revealing a measure of self-contempt in the process.

Perhaps Kristol was exorcising some of his own demons with this column — resolving long-simmering issues resulting from having been an indulged, Ivy League boomer who didn’t serve in the military and whose accomplishments are in the vein of commenting on the actions of others.

Half of the electorate are women and half of the older demographic Kristol insulted as a bunch of losers are women, and a good many of those are women who usually vote Republican, like Kathleen Parker. It would seem to be rather reckless of Republicans to denounce so many potential voters with such a sweeping condemnation.