How Baby Boomer psychodrama infected the 2016 election

Clinton vs. Trump is the ultimate curse of the Boomers

The Boomers' last stand
(Image credit: AP Photo/Mike Groll, AP Photo/Charlie Neibegall)

Barack Obama's election to the presidency in 2008 seemed to promise the end of the Baby Boomer reign over American life. Even Obama seemed to know his rise was their downfall. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama commented that so much of our national politics felt like "the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage."

Well, the Boomers are ready to take the country back, putting their arthritic — excuse me, "overworked" — fingers around the levers of national power again. Donald Trump was born in 1946. Hillary Clinton was born just a year later. Trump was discipled by Roy Cohn, a veteran of the McCarthy investigations. Clinton was a young Goldwater girl turned Wellesley radical. The 2016 campaign is like the final chapter in the Boomer generation's tragic story.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.