Editor’s note: This commentary is by Stanley R. Sloan, of Richmond, a native Vermonter who is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, has taught in the winter term at Middlebury College for 15 years, following a career of government service at the Congressional Research Service, the CIA and as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. His latest book, the basis for several recent presentations in Vermont and in Europe, is “Transatlantic traumas, Has illiberalism brought the West to the brink of collapse?”
[N]ow that the Democratic campaign to select a candidate to compete with President Donald Trump in the 2020 elections is underway, we Democrats are faced with many choices. One of them is generational: should we favor a candidate who is older and experienced, like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, or one of the many capable younger contenders?
The good news is that the Democrats have quite a few good options. And, those of us who believe President Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy plan to vote for whoever wins the Democratic Party’s nomination. Any one of the potential nominees – no matter the generation – would be an improvement.
Trump has already started to amass a substantial election campaign fund, but his popularity seems to be pretty much stuck at the level of his predictable base – likely not enough to win reelection. And, he shows no sign of building out that base by trying to appeal to more centrist Republicans and independents. From this point of view, the election is for the Democrats to lose, which they certainly could do.
The more senior Democratic candidates currently benefit from their name recognition and, to some extent, existing national networks of supporters. But many voters in my circle of friends and acquaintances are hopeful that a new generation candidate will emerge from the pack and defeat Trump.
Now, this may sound like age discrimination, and it may be. My friends and I are of the same generation as Biden and Sanders, and we value their previous contributions to our democracy, but most of us believe it is time for the torch to be passed.
Let me add that I have a history with both Biden and Sanders that has left me with great respect for their accomplishments. When Joe Biden was a senator from Delaware, I was working at the Congressional Research Service on international security issues. Biden had a strong interest in NATO, and he requested and published several of my studies on transatlantic relations. I also worked closely with Biden and the late Republican Sen. Bill Roth (also of Delaware) when they led the Senate NATO Observer Group in managing the first phase of NATO enlargement in the 1990s.
As for Bernie, I recently voted to return him to his position of representing Vermont in the U.S. Senate, where I believe he has been a vitally important voice for the average American, whose influence is otherwise frequently overwhelmed by big money and commercial interests. His “socialist” label is misleading, as he clearly believes in a strong and functioning democracy and capitalist economy while advocating a stronger system of support for education, health care, and individual liberty. At the invitation of the Sanders campaign in 2016, I did volunteer work coordinating positions on transatlantic security issues.
With this said, I encourage fellow Democrats and independents to consider making their selection from the many good choices that are available to the party from new generations of candidates. I recommend this direction not as a criticism of either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, but as a consequence of my judgment that we should put our democracy in the hands of new generations of leaders who, unlike our current president, believe in the values of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.
The damage that has been done to our democracy and its standing in the world will take some time to repair, and we need a team that can move on from 2020 to 2024 and beyond rebuilding our country. It is time to move on …
