As fond as folks of my generation are of Joe, we can’t help reminiscing on the righteous revolutionary moment that was the Stonewall Riots in 1969. We swore then that we would do everything in our power to liberate our gay brothers and sisters. Mayor Pete, I feel, is the fulfillment of that promise. It’s probably a…

It was RFK’s and MLK’s assassinations that pushed me to believe working within the system was futile and violent revolution was the only solution, and I was not unusual in that regard. My generation became very embittered.

seeing these two side by side was weird.

What if Joe Biden has a health crisis, say a heart attack or a stroke, and is forced to drop out? Who will speak for pragmatic voters then? I saw my favorite candidate Robert F. Kennedy murdered in 1968, so I know how quickly a race can change.  Amy should stay.

You young people will accuse my generation for being apologists for political dynasties, but the truth is we are philosophically opposed to political dynasties. However, hard experience has taught us that inflexible adherence to dogma is cruel and heartless. To you, RFK is just a name in a history book. You don’t…

I remember RFK’s assassination like it was yesterday. It felt like a punch to the gut, literally a palpable sensation of bodily trauma. My generation still feels the psychic horror of that moment and always will.

My generation’s campus revolution had the Vietnam War to energize it initially, and we rode that wave as far as it would take us. It was quite a ride while it lasted. But eventually the war ended and with it our movement.

I’ve seen this evolution before, having experienced it myself in the 1960s and 70s. It goes thus:

I actually was homeless in San Francisco in the summer of 1967(aka “The Summer of Love”). It was a beautiful experience, though a few years later I decided Maoism was a quicker vehicle for change than Peace and Love.

The Reagan Revolution was the result of my generation’s overreach. It was the arrogance of our youth receiving its comeuppance. We will never live down the shame. All we can do to atone is teach young people not to repeat our errors. I hope I have done my part.

America is not ready to move that far to the left. The great mistake of my generation was impatience. We wanted radical change immediately, but that’s not how change happens. It seems every new generation of young Americans has to relearn that lesson.

Bernie and Liz are campus radicals who refuse to grow up.

I don’t know anyone here. You’re all so young. I can’t imagine anyone else here being old enough to have been arrested at a Vietnam war protest.

What have you young people ever done to earn the credibility of my generation on matters of war and peace? We were in the front lines in the 60s, in the streets breathing tear gas and getting hit over the head by cops. I still carry scars from those days. It was the watershed moment of our political lives, so of…

This is not Vietnam. I marched against that particular war, so I can hardly be accused of being an imperialist. But my generation was in our youth perhaps too rigidly opposed to any and all military action. As we matured we hearkened back to our parents’ warnings about the pitfalls of appeasement, which they witnessed…

I bet you’d like that, but you’re stuck with us a while longer.

My generation built the modern American Left, so I need no lectures on what the Left is.

You have to understand, our generation’s parents fought WWII, and we grew up hearing tales from them of the catastrophic failure of the appeasement of Munich in 1938. We took their words to heart. So when Iraq blew up into a crisis in 2002, we knew immediately that appeasement was not an option with Saddam Hussein. …

Punk.

Iraq was not Vietnam. My generation knows the difference, and Joe is from my generation. Young folks should listen to us more.