Second50Years Marketing Blog

It will be interesting to see how Democratic Baby Boomers deal with making a choice between leading edge Boomer Hillary Clinton (age 60) and trailing edge Boomer Barack…Obama (age 46). A column by J.D. Mullane points out that Obama has been hard on the Boomers, writing in his book:

In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching 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.

Nevertheless many Boomers who are older than Obama are supporting him. Columnist Mullane says:

It is not hard to see why Obama appeals to older boomers. His rhetoric soars with a feel-good ’60s-style idealism. He is a marvelous speaker. You want to march from the room and take on the world after he’s done.

And yet, his sharpest social criticism has been of the baby boomers. Obama was born in 1961, at the tail end of the boom. He came of age with disco, Jimmy Carter and hostages in Iran, not with the Beatles, LBJ and Vietnam. He was 2 when Kennedy was killed, 7 when King was killed, and 11 when the Vietnam draft ended.

Clinton, on the other hand is “vintage, or perhaps, “iconic” Baby Boomer, as is her husband, and appeals to a broad swath of Democratic Boomers. Surely the cultural events that affected those Baby Boomers born in the 1940s and who came of age in the 60s are not already irrelevant. Or, are they?

More about Obama and Clinton.