The presidential issue the media doesn't want to talk about

Sam Smith - Trump, at age 70, was the oldest first term president but not only is this ignored by most of the media, the fact that four of the top Democrats are in their 70s (and three within three years of 80) is as well. Of the other candidates with any clout, Biuttigieg is 37 and Klobuchar is 59. But for the most part, it is an unprecedented old folks race.

The effect this may have on the candidates themselves - as Trump has more than amply demonstrated - is only one part of the story. The fact that 70 somethings are playing such a big role in the Democratic Party is another factor that doesn't get discussed. As Andrew Ferguson wrote in the Atlantic last June:

The public-affairs software firm Quorum reckoned that the average age of the Democratic House leadership is 72, fully 24 years more than the average of the Republican House leadership. Infamously, the three leading Democrats in the House are 79, 78, and 79, for a staggering combined age of 236, making the Democratic leadership team older, in aggregate, than the Constitution itself.

.... If either Biden or Sanders gets to the White House and then wins a second term, we will be governed by a man in his early 80s, nearly two decades older than Franklin D. Roosevelt was when, having won his fourth term, he pegged out from overwork.

One possible explanation of this aging culture of the Democratic Party is what has been happening to the country itself. If you are in your 70s then you reached your 30s or 40s back in the 1980s, when - led by the Reagan regime - America's first republic was starting to collapse. The hope for America was beginning to fade and, besides, the rise of narcissistic corporatism was on a  roll, making power more important than what you did with it. It is probable that the most likely reason someone in their 70s would want to run for president would be for that final achievement to be listed in their bio.

Meanwhile, the younger Americans think differently, as Time Magazine noted some months back:

A recent Economist/YouGov survey found that 22% of respondents thought someone between the ages of 70 and 75 was too old to be president, while 17% felt 75 to 80 was too old.

Your editor has some experience with all this given that he is now 82. And while I am in good mental and physical health for someone of my age, there is no doubt that I have slowed down, compressed my imagination, lack the energy I once had, and do not respond as quickly as I did when younger. I could still bluff my way through a few major crises , but a more rational approach would be for you to rely on someone else.

The problem can also be seen by looking at turnout. In 2018, for example, 68% of men over 65 came out to vote while for those 18-29 years old the figure was only 33%.

The answer is clearly for the young to take charge again, much as they did in the 1960s. Trump and the Democratic opposition are a reflection of the failure of this to happen over recent decades but it is an option still available to start putting this country together again.