Editor, The Beacon:

In late July, Mr. Biden stepped aside. It’s hard to watch the old guard marching off into the sunset.

But it’s high time. Our country began with a lot of idealistic, smart men in their 30s and 40s. By far, the outlier was Ben Franklin, 70 years old at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Though he was old for his time, he still was smart, ingenious and seasoned, he just didn’t expect or want to be the leader of the country.

The U.S. has been running on old ideas and backward thinking for at least three decades. The Senate is filled with men who are well past Social Security retirement age … yet they dodder on, collecting their benefits and perks, and rolling logs for rich companies because they’ve had so much practice.

Maybe now we’ll get some fresh air. Mr. Vance is not quite 40, and the Democrats have options to run candidates who are 30 years younger than they expected.

That’s a good thing. The median age of Americans is 38 years. They shouldn’t be governed by people who are the age of their grandparents and great-grandparents, who were born before the internet.

Joan Carter
DeLand