It’s Time to Vote Against Ageism

This has been a very difficult past few weeks for those of us anti-ageism warriors who have had to witness the goings on in our country’s fraught political process. While I can’t speak for my colleagues across the country, I can sum up my feelings with three little words:

I. AM. SAD.

As a child, I was taught to treat my elders with respect. To stand when they entered a room. To greet loved ones with a hug—and strangers with a firm handshake. To hold the door so they could pass. To offer them a seat on public transportation. To listen to what they have to say, not just out of respect, because I might learn something.

To treat them with dignity.

That has not been the case over the past few weeks. In fact, to me it’s been quite the opposite. Some people have even characterized the way Joe Biden has been treated as bullying. Perhaps, in many ways it was.

Here was a man who clearly wasn’t done yet. Who had more to give—and the desire and the conviction to give it. Who loved what he did—and did what he loved. Who dedicated virtually his entire adult life to public service—until the public essentially turned on him.

Even then, he put the public’s interests and future over his own.

That is not to diminish the fervor that now surrounds the renewed possibility of electing our nation’s first female president. Clearly the electorate is more excited and enthusiastic about this latest turn of events—and an engaged electorate is always a good thing, especially when the stakes are so high.

As exciting as it may be to see voters so energized, it is not lost on me that this spirit is fueled—at least in part—by an insidious prejudice that, rather than be dispelled, has actually been rewarded.

Because the fact is Joe Biden’s campaign wasn’t felled by age. It was felled by ageism.