I voted in the California Democratic primary yesterday. We’re in one of those remote regions where there is no actual polling place: ours is all done by mail. Somehow, when we moved, my registration didn’t move with me, and while my wife’s ballot came a week or two ago, mine didn’t come, and didn’t come, and here comes Super Tuesday. So I found the county election office (it’s in town) and went there in person to get my ballot, and I voted. I even wore the “I Voted” sticker.

I voted for Bernie.

There were a lot of factors involved, but in the end, the biggest item was the young voters.

I wrote an open letter to Nancy Pelosi some time back, in response to an old video clip in which she was dismissively grandma-‘splainin’ to a young voter that “we are capitalists” — she seemed exasperated that he didn’t seem to understand this. I pointed out in my letter that, no, “we” are not capitalists. In particular, the young man she was talking down to was clearly not a capitalist. In the end, he is going to win, for one, simple, unarguable reason: he’s going to outlive Pelosi. He’s going to outlive me. His beliefs and attitudes are going to control the future. Not ours.

Elders preserve their beliefs and attitudes by passing them on to the young, by selling them to the young, if you will. When the elders are unconvincing and the young don’t buy what they are selling, those beliefs and attitudes die out.

Our time has already passed.

If you look at the young voters, they are all in for Bernie. They have plenty of good reason to be, of course. But I also see how idealistic the young are — and remember how idealistic I was back in the day — and I think they will walk away from the election almost en masse rather than vote for someone they think is the wrong person.

Put Biden up against Trump, and the young will not vote at all. Or they will throw away their vote on a write-in candidate.

Our time has passed. It is time to let the young take the torch.