It was with nearly 40 years of cynicism built up from covering American politics corroding my arteries that I trudged down to Philadelphia's Eakins Oval on the sun-soaked afternoon of May 18, 2019, to watch Joe Biden announce his third — and probably final, in my hardened viewpoint — run for the presidency.
An opinion journalist who'd watched Biden's two prior White House bids crash and burn in Hindenburg-like fashion, my opinion was that Biden, who was then 76, was hogging a torch that Democrats ought to be passing to a new generation. The column I wrote that night had a tone of surprise at some of the young attendees who didn't agree with a perceived centrist on every issue, but saw Biden as the surest way to rid America of Donald Trump.
When a 30-year-old Christian Perez from Hunting Park told me three years ago that voters craved electability and that "people just want some familiarity," and when he was echoed by a 22-year-old newly minted Temple grad, Yasmine Hamou, who told me that as a Black woman she was attracted by Biden's appeal to voters who didn't look like her, I should have realized I was there for the start of something truly historic in American politics.
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