Hello, friends — I hope you are enjoying the relative calm before the holiday storm. This week, Jonah Goldberg at The Dispatch wrote, “At this point, detailing last Tuesday’s political upheaval would be like telling people a full week after Godzilla flattened their neighborhood, ‘Have you seen the wreckage?’”

We’ll discuss the wreckage a little bit in this week’s Right to the Point, but also move on from the midterms to talk about the generational warfare being waged on the baby boomers, and a curious new approach to marketing divorce.

— Jennifer Graham

At 80 years old, President Donald Trump is at the high end of the arc of the baby boomers. And with the vanquishing of MAGA in the midterm elections, it didn’t take long for someone to draw a straight line from Trump to the rest of the boomers.

It was Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh.

It was a post designed to inflame, as many of Walsh’s posts are. And it was clearly unfair.

Being over 70 doesn’t make you “geriatric” any more than being under 30 makes you a “snowflake” — see Mitt Romney as Exhibit A. There are plenty of vibrant lawmakers on Newsweek’s list of U.S. senators over the age of 70, including one former football coach who was just elected governor of Alabama.

But bashing baby boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964 — has been a popular spectator sport for a while, gaining speed and altitude with the 2019 TikTok trend “OK, boomer.”

It’s not necessarily ageism, although that can be part of it. But nobody is going around bashing the “Silent Generation,” those born before 1946. It’s boomers who get under people’s skin.

Even The Economist got in on the boomer bashing last year, publishing a provocative article entitled “Why people over the age of 55 are the new problem generation.” The piece noted that the boomers were known for their love of “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll in their youth” and said that many have carried this affection into their golden years, in which they are ”aging disgracefully."

Part of it, The Economist notes, is because of the boomers’ upbringing.

“On both sides of the Atlantic, the baby-boomers and then Generation X were born to parents who had rushed out of war and into prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s, marrying young, having children early and raising them with a bare minimum of attention. They grew up breathing the fumes of leaded petrol (long associated with impulsive behavior) and watching social mores collapse. They had access to contraception, abortion and pop music.”

Now in their 60s and 70s, the boomers are responsible for the rise in the so-called “gray divorce” and many are still drinking and using drugs. “Deaths caused by cocaine are now far more numerous among the old than among the young,” The Economist said.

The article got one thing wrong: calling boomers “especially — and weirdly — glum.” But it based that on decades-old research from Pew. More recent studies have shown that boomers are getting happier, which makes sense given that it’s well established that there is a U-curve of happiness. But that also might be because they’re enjoying their assets and wealth — another reason for all the boomer hate online. (Fortune recently called this “the great boomer hoard.”)

Fair or not, all this adds up to resentment from some of the youngest Americans who are sharing their frustrations online, leading to a generational rift. News headlines aren’t helping either. Here are a few in recent months:

Why won’t boomers grandparent? (In which Arthur C. Brooks coins a memorable term: “grandboomers.”)

A generational tax battle has arrived. Millennials struggle to build wealth — while boomers seek tax breaks

Baby boomers are aging in place and plunking down hundreds of thousands on renovating their homes

How Americans over 75 got richer than other age groups

Boomers are even getting blamed for the selfie. In a Wall Street Journal essay by physician and Hoover Institution scholar Scott W. Atlas said his demographic cohort “raised a generation insulated from failure, from consequence, from the experience of working for something, failing and trying again.”

It’s going to be an interesting time to be sitting at a multigenerational table this holiday season. Politics is usually the topic people try to avoid. But apparently “baby boomer” has become fightin’ words, too.

Feel free to elaborate on your answer in a comment.

The Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said that opportunity arises during chaos, and no Republican took advantage of the post-midterm chaos better than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The voting machines were still warm when a strident DeSantis emerged in video clips across social media, saying things that made many non-MAGA conservatives applaud.

The midterms were an “extinction-level event for Republicans,” he said. “You should try reading the U.S. Constitution,” he said to one of his critics on X. The Republicans in Congress did nothing to advance the conservative agenda, he told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “It’s really both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, not just one.”

But he also punched hard at some fellow Republicans, including Vivek Ramaswamy, saying he was “not the type of person that’s going to sell” in Ohio, and Mitt Romney, writing on X, “I voted for Romney but not enthusiastically. In hindsight I wish I had left it blank. Total squish.”

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, was emboldened by the fact that Florida stayed red even while Texas went surprisingly blue. Next year, of the 10 largest states in America, only Florida will be under Republican control, he said. He has taken to social media to talk up his record as Florida governor.

Democratic strategist and gadfly James Carville pronounced DeSantis “the Republican winner of the midterms,” and it’s hard to argue with that right now. But whether his popularity will hold up in January 2028, when the Iowa caucuses start, remains to be seen.

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Cliff Smith brings perspective to what just happened, looking at how a midterm bruising has played out for parties in the past.

“Midterm elections are great at reining in a president who has over-read his mandate. And they give the opposing party leverage to frame the debate. But they don’t change the direction of the country unless the winners play their cards very carefully or the losers continue to make mistakes.”

The quickest way for Democrats to squander their red-state breakthrough

Two years ago, Democratic strategist Steve Pierce advised his party to be patient. Now he says Democrats have to earn Americans’ trust by delivering on their promises.

“The pendulum has indeed swung back. But the question now is whether Democrats can do something that neither party has managed in recent years: deliver the change that Americans are asking for and begin to break the recurring cycle of disappointment and disillusionment.”

The political pendulum swung back. Now Democrats have a historic opportunity

In last week’s poll, we asked subscribers where they planned to watch the midterm results come in — if they planned to watch at all. Nearly 60% of respondents said they didn’t follow the returns as they came in, for very sensible reasons.

Here are some of the comments from people who didn’t watch the television coverage:

“Seemed a waste of time. Better for me to just wait and read the results without all the drama.”

“Early coverage is too much just speculation.”

“I’m interested in final results which takes days if not weeks to settle.”

“Too stressful to watch it. Easier on the mind, spirit, and body to read about it later. Much, much later.”

“Watched sports.”

In other news, Columbia Journalism Review, normally no fan of the work of conservative media outlets, recently highlighted the work of a reporter at Newsmax, the cable news network founded by Trump supporter Christopher Ruddy.

In a piece entitled “A Truth Teller at Newsmax,” veteran journalist Bill Grueskin praised the work of foreign correspondent Shelby Wilder, specifically highlighting her coverage of the Ukraine-Russia war for “an audience in and around the MAGAverse.” He was so impressed that he reached out to her for a Q&A. It was the kind of “reaching across the aisle” that we don’t see often enough — and by “the aisle,” I mean Bluesky and X.

Finally, a sign of the times spotted in the wilds of New Jersey:

The positive spin is that divorce lawyers are so hard up that they’re having to advertise specials. Unfortunately, more people might take them up on this since everyone loves a bargain. What do you think?

As always, thank you for reading and being a part of the Right to the Point community. Feel free to reach out at any time with ideas and comments: [email protected] or via direct message on X at @grahamtoday.

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