On Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden referenced the 1968 assassinations of his political heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. He would go on to describe how his time in college during the late 1960s was the start of his political awakening, leading up to his first Senate run in 1972.

Biden is a politician of a different era with a record that dates back to the end of segregation and the Vietnam War, and a series of references that most voters are increasingly detached from.

The 76-year-old Biden and 73-year-old President Trump both have strong positions in their respective parties, but the 2020 election may mark the end of the Baby Boomers’ time on the national stage.

– Stephen C.Craig, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida

Ostensibly, Biden’s time in the limelight should have already passed — his campaigns have proven unsuccessful twice already. His party continues to hurtle to the left, as candidates trip over each other to see who can apologize most sincerely and who will give away more of other people’s money.

Meanwhile, Biden waxes nostalgic on the campaign trail about his salad days working alongside the Senate’s most ardent segregationists — and he’s winning. Biden understands his constituency, and he’s almost exclusively supported by older, moderate voters.

Young progressives are generating tremendous enthusiasm, but Democrats won’t need Queens, New York to win the 2020 election, but an improved performance in the Midwest.

“To win, I think you need to connect with the white working class, and the Clinton campaign didn’t pay any attention to them,” said Craig. “I believe that Biden has the potential to appeal to that group in a way no other candidate can.”

Looming large over the Democrat nominating process is President Donald Trump, a Baby Boomer icon in his own right.

President Trump has captivated the attention of older voters by appealing to a particular slice of Baby Boomer nostalgia — draft-dodging, Studio-54 attending casino owner whose campaign slogan pulled no punches in longing for better times.

Trump versus Biden would be a fitting end to the noisiest generation’s dominance of the cultural and political landscape.

Change is ahead for both parties. Republicans have painted themselves into a corner, courting all of the country’s shrinking demographics while offending all of its growing demographics. Meanwhile, the Democrats have a bona fide grassroots movement on their hands, one with no shortage of criticism for the party orthodoxy and its older, whiter constituents.

But for now, it appears that the Baby Boomers won’t go quietly into the night, and the ballot boxes will hold one last contest between candidates who remember soda fountains.

Michael Furnari is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. His column appears bi-weekly. He can be reached at mpfurnar@syr.edu