Running for president is no longer limited to election years. It's a full-time job now.

President Donald trump filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission just hours after his inauguration on January 20th, 2017. While Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the self proclaimed "democratic socialist" and constant thorn-in-the-side of eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, has not declared an official intention to run in 2020, his book tour and visits to early primary states suggest it is, at the very least, a good bet that Bernie will be in the mix come the Democratic primaries.

Why these two matter

Trump is the President of the United States, the de facto leader of the free world, no matter how petty he can be to people sometimes. Barring a primary challenge from a rogue governor or senator in the Republican primaries, he will be the Republican nominee in 2020. Considering no sitting president has lost a single state in the primaries since 1980, it's reasonably safe to assume that Trump will continue to be the Republican party's standard bearer.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is quite a bit further from being a mortal lock on the Democratic nomination. The field is wide open for Democrats, and it looks as though we may see a repeat of the initial vast field the Republican primaries gave us in 2016.

Given his recent inflammatory comments characterizing the party as a "failure", it may be even more of an uphill battle now.

With that said, Bernie is still leaps and bounds ahead of any Democratic opposition, with his national name recognition, continuing grassroots support, and an effective and vast political operation remaining from the last campaign.

Make no mistake about it, if Senator Sanders runs, it's his nomination to lose.

Too old for the job?

President Trump is the oldest man to ever assume the highest office in the land, aged 70 years at the time of his inauguration (Reagan comes in a close second now, being 69 when he took office). Had Sanders won the presidency, he also would have been the oldest, aged 75 at the time Trump took office.

By the time the 2020 election rolls around, Bernie will be 79 years old; Trump will be 74. The average life expectancy for Americans? 78.74 years as of 2015, according to World Bank.

This would mean that by the time Bernie potentially took over the presidency, he would have surpassed that life expectancy. Trump, while not hitting the mark by that time, will have passed the expectancy by the time his prospective second term is up.

Why does age matter?

This isn't just a case of youth ganging up on the elderly because it's an easy target. The presidency means more than many care to think about. Whenever a president's health or safety has been in jeopardy, it's had adverse and sometimes violent effects on the global markets, world affairs, and legislative agendas both here and abroad, among other things.

The death of a president brings about monumental change in a short period of time, change that Americans and other countries alike do not adjust to easily.

While we do have contingencies in place, such as the vice president should the president become incapacitated, let's be honest with ourselves; we don't vote for the vice president. Sure, they're on the ticket, and they may even play a factor in the decision making of more politically savvy voters, but at the end of the day, the guy at the top of the ticket is the guy we expect to sit in the oval office.

Moreover, the median age of the U.S. population was 37.9 as of 2016, according to Statista. That would make either of these men roughly double that median by the time they assumed office in 2020.

It becomes more and more difficult to accept the notion that these men can possibly be completely in touch with the American populus at large being so far removed from the average American chronologically.

And even if they are in touch with the average American, would it not be wiser to choose a leader who can resonate with the struggles and intricacies of modern American life, who is far less likely to die of simple natural causes due to their age, rather than a leader who was born before the second world war was even finished?
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED