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creativecommons.org/violentzToday is the first Election Day since Obama’s tremendous victory last November. This time, his own office isn’t in question, but he’s still campaigning. He has been stumping and fundraising for candidates from Virginia to Connecticut, while burnishing his own brand.

His most important theme is hope (the term is a Clintonism, but Obama has more than made it his own). In these turbulent times, optimism is what keeps us going. Even as everything is changing, Obama encourages us to believe things will be better than before.

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 26 percent of Americans are now satisfied with the country’s direction—a low number at first glance, but fully twice the dismal 13 percent who were satisfied a year ago. Six in 10 expect the country to be better off in three years. And Obama’s own approval rating remains near or above 50 percent—again, far higher than his predecessor’s.

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Here’s some of what we know about baby boomers:

• There are about 78.2 million of them—people born between 1946 and 1964, that   is—in the U.S. right now.


• They account for 26 percent of the population.


• About 8,000 Americans turn 60 daily.


• They’ll start turning 65 in 2011.


• In 2006, there were 37.3 million Americans age 65 and older—12 percent of the population.


• By 2030, the 65-and-up population will have nearly doubled, to 71.5 million—one in every five Americans.

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creativecommons.org/daveyninOne of the many lessons from the past few years is that there’s no escaping change. We went from the flush, go-go times of 2007 to the Great Recession in what felt like a heartbeat. Newspapers are fighting for survival, while Twitter and Facebook are signing up millions of new users. And that iPod you bought two years ago? Obsolete.

The only constant—as the cliché goes—is change itself.

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