General Discussion

Reagan was the runner-up in 1976; Bush was the sitting Vice President; Dole had been the runner-up in 1988; Bush Jr. was the son of the last Republican president; McCain was the runner-up in 2000; Romney was the runner-up in 2008. In 2016, it was supposed to be Jeb's turn until Trump shook everything up. On our side, with the exception of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and previous/sitting Vice Presidents (Mondale, Gore, Biden), we never really did that - and two of those cases have caveats: we were writing off 1984 and Mondale very nearly got beat by Hart; Biden more or less was the frontrunner in 2020 by default - I think almost everyone would have preferred someone younger but due to years of poor bench development and long stretches of minority status in congress, people frankly were hard pressed to name a younger white male with a moderate image who seemed to be nationally viable.

That last point is the clincher: we really need to develop and elect nationally viable moderate white males - we no longer have the option of tapping the just prior to/very early baby boom generation of party stalwarts.