I also went back to his book, "The Audacity of Hope," in which he belittles "the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation."
As Matt Bai wrote in The New York Times, "Obama, meanwhile, has been going after the Clinton legacy with a third story line: Boomer fatigue? If you really want things to stay that way, he says, then vote for another Clinton and watch these self-obsessed baby boomers go at it all over again."
As a Boomer myself, I did see Senator Clinton as a quintessential candidate of my generation.
In November, voters aged 44 to 62, will constitute at least one-third of the vote and will play a critical role in key battleground states. For Boomers, the election of 2008 might have been our last chance to give the nation a leader from our ranks, who might fulfill our world-changing promise of the sixties.
Many of us feel that, despite our size and our passions, we have not yet delivered on that promise.
Ironically, Senator Obama, who by and large denigrates the sixties, has put himself forward as precisely the type of candidate we thought we would generate.
Yet Senator Clinton, who is much more a product of the sixties, focused with more precision and depth on those issues that appeal most to this generation, such as retirement security, health care, economic justice, and human rights.
And it is the absence of substantive discussion of these issues that I'm also missing in the campaign thus far.
Compounding this dismay is the apparent attempt by the Democratic Party to conduct a very different type of convention in Denver than we have historically had.
In response, several groups have been formed to press the party leadership for an open convention. One of them, The Denver Group, is calling upon delegates to sign a petition to place Senator Clinton's name in nomination, along with Senator Obama's.
This will ensure that the roll call of the states and their delegations will reflect the results of their primaries and caucuses. It will also enable pledged delegates and superdelegates to go on record on the first ballot with their choice of a Presidential candidate.
In the words of The Denver Group, "We must strive for a true sense of unity in the Party and avoid the damaging upheaval that would accompany a counterfeit consensus."
So, what did I expect last evening? If Hillary Clinton had looked me in the eye and said, "Bill, do for Barack Obama exactly what you were doing and would have done for me," then I would devote all of my energy to helping him and would encourage others to do the same.
Instead, what I heard was a candid acknowledgment that it is taking more time for some to transfer their enthusiasm to another candidate after so closely contested and contentious a campaign for the nomination.
Senator Clinton did say that she preferred that we make as our top priority uniting to elect a Democratic President in November. She offered, however, as an alternative that we work hard to elect more Democrats to the Senate. Sitting on the sidelines in this critical election is simply not an option.
I believe that the burden remains on Senator Obama, his campaign team, and the leadership of the Democratic Party to show genuine respect for Senator Clinton's candidacy -- its content, character and constituencies -- and provide real opportunities for her supporters to play meaningful roles in the fall campaign.
(WILLIAM ARNONE is a prominent New York business leader and a partner in a global professional services firm. He has over 25 years of experience in retirement income policy and planning. Mr. Arnone is a long-time Democratic Party activist, beginning with his work in the New York Senate office of Robert F. Kennedy and on his 1968 presidential campaign. His focus is on older voter issues and strategy.)
