If 40 is the new 30, then maybe 80 is the new 60, and Joe Biden is wise to be making (and denying he’s making) quiet preparations for a possible presidential run in 2020. And when taking office he’d be only 78, which might be the new 72. But what if that’s too optimistic? Some of us foresee Democratic debates punctuated by cocked-ear shouts of “What?” and collisions between four-wheel Rollator walkers. By Inauguration Day in 2021, most of today’s stars of the left will be older than any first-term president so far: Bernie Sanders will be 79; Hillary Clinton, 73; Elizabeth Warren, 71.

You could easily argue that these politicians should step aside for contenders with original hips. The presidency is brutal, and most people are probably best suited to its physical and mental demands when they’re in their 50s. If Ted Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy had tried once more to pursue the Democratic nomination in 1992, then maybe a little-known up-and-comer named Bill Clinton wouldn’t have won the nomination, and George H.W. Bush would have stayed in office. (Then again, we’d probably also have avoided the presidency of the younger George W. Bush, a trade-off that’d be impossible to refuse.) Moreover, fairly or not, old white males aren’t as likely to inspire heavy Democratic turnout as a less-traditional candidate.

But I’m going to make a case for why Biden should run. We all basically like the guy, right? So let’s help him out.

The likability factor, alluded to in the preceding sentences, is a fine place to start. Neither Republicans nor Democrats hate Joe Biden. His Senate colleagues consider him a mensch. He has overcome the most harrowing losses imaginable—the death of a spouse and two children—and emerged with grace. Certainly, political foes always look for reasons to hate you as a person, but the intensity with Biden would be a little lower, because he is known, and what sets people off most is the unknown. Republican nuts worried that at heart Obama was a Bill-Ayers-worshipping radical, just as they worried that Hillary Clinton at heart was a Saul-Alinksy-meets-Wall-Street corporatist social revolutionary. (Lest Democrats sneer, the nuts on their side worry that at heart Donald Trump is a Kremlin-controlled anti-Semitic white nationalist.) Biden has way too much of a track record to be suspected of harboring a covert agenda, so Republican partisans would merely scorn and sometimes rage but not fear. That’d be a nice change in our political climate.

Biden’s age is less of a handicap than in a normal year. Trump, in 2020, will be 74, making him the oldest president ever to seek re-election. So what’s a few extra years? Trump also speaks with less clarity and control than he did a decade ago, to judge by interviews, meaning odds are grimly high that he’ll be even less coherent. Biden, by contrast, merely babbles, as he always has. Age should have no effect on this trait, because Biden’s chatter is already maxed out. Biden wouldn’t necessarily be the oldest candidate, either. Bernie Sanders seems to be flirting with another run, and he’s a year older than Biden. And, if nothing else, Biden will be so old that he’ll make Elizabeth Warren look young by comparison. That’s useful, too.