All posts tagged: Biden’s age

How Hur Misled the Country on Biden’s Memory

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] First impressions stick. After a big story hits, the initial conclusions can turn out to be wrong, or partly wrong, but the revisions are not what people remember. They remember the headlines in imposing font, the solemn tone from a presenter, the avalanche of ironic summaries on social media. Political operatives know this, and it’s that indelible impression they want, one that sticks like a greasy fingerprint and that no number of follow-ups or awkward corrections could possibly wipe away. Five years ago, a partisan political operative with the credibility of a long career in government service misled the public about official documents in order to get Donald Trump the positive spin he wanted in the press. The play worked so well that a special counsel appointed to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, ran it again. In 2019, then–Attorney General Bill Barr—who would later resign amid Trump’s attempts to suborn the Justice Department into backing his effort to seize power after losing reelection—announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had …

It’s Not Just That Biden Is Old

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] We were reminded yet again this past weekend that Joe Biden might be in deep electoral trouble. Once again, hands were wrung. This latest bout of alarm was occasioned by a New York Times/Siena College poll showing that only 23 percent of Democratic-primary voters said they are enthusiastic about President Biden’s candidacy. Forty-five percent said Biden should not be the party’s nominee. And Donald Trump led by five points in a head-to-head matchup. Yes, voters overwhelmingly believe that Biden is too old to be running for another term. He looks old, walks old, and seems not as sharp as he once was. This is not a new story. The premise has been challenged vigorously by the White House—to no avail. But there might be more to voters’ acrimony toward Biden than just his age. In speaking with Democrats about the president’s reelection chances, I often pick up a sharp tone that goes beyond resignation. It sounds more like rage. Senior citizens are not unpopular, per se. Biden himself was relatively well liked into his …

Biden Is Still the Democrats’ Best Bet for November

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Let’s start with the obvious. The concerns about Joe Biden are valid: He’s old. He talks slowly. He occasionally bumbles the basics in public appearances. Biden’s age is so concerning that many Biden supporters now believe he should step aside and let some other candidate become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. The New York Times journalist Ezra Klein made the best-available case for this view recently in a 4,000-word piece that garnered intense attention by arguing that Biden is no longer up to the task of campaign life. “He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago,” Klein writes. “The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.” In one sense Klein is correct. As the political strategist Mike Murphy said many moons ago, Biden’s age is like a gigantic pair of antlers he wears on his head, all day every day. Even when he does something exceptional—like visit a war zone in Ukraine, or whip inflation—the people applauding him are thinking, Can’t. Stop. …

On Fear of a Senile President

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] At the height of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986, Saturday Night Live featured a now-classic skit in which Ronald Reagan (played by Phil Hartman) doddered around the Oval Office whenever a journalist or tour group showed up, then snapped into evil-genius mode when they left the room. “Casey!” he barks at CIA Director William Casey. “The TOW missiles and grenade launchers will leave for South Africa at 0800 hours!” He performs lightning-quick mental arithmetic to improvise funding for a covert op. Those who lived through the second Reagan administration may remember the alarm at the president’s creeping senility. That someone with a declining mind and a preoccupation with the apocalypse had to make decisions about thermonuclear exchanges with the Soviet Union was so unsettling that to keep sane, one had to crack jokes about it. President Joe Biden was only 41 when that SNL skit aired. Thirty-eight years later, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report exonerating Biden in a classified-documents case took palpable digs at the octogenarian’s acuity. Biden reacted angrily, particularly at the assertion …

Donald Trump Is Old – The Atlantic

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[ad_1] Donald Trump is an old man. He’s 77 years old. When Trump was born, Harry S. Truman was president and Perry Como topped the year’s pop charts. Betty White hadn’t yet started her career in film. Israel and Pakistan didn’t exist. Korea was a unified country, and Vietnam was not. The pioneering computer ENIAC was just four months old. Trump’s cultural references are dated, and only getting more so. Elton John and the Rolling Stones headline his rally playlists. When, as president, he had a chance to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, his selections included Babe Ruth (who died in 1948) and Elvis (who died in 1977—perhaps). The same goes for his political touchstones. His view of immigration, in which foreign countries dispatch their undesirables en masse, seems to be shaped largely by the 1980 Mariel boatlift. His trade policy is steeped in ’80s-era fears of Japan. He rails against “Communists” and “Marxists” like a Cold Warrior of yore (only with a peculiar affection for the Russians, rather …

The False Comfort of Comparing Biden to Obama

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[ad_1] It’s a year before the presidential election, and Democrats are panicking. Their incumbent is unpopular, and voters are refusing to give him credit for overseeing an economic rebound. Polls show him losing to a Republican challenger. What’s true now was also true 12 years ago. Today, Democrats are alarmed by recent surveys finding that President Joe Biden trails Donald Trump in five key swing states. But they were just as scared in the fall of 2011, when President Barack Obama’s approval rating languished in the low 40s and a pair of national polls showed him losing to Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who would become the GOP nominee. Barely one-third of independent voters said Obama deserved a second term. A New York Times Magazine cover story asked the question on many Democrats’ minds: “Is Obama Toast?” A year later, Obama beat Romney handily, by a margin of 126 in the Electoral College and 5 million in the popular vote. Those results are comforting to Democrats who want to believe that Biden is no …

Why Biden’s Age Is An Unavoidable Conversation

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] “Human history is littered with good leaders who stayed too long,” one reader argues. Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Jordan Gale / The New York Times / Redux October 4, 2023, 2:20 PM ET Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. Last week I asked readers to opine on whether Democrats should stick with Joe Biden in 2024 or replace him with a younger nominee. As always, your responses were wonderfully diverse, but I want to begin with one form of common response and then offer a brief rejoinder to it. Replies have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s Susan, though I could have chosen other examples of the same basic take. She wrote: Please stop asking the question about Democrats supporting Biden!! The question itself inserts unnecessary doubts about him and his ability to do his job. He has ALREADY DEMONSTRATED through landmark legislation his ability …

Joe Biden’s Bridge to Himself

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[ad_1] In retrospect, Joe Biden probably wishes he’d never uttered these words in public. Maybe it was just youthful exuberance: He was, after all, only 77 at the time. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said at a rally in Detroit, one of his last pre-lockdown campaign appearances of the 2020 Democratic primaries. It was early March, and he was flanked by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a pair of his former rivals, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker—all members of what Biden would call “an entire generation of leaders” and “the future of this country.” Few paid much attention to the future president’s remarks at the time. They appeared consistent with a prevailing assumption about his campaign: that Biden was running as an emergency-stopgap option. And once the emergency—Donald Trump—was dealt with, the old pro was expected to make way for that “entire generation.” “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said during an online fundraiser shortly after he gave his bridge speech, according to The New York …