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The Biden Age Issue Isn't Going to Disappear [1]

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Date: 2022-12-04

Recently a couple of people here have written popular posts telling people to stop being “fools” and get on the Biden train for 2024. The idea that Biden is the best presidential candidate for the Democratic Party is an opinion. It is an opinion that has some merit. There are good arguments for Biden. However, ignoring a candidate’s weaknesses has never been a recipe for success, and it never will be.

Take the Hillary Clinton example. Republicans started running against Hillary for President somewhere around 1994. They laid the groundwork for literally decades before she started running. What did they do? They focused in on her basic weakness: lack of likeability. Hillary is a stern soul. I recognize myself in her. I also know it doesn’t always translate well, especially to large speaking audiences. Republicans knew this — heck everyone knew — this long before 2016. How obvious was the problem? Obama called Hillary “likeable enough.” That’s OUR guy. OUR team. We know that team red went to crazy land when talking about Hillary. Now, you can be mad about it. You can even try to debate whether Hillary caused this or if it was the product of some vast media meme, but you cannot deny that this was seen by the public to be her defining weakness. We nominated her anyway, and she went on to lose.

Turning to Joe, he has always been gaffe prone. He is also the oldest president at his first inauguration by eight years. His closest competition in age were Trump and Reagan, neither of whom I would refer to as a model of mental clarity at any point in their presidencies. The median age for a US President? 55. Clinton was 46. Obama was 47. Is age everything? No, of course not. In fact, a very good argument could be made that Clinton and Obama were both less effective at achieving their goals because they lacked sufficient experience in Washington. But all of that said, Biden has a tendency to make mis-statements on a regular basis, and as he ages people are more and more likely to associate it with cognitive decline (whether it is or not, only his doctor can say). And to be blunt, we are in uncharted territory with a President of his age, and no one here knows how Joe’s mental acuity will be in a year when he starts running, let along three years down the road when he is governing.

Some have said, “I don’t see any issues with Joe.” OK. Two recent examples were Biden calling out Rep. Warlorski after she was dead (September 2022) and blaming inflation on the war in Iraq (November 2022). Google them. I also personally noticed him refer to a battlefield in Iraq when he was discussing the war in Ukraine in the last two weeks. And is this just a right-wing meme? No. Check out the SNL clip below at 1:15.

Much like with Hillary, we can bury our heads in the sand and plow forward with our candidate, regardless of the obvious flaw. And in fairness, we can all agree that Biden is capable of winning a second term, assuming his health remains strong enough for him to actively campaign (which, in fairness, everyone must acknowledge is not a given). But the reality is that the weakness is obvious to the general public, and it will be exploited if the Republicans can manage to select a nominee who is acceptable to that small slice of the electorate in the middle. We are talking the less than 1% of voter in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin that decided the last election. And I’ll throw out a prediction here: a similarly small slice of voters in states-yet-to-be-named will decide the next election as well. For these reasons I’m fine with Joe sticking to his implied promise of one term. I’m fine with an open primary where Joe sits back and then embraces the winner. Foolish? Ignoring an issue and calling each other names is foolish.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/4/2139934/-The-Biden-Age-Issue-Isn-t-Going-to-Disappear

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