{"id":1505026,"date":"2024-02-17T10:23:46","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/democrats-joe-biden-age-trump\/"},"modified":"2024-02-17T11:15:27","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T11:15:27","slug":"democrats-have-been-panicking-over-bidens-age-for-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/17\/democrats-have-been-panicking-over-bidens-age-for-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Have Been Panicking Over Biden\u2019s Age for Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

For years, Democratic insiders themselves have raised concerns about Biden\u2019s fitness to serve. The party tried to put off this discussion. It\u2019s too late for that now.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n US president Joe Biden addresses special council Robert K. Hur's report, which called him an \"elderly man with a poor memory,\" on February 8, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Nathan Howard \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Jon Stewart\u2019s return this week to a late-night television landscape that has, over the past roughly nine years, largely reshaped itself in his image should have been the triumphant homecoming of a beloved liberal figure. Instead, it was met with a hailstorm<\/a> of liberal rage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s niece Mary, for example \u2014 a liberal cable news celebrity since releasing her best-selling tell-all anti-Trump book in 2020 \u2014 embodied it best by declaring<\/a> Stewart\u2019s jokes \u201ca potential disaster for democracy\u201d given the \u201cexistential\u201d nature of the 2024 election, before later accusing<\/a> him of having caused Trump\u2019s 2016 election win.<\/p>\n

Stewart\u2019s crime was daring to use his first night at the Daily Show<\/em> desk in nine years to wade into the fraught subject of President Joe Biden\u2019s age \u2014 a long-standing concern among US voters which had shot to recent salience after special counsel Robert Hur\u2019s report<\/a> on the president\u2019s mishandling<\/a> of classified documents alleged he had exhibited \u201csignificant limitations\u201d in cognitive functioning in the course of his investigation.<\/p>\n

While the liberal establishment had reacted to the report by closing ranks and angrily insisting any such claims were partisan fabrications, Stewart freely poked fun at the older, slower Biden that Americans were seeing on TV and social media, and affirmed that people weren\u2019t crazy for having concerns about the two oldest presidential candidates in US history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the candidate’s job to assuage concerns, not the voter’s job not to mention them,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

The fact that the segment was, if anything, generous <\/em>to Biden \u2014 reminding viewers that \u201cTrump regularly says things at rallies that would warrant a wellness check,\u201d while showing a montage of Trump family members being, like Biden, unable to remember details under legal questioning to joke that \u201cthe leading cause of early onset dementia is being deposed\u201d \u2014 didn\u2019t spare him.<\/p>\n

Yet as denunciations from Democratic apparatchiks rained down on Stewart, something funny happened: the show was a hit.<\/p>\n

Stewart\u2019s comeback drew<\/a> nearly three times as many viewers as former Daily Show <\/em>host Trevor Noah had averaged in 2022. On YouTube, the segment<\/a> on Biden\u2019s age has, at the time of writing, racked up more than 7 million views. By comparison, recent segments by revolving hosts Jordan Klepper, Kal Penn, and Charlamagne tha God averaged roughly half a million views.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a disconnect that, not coincidentally, almost perfectly mirrors the vast gulf in opinion on Biden\u2019s age and fitness for office between party elites and the broader public<\/a> we\u2019ve seen for much of his presidency \u2014 a gulf that, when you really drill down, seems to only exist for public consumption.<\/p>\n

The fact is that on this issue, both Stewart and US voters are saying things that we first heard out of the mouths of other Democrats, often members of the Washington establishment who, unlike the rest of us, have seen Biden up close \u2014 and who started voicing these concerns not recently, but years ago<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

From Inside the House<\/h2>\n \n

It was Democratic officials and liberal-leaning news anchors who first gingerly brought up Biden\u2019s difficulties through 2019, in light of the former vice president\u2019s widely mocked debate performances. Biden\u2019s own aides and allies reportedly<\/a> watched his first debate performance with \u201calarm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think Biden is declining. I don\u2019t think he has the energy,\u201d observed<\/a> then Rep. Tim Ryan, before later endorsing him. Maybe most famous was former Obama official Juli\u00e1n Castro\u2019s September 2019 attack<\/a> that Biden was \u201cforgetting already what you said two minutes ago.\u201d But he was far from the only one.<\/p>\n

Witness Sen. Cory Booker admitting<\/a> his worry about \u201cBiden\u2019s ability to carry the ball all the way across the end line without fumbling,\u201d and his incredulous real-time reaction<\/a> to Biden\u2019s claim that he was endorsed by \u201cthe only African-American woman that had ever been elected to the United States Senate\u201d (\u201cthe other one is here,\u201d Kamala Harris helpfully replied).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, does he still have his stuff?\u201d NBC News\u2019s Andrea Mitchell asked<\/a> after a debate in June 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, you\u2019re answering the question by the question,\u201d replied MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews.<\/p>\n

This kind of talk was unofficially hushed<\/a> when Biden became too big to fail for the party but made a comeback as election season neared and his plummeting approval ratings showed no sign of improving.<\/p>\n

Last April, some of \u201cBiden\u2019s close advisors\u201d told<\/a> Axios<\/em> that \u201chis age has diminished his energy, significantly limiting his schedule.\u201d That June, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cunease about Mr. Biden\u2019s age suffuses Democratic circles,\u201d and that it\u2019s \u201call anyone was talking about\u201d among party donors. A small group of former Democratic officials from Biden\u2019s generation all \u201cagreed he was too old to run again,\u201d the Times<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

The centrist Rep. Dean Phillips\u2019s lonely challenge to Biden is explicitly centered<\/a> on concerns about Biden\u2019s age and, in the congressman\u2019s words, was \u201cjust giving voice to private conversations.\u201d Last September, the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a> on \u201cwaves of anxiety\u201d that Biden \u201cmay not have the vitality\u201d to defeat Trump, after speaking with dozens of Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and activists. While they talked about Biden\u2019s \u201cage,\u201d one House Democrat told the Post<\/em> that what his fellow lawmakers and donors really meant was \u201cwhether the president can sustain a grueling campaign and another four years in office.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of this has gone away even as the party dismissed Hur\u2019s report, with Democratic senators just recently admitting<\/a> to the Hill<\/em> they had \u201cprivate worries that President Biden\u2019s age and health could cost their party the White House,\u201d and that they consider it \u201ca serious problem,\u201d but bringing it up is virtually taboo in caucus meetings.<\/p>\n

This has all come alongside public calls from friendly voices in the Washington establishment for Biden to hang it up, calls that are unprecedented for an incumbent president. Former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, who has spent more time around Biden than most people, said in 2022<\/a> that Biden\u2019s age would be a \u201cmajor issue\u201d given \u201cthe presidency is a monstrously taxing job,\u201d before last November suggesting<\/a> it might be in the country\u2019s \u201cbest interest\u201d if he decided to drop out.<\/p>\n

There was also insider\u2019s insider David Ignatius, who\u2019s known Biden for forty years and made waves<\/a> last September with a Washington Post<\/em> column gently imploring him not to run again, calling it \u201ca wise choice for the country\u201d and pointing to his age as one of his \u201ctwo big liabilities\u201d (the other being vice president Kamala Harris). Ignatius later told the Morning Joe<\/em> hosts that \u201cI haven\u2019t talked to any group of people, where this issue . . . hasn\u2019t been a centerpiece of conversation\u201d \u2014 particularly notable given the elite, well-connected circles Ignatius travels in \u2014 and remarked to the hosts that he\u2019d \u201cbe surprised if you and . . . the people you talk with are not discussing it in private.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ordinary voters who got a close look at Biden back in 2019\u201320 made similar comments<\/a> about his lack of vitality. But when people who spend far more time in close quarters with the president than the average American express the same feelings \u2014 whether publicly or, more worryingly, quietly and anonymously, because they\u2019re afraid to bring it up \u2014 it\u2019s not unreasonable for people\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to think there is something they\u2019re not being told, especially given the lengths the party went to protect<\/a> the shockingly<\/a> dementia-addled<\/a> Sen. Dianne Feinstein before she died. One of the reasons Hur\u2019s report struck the nerve it did was because it seemed to confirm something people already suspected.<\/p>\n