I keep coming back to the New York Times story we quoted from yesterday, which is one of a series of recent media articles and commentaries sounding the alarm about Joe Biden's serious vulnerabilities heading into a re-election campaign. It can be read as a straightforward report on the divide between Democratic elites and their voters. The existence of the story might also be interpreted as something of a concerned nudge. If you missed it, the crux of the piece is that many, many Democrats aren't sure Biden has it in him to run a robust campaign -- let alone govern for another four years, starting in 2025. Again, here's the pushback from Bidenworld (setting aside facially preposterous assertions like this from the White House Press Secretary):
William Owen, a Democratic National Committee member from Tennessee, was full of praise for Mr. Biden and said he was puzzled by surveys that consistently showed the president struggling to win over Democratic voters. “I’m looking at all the polling, and I’m amazed that it has so little to do with reality,” he said in an interview this past week. “A big part of it is just pure ageism. The American people are prejudiced against old people.”... Officials in Mr. Biden’s campaign insist that hand-wringing about his age is driven by news coverage, not by voters’ concerns. They dismiss his low approval ratings and middling polling numbers as typical of an incumbent president more than a year away from Election Day.
Let's start with the second part of the bolded passage first. The idea that the age-related "hand-wringing" is just hyped-up media bias, disconnected from voter sentiment, is truly delusional. The media is covering that angle a fair amount because many journalists are worried about is as an obstacle to their political party winning next year's election. And they're anxious about it because voters clearly are, too. People have eyes to see, and ears to hear. They have observed the president at work -- or not at work. We've seen this over and over again, in virtually every poll on the subject. Three new examples from the last few days alone. Yahoo/YouGov:
A larger number of Americans now consider Trump “fit to serve another term as president” (39%) than say the same about Biden (27%). Trump’s fitness number is up 5 points (from 34%) since August. When it comes to fitness for office, more Americans see Biden’s age — he is 80 now and would be 86 at the end of a second term — as a problem (52% say it is a big problem, and 77% a small or big problem) than see Trump’s criminal charges as a problem (47% big problem, 64% small or big problem).
Three-quarters see Biden's age as a problem. A majority say it's a "big problem." Barely more than a quarter of respondents think Biden is fit to serve another full term. Here is a Siena College poll of voters in heavily-Democratic New York: "Sixty-two percent of New York State voters said they do not think President Joe Biden, 80, is fit for another term in the White House," which is a higher percentage than say the same about Trump. The survey still shows Biden leading Trump comfortably in the Empire State, as would be expected, by the underlying worry about Biden's fitness is a super-majority position among these voters. And then there's this, which Spencer covered:
Only 34% of registered U.S. voters think President Biden would complete a second term if re-elected, 44% believe he'd leave before it ended and 22% are unsure, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll. That compares with 55% who think the 80-year-old's closest presidential election rival, 77-year-old former President Trump, would finish a full term if elected in 2024. However, 29% believe Trump would leave before his term ended and 16% are not sure, according to the poll that was published Sunday. Meanwhile, 26% of those polled believe only Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president.
Look at this:
New YouGov poll asked what was a bigger problem: Biden's age or Trump's criminal charges.
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) September 20, 2023
Americans overall say Trump charges, 42-39.
Independents say Biden's age, 43-34. pic.twitter.com/viXF0jFbq5
I could go on and on sharing additional data along these lines because the problem for Democrats is a blinking red light, even if the campaign dismisses it as a media invention. You've got Democratic officials serving up anonymous quotes like this to reporters, for crying out loud:
One Democratic lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, raised the prospect that Biden could secure the nomination, then have to drop out for health reasons. “The worst-case scenario is we get past the nominating process with President Biden as the nominee, and then he’s no longer able to continue on as the nominee,” the lawmaker said. “That’s the nightmare scenario for Democrats."
It seems as though some top Republicans fear their likely nominee could get convicted of one or more felonies before the election, and some top Democrats fear that their likely nominee won't be alive for the election ("death is imminent" is quite a turn of phrase, coming from an Ohio county-level Democratic Party chair). These points raised by Charles Cooke decimate both the "voters don't really care about this" hand-waving, as well as the "rank ageism" excuse that casts voters' bigotry as the real problem:
And it’s not just that the public think Biden is “too old.” As @jimgeraghty notes, 44 percent think he’ll definitely die or have to resign in a second term; 22 percent think he may. That’s 66 percent! We’ve never seen anything like that in the modern era. https://t.co/lxenXhzzsZ
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 19, 2023
We have had old candidates before. Bob Dole was old — especially when contrasted with Bill Clinton. So were John McCain and Ronald Reagan. But the public didn’t think that any of those men were “too old,” let alone that they were likely to die or be unable to finish their terms. Twenty percent of Americans said that McCain was “too old.” Twenty-seven percent thought the same of Dole. Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. By contrast, 77 percent think that Biden is too old (that’s 50 points higher than it was for Dole, who is usually trotted out as the example of a “too old” candidate), and 66 percent aren’t sure he’d finish his term. The last time that a president’s health was discussed in anything approaching these terms was 1944. But that was a different era, the United States was in the middle of a world war, and the public was unaware of the scale of FDR’s ailments. And, unlike Biden, FDR was popular.
Did American voters suddenly flip the ageism light switch for Joe Biden, or are their concerns about his age specific to his demonstrated acuity and vitality? Cooke writes, "In the opinion of a supermajority of the American public, the Democratic Party is on the verge of asking the country to vote for a president who will either die in office or be so infirm that he is obliged to resign. I honestly have no idea how voters will react to this. It represents uncharted territory." He adds, "it’s a hell of a risk." Yes, it certainly is. And it's an especially crazy one if many Democrats are in absolute denial about how widespread the challenge is. I'll leave you with this:
Biden incoherently mumbles as he reads his remarks from his teleprompter at the UN General Assembly pic.twitter.com/XqovhtLQ6o
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 19, 2023
Was Biden reading his pre-written remarks for the first time? pic.twitter.com/4LdCXPTTXZ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 19, 2023
