Republican strategists who will plan their nominees’ national campaigns for 2024 are faced with some unique challenges. Running against an 80-year-old incumbent may seem to be a no-brainer. Biden is clearly declining; even those “low information” voters know of the president’s infirmities.
But attacking Biden’s age carries risks. Voters 65 and older make up about a quarter of all voters and about a third of all GOP voters. Portraying Biden as too old to be president might turn some older voters off and give other voters the impression that the Republican candidate is unfairly criticizing Biden — especially when Democrats start running commercials showing a hale and hearty Biden being active and lucid.
Hopefully, Biden will supply all the proof that he’s too old to be president by himself.
But Biden can’t hide in his basement like he did in 2020. There’s no pandemic Biden can use as an excuse to campaign from the basement of his beach house.
“It’s quite shocking that Biden thinks he would be able to fill a second term, let alone the rest of this term,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.
Indeed, he can’t very well go to the voters and ask them to give him four more years when the last four have been so terrible as far as the economy is concerned.
“The allure for voting for Biden in 2020 was sort of the quaint notion of getting back to normal,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, referring to Trump’s time in office.
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“The problem for Biden is that he’s been in power… and things are anything but normal, especially when it comes to the economy and inflation.”
And hiding in plain sight is the prospect of a recession — unspoken by Democrats and unmentioned by the media. But the Federal Reserve has been mentioning it as the Fed has jacked up interest rates and companies have little choice but to cut back on hiring and put plans to expand on hold.
Reuters:
Biden took office in January 2021 just as COVID vaccines were rolling out, and economic conditions gradually normalized during his early tenure after the shock of nationwide shutdowns. The United States now boasts 3.2 million jobs over the pre-pandemic peak.
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But Americans are concerned about a potential recession, and Biden may suffer from being on the wrong side of an economic cycle heading into 2024, with unemployment likely to rise as growth slows, interest rates remaining high and inflation potentially hovering above pre-pandemic levels.
Biden is not “on the wrong side of an economic cycle.” The inflation America is suffering from and the probable coming recession can be tied directly to his policies. They are the inevitable consequence of out-of-control federal spending and lax monetary policy from the Fed.
Meanwhile, Democrats believe they have a counter to the “Biden is too old” attack. They can simply point out that Donald Trump isn’t much younger than the president — he’ll be 78 on inauguration day in 2025.
But the perception of Trump’s age is far different from that of Biden. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that most Americans think Biden is just too old for another term.
Newsweek:
The poll found that 65 percent of Americans agreed that Biden would be “too old for another term as president” when they were informed that he’d be 82 starting a second term in 2025 and 86 by the end of it.
A further 18 percent said he wouldn’t be too old and 17 percent weren’t sure.
However, poll respondents took a different view of Trump, who is a few years younger than Biden.
When they were informed that Trump would be 78 years old starting a new term and 82 by the end of it, just 45 percent said he would be too old to serve as president, while 35 percent said he wouldn’t be too old and 20 percent weren’t sure.
It’s a long way to Election Day and Democrats may decide that they can never win with Biden in 2024 and will try to find a way to get him to withdraw. It won’t be easy. Biden has convinced himself that he’s fit as a fiddle and ready for any challenge.
The world will not make any allowances for Biden’s age. Presidents Xi and Putin will see weakness and take advantage of it. So if the world won’t give Biden any breaks because of his age, why should the American voter?
