Chris Lange, FISM News
Concern about President Biden’s fitness for office, once slammed by Democrats and the media as right-wing propaganda, now has some Democrats openly urging the 46th president not to seek a second term in 2024.
Video clips and sound bites chronicling the first year-and-a-half of Joe Biden’s presidency bely the image of vim and vigor the White House has sought to portray of the commander in chief who turns 80 this fall.
Americans have watched the president twice trip up the stairs as he boards Air Force One. They’ve cringed at a litany of potentially incendiary gaffes with significant global security implications and have come to expect his staff’s frantic attempts to walk back the remarks. At times, the president seems to mumble incoherently and look confused; at others, he comes off as being irritable – even angry – as he barks at audiences and snaps at reporters.
Americans have also witnessed numerous occasions that the president has been ushered away by his handlers, including First Lady Jill Biden, in an apparent effort to prevent him from answering reporters’ questions. The president’s recent tumble off a bicycle, while not necessarily significant by itself, has served to further underscore concerns about an aging president who increasingly appears ill-equipped to fulfill the duties of the nation’s highest office.
A Harvard-Harris Poll survey found that 62% of Americans believed in April that Biden was “demonstrating that he is too elderly to be president.”
This sentiment, once murmured privately among Democratic circles, has recently come out in the open.
Already fearing a pummeling in the midterms that could see the blue party lose control of the House and, quite possibly, the Senate, some Democrats have begun to shift focus to the 2024 presidential election with a critical eye on an increasingly unpopular president. Soaring inflation and gas prices, rising crime, and ongoing supply chain and border crises have soured some voters who once viewed Biden as a welcome reprieve from the bombast and petty acrimony of his predecessor.
Today, many Democrats who were once dismissive of what, to others, seemed like obvious signs that Biden was slipping are now saying the quiet part out loud.
Last Thursday, Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic penned an op-ed. with the following introduction: “Let me say it plainly: Joe Biden shouldn’t seek reelection in 2024. He’s far too old.”
Entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang told The Hill, “I expect that Joe will run again, and his age will be a valid concern for many people.”
“Joe is already the oldest president we’ve had even before his potential second term,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board issued a blistering assessment of Biden on Sunday, writing, “The truth is that the President indicated he had lost a linguistic, and perhaps mental, step in the first Democratic candidate debate in 2019. He hasn’t improved.”
“Look, it’s a problem,” one Democratic strategist acknowledged to the Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“He’s f—— old and everyone knows it, but no one wants to talk about it for fear of offending him or anyone around him.”
Democrats are purportedly mulling a few younger alternatives to Biden for 2024, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon argues that age should not factor into discussions about Biden’s presidency,
“Presidents should be evaluated on performance, not on age,” he said. “He deserves more time to fix the country before he makes a decision on running in 2024. If the situation isn’t any better a year from now, then he should seriously consider his plans to run for reelection. Any decision now would be way too premature.”