The number one problem Joe Biden faces going into his re-election bid is the economy. It stinks. A majority of Americans think it stinks. Almost every previous presidential election was based on the voter’s perspective on the economy. Ronald Reagan’s question still haunts all incumbents: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
The pandemic and the economic fallout from business closings, supply chain disruptions, and $5.2 trillion in government spending — which led to a painful spike in inflation — have made the Reagan question somewhat irrelevant. The economy has come roaring back to almost where Trump left it.
But people’s perspective on the economy is still clouded. That’s why this election may very well be decided by other factors.
This is a major one: a recent AP-NORC poll showed that a whopping 77% of voters think Joe Biden is too old to be president.
A quarter of adults associate Biden with words related to his age, while words like “corrupt, criminal,” and “crooked” come to mind first for former President Trump, the poll found.
This foreshadows a potential rematch that could boil down to two main sticking points among voters: Biden’s age and Trump’s legal peril.
Driving the news: 77% of adults think Biden, 80, is too old to effectively serve for four more years, with 89% of Republicans holding that view and 69% of Democrats, the AP-NORC poll found.
That view is held across age groups, but voters 44 and under were more likely to hold the view.
Still, 82% of Democrats said they would at least probably support Biden if he is the party’s nominee.
The difference is that 26% of all voters think Biden is too old (“Old, outdated, aging, elderly”) and 15% think the president is too feeble (“Slow, confused, bumbling”). As for Trump, just 8% see him as a liar (“Liar, dishonest, untrustworthy”) and 15% as a crook (“Corrupt, criminal, crooked).
Biden’s age is a far bigger drag on him than Trump’s alleged corruption is on him. And since it doesn’t appear that the state of the economy is going to be the deciding factor — or at least as pivotal as it has been in the past — it’s possible the election may turn on whether people think Biden can do the job and whether Trump is guilty.
Many believe that Biden will not be the Democratic nominee. But from what I’ve seen, they’re going to have to carry him out of the White House feet first before he quits. Unless Democrats want a bloodbath at their convention, they are going to renominate Biden and Harris (they wouldn’t dare dump a black woman at this point).
But to silence the doubters about Biden’s age, his handlers are going to have to carry out the biggest presidential health cover-up since keeping FDR’s congestive heart failure, melanoma, and sky-high blood pressure from the voters in 1944.
They’ve already cut his daily schedule back to 30 hours and sent him on frequent vacations — 40% of his time in office has been spent at his beach house in Delaware or other relaxing getaways.
Biden’s handlers have made other concessions to his age as well. Ever since the president tripped over a sandbag and fell on stage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation, his handlers have tried to ensure that he isn’t placed in a situation where he might fall. To that end, they’re now using the “short stairs” on Air Force One to deplane.
It’s one of the iconic images of the American presidency: the commander in chief, standing and waving to the cameras from the top of the stairs leading into Air Force One.
But recently, President Biden has been avoiding climbing up the sometimes-wobbly 18-foot staircase that is trucked over to the plane’s upper door. More often than not, he is using a much shorter and sturdier set of stairs that fold out from the belly of the plane.
Related: The White House Is Now Hiding Joe Biden’s Trips Up and Down Stairs on Air Force One
If you’re not following the president day-to-day, you’re not likely to pick up on these concessions to his age. And as long as the American people are burdened with an incurious press who don’t want to pick up on any sign of Biden’s feebleness, they aren’t going to know about it.
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