Democrats ignore the problem of Biden’s age at their peril 

Democrats have spent the past four years pushing back against Republican claims that Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president. Right-wing media outlets kept those allegations simmering even as America’s economy saw a record run of good news and Biden racked up one of the most legislatively significant first terms of any president since Franklin Roosevelt nearly 90 years ago. 

But none of those policy successes have stopped the age issue from dogging Biden — and the situation is only getting more perilous.  

Last week, special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents criticized the president for his spotty memory. Even venerable man-of-the-left Jon Stewart couldn’t resist mocking both Biden and Donald Trump’s age and memory issues in a “Daily Show” segment on Monday. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that Republicans believe Biden is too old to serve. What makes this a genuine crisis for the Biden campaign is that a growing number of Democrats are quietly worried Republicans may be right.  

If Biden can’t change his base’s skeptical mood, it could spell disaster for his campaign in November. 

“The White House can’t run away from this issue because it’s a legitimate concern,” Democratic strategist and commentator Michael Starr Hopkins told me. “Democrats can’t dismiss those concerns out of hand, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.”  

Republicans sure aren’t wasting any time capitalizing on Biden’s latest age-related fumbles. House GOP lawmakers are now pushing for extended hearings into Biden’s mental capacity, even though they flatly admit the hearing is mainly designed to hurt Biden’s re-election chances. Republicans would also likely urge Biden to testify as a way of proving his mental fitness — something the president’s advisers would dismiss as distracting political theater.  

Unfortunately for weary Democrats, Biden doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring questions about his age and mental fitness.  

Republicans are undeniably exaggerating Biden’s slip-ups to make headlines on Fox News, but large majorities of voters also cite Biden’s age as a persistent and increasing concern. According to an NBC News poll released last week, over 60 percent of voters have “major concerns” about Biden’s mental and physical health. That’s nearly double the 34 percent of voters who have similar concerns about Trump. 

More concerning is the share of Democrats who have expressed reservations about whether Biden is still up to the presidency’s grueling pace. Nearly half of the NBC News poll’s respondents were Democratic voters, and those voters are talking openly and critically about Biden’s age. That number has also been remarkably consistent over time; back in September 2013, a CNN/SSRS poll found that 56 percent of Democrats harbored real concerns about Biden’s age. 

That’s creating a major disconnect within the party, with Democratic elected leaders dismissing such concerns merely as manufactured GOP propaganda. And while those concerns may be overblown, they aren’t solely the result of the always-on Republican smear machine. Even many long-time Democrats find themselves asking if elderly candidates like Biden and Trump are the best voices for a country in the midst of a major generational power shift 

“I think about Trump and Biden shaping the future of America when they are in their late 70s and early 80s, and I hesitate,” Cameron Allen, a millennial and lifelong Democratic voter from Kentucky told me. “It’s a bad play to ignore the age issue. There’s a real argument that anyone at that age would see their cognitive abilities declining.”  

Biden’s age problem isn’t just contained to the base, either. Despite a virtual embargo on any internal discussion of Biden’s age, Senate Democrats now whisper their deep concerns that the president could be a drag up and down the ballot this year. Those frustrations brush up against yet another pet peeve: the perception that media outlets are treating Biden’s age as an equal concern to Trump’s loud and repeated endorsements of fascism on the campaign trail. 

Concerns over Biden’s age and mental fitness may be insulting and unfair, but they are also a political reality Democrats can no longer avoid confronting. Dismissing the concerns of a supermajority of American voters is a dangerous political path to tread. Biden ascended to the presidency in large part because of his ability to connect with voters by leveling with them. His candor was exactly what the American people were looking for after four years of Trump’s brash and unreflective bravado. It’s time to apply those valuable lessons to the age issue. 

By continuing to shush high-level conversations about how to address those concerns, Democratic leaders risk letting the hugely consequential 2024 presidential race become a referendum on Biden’s age instead of Trump’s overt threats to peace both at home and abroad. If Democrats want to defang the age issue, Biden will once again need to level with the American people directly. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.