Everyone knows that Joe Biden isn’t up for another full term in office.
A majority of Democratic primary voters want someone other than Biden. Establishment news outlets regularly feature items on the back-room chatter of Democratic muckety-mucks still supporting Biden publicly but scrambling behind the scenes for a viable alternative.
Those Democrats don’t oppose Biden because they dislike his policies or positions, but because of his age.
Republicans oppose him because of his policies, positions, and age.
But Danmarks Radio (DR) is here to tell you that Biden’s only getting better with age.
Can politicians get too old? Or do they get better with age?
DR.DK, March 5
It’s not an article, but one of these weird multimedia things DR started doing at some point last year. News for the semi-literate, I guess.
In it, DR asks the aged Danish politician Bertel Haarder (age 78) for his thoughts. He thinks age and experience trump youth and energy, and believes he himself would be a better candidate at 80 than he was at 40. Kaare Christensen, a researcher on ageing, is also consulted: he thinks age can be an advantage but notes that the elderly are more prone to illness.
That’s pretty much it.
DR says there are concerns about Biden’s age, brings in two older men to dismiss those concerns (“poppydash and baldercock!“), and then concludes, over b-roll of Biden addressing a crowd waving Polish and Ukrainian flags:
The whole world is waiting for Joe Biden to announce before long that he’s a candidate for the presidential election in 2024.
Not whether he’ll run, you’ll note: that he’ll run.
Why is DR doing this?
Why is a taxpayer-funded news organization in Denmark serving as Biden boosters? It’s a question I’ve been asking for years: I can understand pro-Democrat media bias in the United States, where the media and political class are incestuously intertwined. But what’s the point of a Danish news outlet gaslighting its own Danish public with rah-rah Biden messaging that even American Democrats aren’t buying?
DR wouldn’t have to drop their leftist bias to point out that Biden’s age is a real concern to Americans across the political spectrum. Politico’s done it. CNN has done it. Why can’t DR?
I mean, it’s a pretty simple formula: acknowledge that Americans are worried about the president’s age, then explain how the spry old Biden is akshually an unstoppable force of nature, vigorous and virile as ever, and his alleged age issues are just a Republican talking point.
As CNN observes in that linked article:
To many top Democratic operatives and officials looking ahead, Biden’s age is the top issue of his reelection campaign—in essence, what he’s running against, at least until a Republican nominee emerges, according to CNN’s conversations with three dozen White House aides, elected officials, leading Democratic operatives and others beginning to prepare for the race ahead.
Three dozen! That’s… hold on, I’m doing the math… that’s like 36 Democratic insiders they talked to. They can’t all be paid CNN contributors, can they? Okay, of course they could, but that only proves how insidey they are.
Also:
Voters young and old often say they can’t really believe he’s going to run. Mocking him as ancient or asleep has become an easy joke for late night comedians. Many prominent Democrats privately say some panicky version of what Robert Reich, the 76-year-old former secretary of labor, wrote recently: Biden’s age is “deeply worrying, given what we know about the natural decline of the human brain and body.”
If leftist media like Politico and CNN, and public figures as far left as Robert Reich can express concerns about Biden’s age out loud, why can’t DR?
Why, instead, is DR suggesting that Biden is getting even better with age?
Is it all those remarkable successes he and his aides keep bragging about? I forget what they are (since they’re all entirely fabricated), but if you take an objective look at America today and compare it to America when Biden took office, which particular accomplishments would justify a Danish news outlet gaslighting their readers in this way?
Why does it even matter to DR that Danish citizens support Joe Biden?
If DR wanted to make the point that advanced age is not inherently disqualifying for major public office, they certainly could have done so without pegging the piece to a man whose own supporters believe is too old to run again.
My guess—based on nothing but decades of exposure to DR—is that the editorial offices of DR finally caught wind of rumors that a lot of people felt Joe Biden was too old to run again, and instinctively felt compelled to swat that argument down because Democrats Good, Republicans Bad supersedes all other considerations.
If Joe Biden is old, then being old must be okay because Joe Biden is a Democrat.
There’s nothing more to it.
If Joe Biden were a Republican, being old would not be okay. It would be a terrible and frightening thing requiring automatic invocation of the 25th amendment. We would be told how perilous it was for an octogenarian to be the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military. We would be treated to “interviews” with drooling nursing home and hospice patients illustrating by example how cruel age can be. We would be presented with actuarial tables.
But Democrats just get better with age.
Side note: the “whole world” may have to wait longer than DR seems to expect before they get an announcement of Joe Biden’s intentions.
While it’s true that Donald Trump announced his intention to run in 2020 all the way back in February of 2019, a full 21 months before the election, that was early by recent standards.
Obama announced 19 months before the election; George W. Bush announced 18 months before; Clinton 11 months before; George H.W. Bush 10 months before; and Ronald Reagan a mere 9 months.
Although, looking at it that way, the trend line suggest Biden is already overdue:
Biden would have had to announce his candidacy in January to continue the pattern of ever-increasing advance times.
The latest any American president ever announced their intention to seek re-election was when the (unelected) incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson announced at the Democratic convention in late August of 1964… less than three months before the general election.
He was 56 years old at the time.