Let me frame things like this—
What is Biden?
Biden:
1) is Caucasian,
2) is Christian,
3) has a reputation for honesty,
4) is faithful to his wife (unlike Bill Clinton was),
5) has been remarkably successful,
6) is a native English speaker,
7) was obviously born in the United States (recall the Obama birth certificate “scandal”),
8) Biden is heterosexual (in so far as anyone can tell or care to tell)
9) has no birth defects or physical abnormalities that anyone has been able to notice,
10) and a Biden is a male.
What is left to attack Biden with personally? Drum roll please.
HIS AGE.
If you have not already, go watch Biden’s speech to the NAACP.
Considering everything that Biden is, everything that Biden has done, and everything that Biden wants to do, Biden’s age is all you have to attack him with directly.
Biden being discredited just because of his age is something that I am intimately familiar with. At 28, I have also been a target of ageist rhetoric — totally ignoring traits of my character or my accomplishments.
I took a lot of AP Courses when I was in high school. It was part of my coping mechanism for hard years in middle school that led to depression. I threw myself into studies. My daily schedule through high school was waking up at 5:30am, being in classes until I’d get home around 4:30pm, do schoolwork until bedtime at 9:30pm, and rinse and repeat with weekends being spent completely doing schoolwork from dawn to dusk. This enabled me to finish high school with 30 college credit hours from AP, most of which counted straight towards my political science degree. That allowed me to graduate from college a year early. Then I went straight into law school when I was 21 years old and graduated at 24 — the youngest in my class by years. I struggled during the pandemic (I graduated from law school in May of 2020) to pass the BAR exam until 2022. Despite that, the third job interview I had ever had in my life was with the Cook County State’s Attorney Office, and I was hired after that one interview as an Assistant State’s Attorney for Cook County. I had accomplished all of this by the time I was 26. Those years were not perfect, and there were plenty of road bumps. I am not showing off. Mind you, I am making a point.
Do you know what is the first thing anyone says to me, after hearing all of that?
“Oh wow, but you’re so young!”
I have also heard a lot, “How did you manage to do all of that at such a young age?”
Sounds familiar, does it not?
“Oh, but he is so old!”
People who have remarked about my age, or Biden’s age, miss the damn picture completely. They do so either knowingly, or are willfully ignorant. The picture they miss is the accomplishments and deeds of a person — the character of the person in question. Looking at the age is no different than being fixated on race, religion, gender, or any other superficiality.
What does that say about a person’s character if they can ignore everything someone has done, just to focus on a physical trait about a person?
“Oh but he is so old, he could die tomorrow from age. He’ll never make it another four years.”
I have heard that argument before too, with separate but equally stupid words (see the pun I made there? hehe):
”Clinton’s a woman. She is not up to the challenge.”
“Oh Obama? He’s black. No one will listen to him. He’ll never be able to unify enough voters behind him.”
“John Kennedy? He’s Catholic — he’ll be taking orders from the Pope!”
What does that say about your character if the primary argument you raise to the fore is based upon a bigotry?
Biden’s physicians say that he is in good health. There is no such thing as age related dementia (www.cdc.gov/....). That is a bigoted myth created by the younger.
Biden does not have cognitive dysfunction (www.dailykos.com/...), which is made obvious when you compare him to Donald Trump.
“Being President is physically tolling. It is too much to ask for from Biden.”
FDR served nearly four terms as president with far worse, and real, health conditions (www.history.com/...).
Biden has enough accomplishments that he makes Donald Trump’s list of convictions and indictments look short (Here are just 30 accomplishments listed on Politico: www.politico.com/...).
Oh but the polls! Shut it about the polls. We are in July. The people at 538 make a living spending their time looking at the famously inaccurate polls, accumulating them, and then running thousands of simulations to see who is most likely to win in a presidential election.
Yesterday 538 said that Biden had a 53% chance of winning if the election were held that day.
Today 538 now says Biden has a 54% chance of winning if the election were held right now today, noting Biden has a 64% chance of winning the national popular vote, and only an 11% chance that Biden loses the electoral college while winning the popular vote.
projects.fivethirtyeight.com/…
If you alone, with one or two singular polls, can override the thoroughness of 538, and can more accurately predict the future than they can with less information, then you are Nostradamus. Mind you, Nostradamus was wrong about his predictions too. Nothing happened in 2012 except for Obama being reelected.
When the damn hell was the last time an incumbent Democratic Presidential Candidate lost the popular vote in this nation’s history anyway? 1980 — when Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. Do you know when we last had an incumbent president lose the popular vote and the electoral vote? 2020 — when Biden beat Donald Trump.
Do you really expect to look me in the eye and tell me that the 81,000,000 Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 only did so because they were just voting against Trump? Do you really expect me to believe the highest popular vote of any presidential candidate in history happened with 0 voter enthusiasm for that candidate?
Please.
Do you really expect to be able to tell me that 2/3 of all those 81,000,000 Americans are all now suddenly hating Biden, despite everything that he has done, just because of his age (www.huffpost.com/...)?
Even FOX News can do more convincing mental gymnastics and conspiracy theorizing than that.
Get your shit together HuffPost, and give me a God damned break.
And, finally, do you really expect anyone to believe that after the victories of 2018, 2020, 2022, and all the victories we have already had with special elections in 2023, that all of that momentum is just going to wheeze and fizzle out in 2024, when we’re facing Donald Trump and the RNC again, and when Project 2025 has been trending above Taylor Swift for over a week now?
Do you really expect all of that to go away just because “Biden too old!!!!”
The doom-casting and back-bending attempts to reimagine reality are boring, ponderous, unfounded, and repetitive to the point of insentience (www.vocabulary.com/...).
I know there’s been a lot of talk about how Americans are stupid. At this point, “being stupid” is becoming a norm of cultural narratives. Supposedly, there are many that wear their stupidity like a badge. But I refuse to believe Americans, to the tune of 81,000,000, were so stupid that they did not realize Biden was old when he ran in 2020.
I refuse to believe Americans, to the tune of 81,000,000, are so stupid as to completely overshadow Biden’s accomplishments, Trump and the RNC’s evils, and the damned fact that Trump is old too!
I refuse to believe registered Democrats, to the tune of 14.5 million, gave Joe Biden 3,904 delegates out of 3,949, winning Biden all 50 states, while 2/3 of them simultaneously want him to drop out (www.cnn.com/...).
I find such premises patently insulting, offensive, and fundamentally undemocratic.
Biden is old. But guess what?
What happened to Trump on July 13th, shows that age is irrelevant (nearly shot).
What happened to Ronald Reagan shows that age is irrelevant (was nearly shot and killed).
What happened to Bobby Kennedy shows that age is irrelevant (was shot and killed).
What happened to John F. Kennedy shows that age is irrelevant (died from being shot).
What happened to FDR shows that age is irrelevant (died of a cerebral hemorrhage).
What happened to Warren G. Harding shows that age is irrelevant (died from a heart attack).
What happened to William McKinley shows that age is irrelevant (died from being shot).
What happened to James A. Garfield (died from being shot) shows that age is irrelevant.
What happened to Abraham Lincoln (died from being shot) shows that age is irrelevant.
What happened to Zachary Taylor shows that age is irrelevant (suspected to have died of Cholera).
What happened to William Harry Harrison shows that age is irrelevant (died from pneumonia).
Not one President has died in office because of old age.
If you’re scared that Biden is too old for office and that he will die of old age whilst in office, you’re fears are unfounded and inflated.
I am sorry, but they are.
Like children, Presidents are more likely to die in office from bullets. Even if Biden were the first President in American History to die of old age while in office, God forbid, that’s why we already have Kamala Harris as the Vice President. That is why every president has a vice president!
The public and Union commanders, during the Civil War, beseeched Abraham Lincoln not to give command of the Union Army to General Grant because he was "...a drunkard... he is not himself half the time; he cannot be relied upon." Lincoln retorted, "Well... what brand of whiskey [does] Grant drink, because I want to send a barrel of it to each one of my generals."
Grant won the Civil War.
Biden is too old? You swear, against all evidence, that Biden has dementia? If someone like Biden is too old, has dementia, and can do all that Biden has done, then we ought to elect more Presidents like him.
The ageist bigotry against Biden betrays the lack of respect for others’ intelligence and for reality. I shall not stand for it.
If you agree with me, then I challenge you. I challenge you to repeat and share what I have said with others who continue to attack Biden for his age. I challenge you to repeat and share what I have said with others who agree with us to reaffirm what we already know, so we can buttress our confidence to keep fighting and win in 2024, which we shall.