The anxieties surrounding President Biden about his age and cognitive ability were on full display during last night’s debate, when his clearly disjointed and at times confused performance had my phone ringing.
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this column that if Biden appeared even the slightest bit confused, wavering or “frozen,” Democrats might have to replace him at the convention, as he clearly was.
And if viewers weren’t paying close attention to Biden’s struggles with words, at one point during the debate former president Trump said, “I have no idea what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
The obvious concern is that The latest Gallup poll has been released They don’t think “age and perception issues” will hurt Biden. The group reports: “At 81, Biden is three years older than Trump, who turned 78 this month. Though they’re close in age, nearly twice as many people think Biden is too old to be president (67%) as Trump (37%). Biden’s age is a drag not only among Republicans and independents, but also among a sizable minority of Democrats: 44% of Democrats say Biden is too old, and 31% are very worried.”
A few months ago, after dozens of conversations with Americans on both sides of the Trump/Biden political divide, essentially everyone I spoke to had not only made up their minds about who they were going to vote for, but was spot-welded to the bottom of very deep political and ideological silos. But then I noticed a real shift.
This shift was brought about by the Democrats and the overtly partisan district attorneys, prosecutors, and even the “loafers” that the state Supreme Court used to attack former President Trump. By deliberately taking that nasty step in a blatant attempt to remove the presumptive Republican nominee from the race, partisans on the left have created a Frankenstein’s monster that is now coming back to haunt them.
The former president’s approval rating has risen since Trump was convicted in a Manhattan trial overseen by Alvin Bragg. Quinnipiac University releases poll results Among registered voters, Trump leads Biden by four points, 49-45.
Also this week, The New York Times, in collaboration with Siena, The poll was released Trump leads Biden by six points among registered voters, 48 to 42, pollster Nate Silver said. Submit a report He said Trump has a 66% chance of winning. report Trump is comfortably ahead of Biden in most key battleground states.
Considering that in real-time context, one of the reasons Trump won the debates is that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Americans who had closed their minds and were planning to vote against him before the “loafer” campaign against him are now opening their minds, actually listening to Trump’s vision for the country, and might change their vote.
They may have done so, first, because they found the tactics used against Trump despicable, and second, because many may have woken up to the frightening possibility that if a billionaire former president could do it, then so could I or my family.
Why is that so important? Because, from the perspective of someone who has worked on three winning presidential campaigns, these elections are often decided by the smallest of margins: if you can shave off 0.5% of the vote in a district, 0.4% in a county, 0.8% in a state, you can win the election.
The evidence doesn’t go back to 2020, when roughly 50,000 votes would have changed the outcome that year. Trump knows that, as he turns his back on decades of Republican folly and campaigns in the most Democratic cities and states. This time around, Trump won’t give Biden any votes, and he’ll chip away at voters who were once sure to be Democrats.
Then consider the economy. Elites of both parties may like to live in a bubble of luxury, ignorance, and denial that floats above suffering Americans, but their hedonistic club represents only a tiny fraction of the population. Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay their bills. Too many are fighting every day just to survive.
I grew up in extreme poverty, and I know Americans on all sides of the political spectrum struggling to make ends meet before payday, all of whom believe that “Bidenflation” has destroyed their quality of life and that they were better off under President Trump.
Then consider the issue of the border, or lack thereof, for millions of Americans struggling with rising violent crime, unemployment and the growing threat of terrorism in their towns, cities and states. Trump brought this up well and strongly in the debate, and Biden offered no convincing defense for his failure.
Finally, with China, Russia, rogue nations, and terrorist organizations openly mocking and targeting the United States, while President Biden appears to be caving to far-left activists on climate change and identity politics, the United States is weakening in the eyes of the world.
If Trump continues to push the issues of age and cognitive ability that dog Biden, the “weaponization of the law,” an economy that is bankrupting tens of millions of at-risk Americans, a broken border that is increasing crime, and the failure of America in the eyes of our enemies, the former president will likely return to the White House on January 20, 2025.
Political and communications consultant Douglas McKinnon served as a White House writer under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and served as special assistant for policy and communications at the Department of Defense during the final three years of the Bush administration.
