Polls keep saying the same thing: voters think President Joe Biden is too old.
The latest comes from some outfit called “The New York Times.” According to these “Times” people: “An overwhelming 71% said [Biden] was ‘too old’ to be an effective president—an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54% of Mr. Biden’s own supporters.” Just because he’s 80.
Almost 81.
If the election were held today, the poll monsters go on, “Trump would be poised to win more than 300 electoral college votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.”
On paper, where things get printed, it looks bad. “Even Kamala Harris—no political juggernaut so far—fares a bit better than Mr. Biden, trailing Mr. Trump by three points in a hypothetical matchup, compared with Mr. Biden’s five-point deficit,” the Times says.
Fortunately for Democrats, Biden doesn’t live on paper. Our commander-in-chief is a skeletal flesh-and-bone human being. And he has the answer to these so-called “polls”: “I don’t believe the polls.” Exactly so, Mr. President. Anyone who takes the $8 billion-a-year public opinion and election polling industry and its thousands of highly-educated analysts seriously is plainly a poltroon and a malarkey-peddling pony soldier!
Ooo, look at us with our 95% accuracy rate, we’re soooo smart!
Democrats have got to get the president’s message, whatever that is, out there. Otherwise voters might listen to Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, the 54-year-old twerp challenging Biden in the Democratic primaries. “83% of Democrats under 30 want a different nominee. You know, a lot of politicians lie, but the numbers don’t,” Phillips says. Phillips loves Biden and voted with him literally 100% of the time; his only beef with the prez is the age thing.
Like how James Carville famously said “it’s the economy, stupid” and that somehow got Clinton elected president, Biden needs to tell someone loudly and proudly: “It’s not about my age, even more, stupids!”
Studies prove it with 95% accuracy: when people are thinking about one thing, they’re not thinking about something else. So, if we want voters to stop focusing on Biden’s age, we need to seduce them into obsessing over a different subject entirely.
For instance, Biden might run attack ads pointing out that, at 77, Trump is no spring chicken his own self. Ad copy first draft: “If Biden is too old, Trump is almost as old as he is so at bare minimum he’s almost too old too!”
Or, for heterosexual male voters, we could just show and talk about women’s breasts. Age who?
But really, because this is politics and it’s supposed to be about policies, Democrats should migrate the focus on age over to the president’s handling of the economy. Well, they’ve been trying that. The problem is, the voters hate Bidenomics. The thing about voters is, they don’t respond well when you remind them why they hate you.
Why do the voters hate Bidenomics? Because people are psychologically selfish. Rich people and the stock market are doing great but the voters are broke and so are unappreciative. “Whatever stories Americans are told about the strength of the economy under President Joe Biden, they are not going to be persuaded to look past the issue of their own living standards,” liberal economist James Galbraith writes. Ingrates!
Never mind the economy. Which is an awesome economy, no matter what your wallet tells you. And another thing—why is your wallet talking? Are you on fentanyl? If so, why can you afford fancy opioids? Bidenomics, that’s why!
Pivot, pivot, pivot! Maybe Biden should focus on young people. They were a key part of his coalition in 2020, dropped away from Democrats during the 2022 midterms and are expected to stay away in 2024. Let’s get them back.
Biden’s ace in the hole: come out as trans. Trans-young! Biden will announce that he now identifies as a 33-year-old. Not as the racist 33-year-old SOB he was in 1975 when he ran for Congress in Delaware while opposing court-ordered school desegregation and supporting pro-apartheid senator Jesse Helms’ attacks on bussing. As a cool modern one with, like, a goatee.
Trans-young Biden will dump the birthdate he was assigned at birth in favor of his lifestyle birthdate, 1990. It’ll even be on his new driver’s license, assuming he’s able to get the old one back after Hunter took it away along with his car keys.
As a dude who retroactively came of age in the 2010s, he’ll be underpaid, overworked and totally unable to repay his college student loans—just like the young voters who are mad at him because he didn’t forgive their student loans.
Common ground!
Maybe we should talk to Kamala.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
2 Comments.
This will sound like a nit-pick, but it is not intended as such: the issue isn’t Biden’s age. It’s his mental infirmity. It’s as though the polls (shocker) have an agenda: do not mention Biden’s growing mental missteps. As is said, misplacing your keys isn’t a sign. Not knowing what your keys are for? THAT is a sign. To the best of my knowledge, Biden has never had one of those simple “what were the three words I mentioned 15 minutes ago” tests done in public in real time. Nor has he ever drawn a clock face. He could put the whole damned thing to bed at one press conference with a Magic Marker and a piece of paper. And has not.
Further, all the BS about the economy has to stop, right now. It’s the same thing as the age/mental fitness switcheroo. “Economy” isn’t some theoretical airy-fairy mental space: it’s being able to pay your bills, it’s saving for a retirement where you don’t eat cat food. You cannot simultaneously have “the economy is doing great” and “people are living paycheck to paycheck.” Unless you’re a pollster.
Also, “If the election were held today, the poll monsters go on, ‘Trump would be poised to win more than 300 electoral college votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.’ ”
When the election was held in 2020 (I know, I’ve said this a buncha times already) Biden won the Electoral Vote 306-232. With high percentages of undecideds, if just under 21,500 voters in Georgia (~5,900), Wisconsin (~10,400), and Arizona (~5,250) had changed their minds at the polls and picked Trump instead of voting for Biden, Trump would have picked up all three states, giving him a 269-269 tie, sending the election to the House, which had a Republican majority.
The Biden numbers in 2020 (after four very long years of Trump) were terrifyingly poor. Now, with Trump being brought into court for everything but his overdue library books and writing a check at the supermarket and holding up the whole line, the numbers for Biden are … somehow worse?
Very few people are talking about it, but Trump’s got something called Agenda 47 (his publicly released plans for what he’ll do when he becomes the 47th president). It’s one of the most frightening things I’ve ever read. And it’s barely a blip on the media’s smug, self-congratulatory radar.
If he would have voided the outstanding student loans from 1977 to 2013, hanged Trump and Bush, and not sought re-election….. Joseph Robinette Biden would have gone down as the second coming of James K. Polk. Instead he is like Bill Clinton in 1996 without the charisma.