Et tu, Lexington?
The Economist joins the "Biden is too old" bandwagon.
Earlier this week, I took a discounted subscription to The Economist and was bemused to see their Lexington columnist fall prey to the same tired horserace coverage that plagues the American press (“Joe Biden’s re-election bid is in trouble.”)
The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is under indictment for 91 felonies in four criminal cases, and he probably is, as one of his primary opponents remarked during the recent Republican debate, the most disliked politician in America. Democrats have reason to be smug at the prospect of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee—unless they take a hard look at the vulnerabilities of their own standard-bearer.Fewer than one in four Americans (24%) want President Joe Biden to run again, according to a poll published on August 17th by the Associated Press. Even 55% of Democrats do not think he should run. Although his approval rating has ticked up, he remains one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history.
Mr Biden’s problems are obscured by the drama around Donald Trump’s arrests and the Republican nominating contest. But that is also becoming a problem for the current president: he needs to capture the country’s attention if he hopes to recapture its imagination. Only Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump himself—both one-term presidents, at least so far—had net-negative ratings worse than Mr Biden’s at this point in their presidencies, according to an analysis of aggregated polls by the political publication FiveThirtyEight. In late August, its summary of public polls showed that 42% of Americans approved of the job Mr Biden was doing, whereas 53% disapproved.
His standing is even worse on the matter Americans care about most, his handling of the economy. The same Associated Press poll found that just 36% approve of his economic stewardship. It is hard to know which half of “Bidenomics” inspires them less.
[…]
Democrats will rally to Mr Biden, and he has time to woo others. Yet every day that goes by his party’s biggest gamble, on his continued good health and acuity, also grows riskier. In 2020 voters embraced the idea that his age and experience made him a steady hand. Now they seem primed to see the slightest gaffe or stumble as confirmation that he is becoming unsteady. According to an ap poll at the end of August, 77% of Americans think Mr Biden is too old to serve effectively. His vice-president, Kamala Harris, has an even lower approval rating than he does.
The polls are the polls and Biden’s re-election is far from guaranteed. But the overwhelming number of Americans aren’t paying much attention to, well, much of anything at this juncture. That inflation is down to reasonable levels, if granted not the incredibly low rates we’ve come to expect, has almost certainly not yet registered.
Beyond trying to persuade Americans they have it pretty good, Mr Biden will count on the fight over abortion rights and, most of all, on Mr Trump’s greater unpopularity to motivate dispirited Democrats and win over the dwindling cadre of swing voters in the dwindling number of swing states.
“Don’t compare me to the Almighty,” Mr Biden likes to say. “Compare me to the alternative.” Well, Mr Biden will probably lose if Republicans prove sane enough to supply an alternative such as Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and the candidate who called out Mr Trump’s unpopularity. But he could well lose anyway. Democrat or not, anyone committed to the success of the American experiment should be hoping for a Republican nominee not named Trump.
The idea that someone other than Trump—much less Nikki Haley—is going to be the nominee is a fantasy at this point. As much as I’d like it to be so, simply for the sake of giving the American people a choice between two sane, pro-democracy candidates, it’s just wildly unlikely.
Once upon a time, the newspaper’s practice of assigning column beats the name of a historical figure served to give the opinions a gravitas by detaching it from the persona of an actual writer. I vaguely recall that, many years back, they pulled back the veil a bit so that the writers could get credit for their work. I turns out that “Lexington” is none other than James Bennet, the longtime Atlantic editor who was forced out of his role as head of the New York Times editorial page three years ago.
If Biden is too old, then Trump is too old and too fat. I don’t know why the media is acting like Trump is a healthy and fit 37, but the one-sided narrative feels very But Her Emails.
That said, age concerns are there, and they are not going away. Seems not much can be done about it — except to point out that Trump is no picture of youth or health.
Those who want Biden re-elected should be more alarmed at Biden’s dismal economic approval numbers, which I suspect is the key factor in the doom loop of Biden’s unpopularity. Seems obvious there’s a direct correlation between Biden’s re-election chances and perception of the economy.
I’m guessing his team has a plan to sell the Biden economy, but I do not know if there’s a good way to validate people’s pain + trumpet good news. I said here when “Bidenomics” was unveiled that this label would be counterproductive in that regard, because it slaps Biden’s personal unpopularity onto the economy — a la Obamacare. I still think so.
Also, given the advanced age of the likely nominees, both parties would be smart to have a Plan B ready to step in should the unthinkable happen. But the egos of both men will likely prevent this. Scary!
Yeah, polls at this stage don’t mean squat. And in fact, Biden’s approval rating doesn’t mean much either. There are lots of people who don’t “approve” of Biden, but who would never dream of voting for Trump.
Yeah, McConnell’s recent freeze up also served to bring a spotlight back to Biden’s age.
And yes, his age is going to be an issue whether Democrats like it or not.
Notwithstanding the ‘Impeach Joe Biden’ garbage, we all should get ready for all those really scary ‘Do we really want Kamala Harris as our president?’ ads. Even so-called moderate Nikki Haley brought that up at the ‘debate.’
Hey, Biden is a D. There’s always a chance he’ll raise taxes on the wealthy, so he must be destroyed. So they have to attack his age. What else have they got?
KevinDrum this morning shows Biden’s approval v the last three prezes (omitting W. Bush because 9-11 distorted his first term approval, before everyone realized his wars were stupid). He’s below Clinton, but a tick above Obama and Trump at this point in their first terms.
My guess is that Biden’s numbers are low because pissy, entitled progressives can’t bring themselves to support anything less than their perfect, dream candidate who is, um, yeah no one specific but certainly not an old, White male.
It’s not cool to support Biden. Why, he barely ever appears on Tik Tok! I suspect they’ll vote for him in the end but he’s the very picture of what progressives don’t want despite the fact he’s doing an excellent job and has done a great deal for progressive causes. If Biden were 30 years younger, non-White and a woman he’d be well above 50% because he’s earned that support, deserves that support. But he’s not, so progs will make a show of holding their noses and vote for him, but god forbid they should show any gratitude or loyalty.
@Michael J Reynolds: Show me on the doll where progressives hurt you lol
Is James Bennet a progressive? I’m not seeing much concern about Biden’s identify in the progressive media, it’s good ole centrist media that’s harping on Biden’s age. Mike Murphy is still calling on Biden to nix his re-election.
Anybody got any data on how Biden’s approval shakes down, outside of their own hatred of certain of groups and tired axes they like to grind?
@al Ameda:
Is there any way to solve this?
More effort at highlighting Trump’s own advanced age and, um, lack of physical fitness could help neutralize the issue. But it could also backfire by elevating age and health issues.
Maybe best to just try to change the subject to the economy, abortion, book banning MAGA extremism, and Crooked Trump’s legal problems. Democrats must be polling and focus grouping this stuff.
I stopped subscribing to The Economist long ago, after realizing its coverage of anything external to the U.K. is pure conventional wisdom plus stereotypes, utterly no insight whatsoever.
Bennett was the guy who had to step down after her ok’d an Op-Ed calling for US Troops to mow down citizens on the streets, right? Perhaps he isn’t so much concerned with Biden’s age as he is just fashcurious.
@DK: Welp, if I recall correctly, certain people have used progressive ideas to, in fact, engage in character assassination of Michael within the the YA community. This certainly had an impact on his well-being, and might have had financial impact, but that’s hard for me to judge. Maybe I have this wrong, but that’s what I recall from several years of reading Michaels comments. He would know better.
Michael, I wish for youl a happy, full life, which he mostly has, and healing of an actual wound. It would only make me feel a little better to hear that it probably wasn’t personal, but it probably was more people acting out of their own trauma (or perhaps ambition, but that can be the same thing) than it was something you did.
@DK:
Support for Biden among Democrats closely tracks age, and age closely aligns with progressive identification. I’m not implicating progressive pols like AOC, but young voters who echo GOP attacks on Biden because of his age. If Biden was Obama, the record being exactly what it is today, he’d be over 50%.
As for your snarky question, 1) Progressives managed to make kidlit a misery, granted that’s a bit niche, and, 2) The one issue where progressives and young voters generally should have really shined, trans rights, they bungled it.
@Jay L Gischer: Well it’s not for me to tell others how to respond to trauma, but having been called a n—-r and f—-t all my life by various white people and straight people here and there, it’s not healthy to see every issue through the lens of slights, real and imagined. I could rant about how straight white people are at fault for Biden’s political problems — but why?
Progressives have hurt my feelings on occassion too, especially during the catastrophically divisive 2016 Democratic primaries. So what tho? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Worse people have done worse things to better people. There’s bigger villains to stew and obsess over, in my opinion.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s not “young voters” giving most of their supper to book banning white supremacists, climate change denying fascists, or transphobic politicians. If only today’s young could vote, the gay community would be protected.
But there’s a miles-long list of things old voters have bungled that they want to blame-shift and pass the buck for.
@Jay L Gischer:
Re: book world you have it basically right. Of course now the consensus has shifted to validating my positions. IOW, I was right, but I was right too early and too loudly. But like I’ve often said, it’s never a good idea to get ahead of the consensus. It’s not as if people admit they were wrong, no, never. So I’m still evil because I figured things out ahead of the rest of the class.
But is that some terrible hurt? Oh, please. I’m wealthy and wildly successful unlike 90% of authors. No, it’s the botching of the trans issue that pisses me off because that doesn’t hurt me directly, but it has shrunk my daughter’s world and travel is a big thing for her, as it is for me. Honestly, it infuriates me. I’m a boringly cliché dad in that respect. I’m invulnerable, my kids are not.
Why is it that Biden is ” in trouble” when he has the nomination locked up, but Trump holds a “commanding lead” in his primary this far out and he is being indicted all over the country and he has actual challengers.
@Rick DeMent:
Because the world stopped making sense in November 2016.
@DK:
Indeed! (And he’s the self-proclaimed “hard core liberal” among the commentariat. Then again, liberalism may not be what it was when I was a child. It seems more right wing since the Clintons and the DLC.)
@Kathy: Earlier than November 2016. Trump was already the heir apparent of conservative politics by March or April at the latest. (And of course, that presumes that conservative politics still “made sense” at the time.)
Raise your hands lib boomers if you quite vociferously thought Reagan was too old in 1984. Be honest. So Joe is not? Of course he is.
This is the tribalism at work. We defend Joe’s age when we deep down realize this election can be blown on one Gerald Ford like gaffe in the debate with whomever is the GOP nominee.
This isn’t so much how Joe is now, but 3 or 4 years from now. Look at Obama or Shrub. Both vigorous men in their 50s but after their 8 years in office, they had aged considerably. There is a very good actuarial chance Joe dies in office if re-elected.
Dems made a big deal of Dan Quail but the GOP shouldn’t do that with Kamala?
Inflation is down to 3.3% but the perception is failure. Why?
A Nobel Prize winning economist presented a very elegant experiment which upended centuries of classical economics’ reliance on so called “rational behavior”.
He set up a scenario where calculators (remember those?) were sold for $10 but the buyer was told if he walked a block down the street he could get it for $5. Everyone walked to save $5. He then sold Armani suits for $1,000 and told the buyers if they walked down a block the suit was $995. No one walked the block. Now, old school economics would profess that $5 is the same saving and would be pursued but this burgeoning science of behavioral economics brought in a whole new school of how consumers view their choices.
I think this helps explain why Biden is not getting the credit. Inflation may be 3% now, which historically is superb, but we were spoiled by decades of low inflation.
I haven’t hit golf balls at the local range since Covid. A bucket of balls 2 years ago was $6, now $10. A famous local taqueria (Tito’s) used to sell cheap tacos for $2.50 now 4.25. You could get 2 tacos and 2 enchiladas for 10 bucks and change. Now over $20. Repeat rinse with other restaurant and retail (especially groceries) prices.
People don’t say inflation has only ticked up by a point, they see the effects of the 9% rise a year ago ripple through the economy at all levels.
Dems do nothing about high gas prices as they secretly cheer ever higher prices as a way for the rabble to quit their ICE cars and take the bus or ride bikes to work. In California, prices jumped to 5.50. Imagine when prices were $5 if Newsom would have followed other Dem state Governors (which the White House encouraged btw) and temporarily suspended California’s $1.23 tax take for each gallon pumped. At $3.75, do you think we lose some of those CA House seats?
God’s gift to us Dems is Trump. If the GOP were rational they would have waxed us in the midterms, would pick a vibrant youthful moderate and win the general by just showing grainy video of San Francisco’s homeless/drug dystopia and the flash mobs rampaging through retail stores. Game over. Instead, their likely nominee may well be a convicted felon out on appeal.
Mr. Joyner or Mr. Taylor, perhaps a thread on the GOP rules at their convention covering nominating a candidate other than Trump if he is legally compromised. Can there be a recurrence of the many ballots of the 76 convention? Or have the Trumper Coalition in the RNC made it impossible for the delegates to nominate someone else? Trump may have a plurality of the delegates, but not the majority needed to win. What are the scenarios if that happens?
@DK:
I have no memory of the 2016 primaries. That was Clinton vs. Bernie, right? The least dramatic Democratic primaries of my life. Did I miss something?
Everyone liked Bernie more, but we were trying to select a President not a cantankerous uncle? That primary?
The one where Obama referred to Hillary Clinton as “likable enough”?
I think Bernie used the n-word in a book? But quoting or paraphrasing a racist so plausibly defensible if not actually an ok usage?
@Neil Hudelson:
See this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/27/new-york-times-tom-cotton-oped-james-bennet/
I like the Economist; but some of it’s commentators can default to sneer mode.
Current Lexington in particular; current Bagehot (UK analysis column) sometimes as well.
IMO President Biden has performed admirably.
By any international comparison the US is doing well, economically: the UK would love to have your inflation, growth, and interest rates.
Trust me on this.
I’m not a uncritical fan of all the administrations policies, and (being a furriner) not as up as you folks on all the details of domestic doings.
I have, for instance, sometimes crticised the “grandmothers footsteps” approach to supplying eg MBT, jets etc to Ukraine.
And argued that a greater outreach on potential trans-Atlantic economic co-ordination would be a sensible thing to avoid subsidy/trade conflicts.
(Also Middle East policy looks to running into the sands, again: but local intransigence and malice is neither new, nor the administrations fault)
But these are, essentially quibbles.
And best as I can judge derive from Biden’s (generally very sensible) approach of setting parameters and objectives, and leaving the secretaries etc to manage detail and implementation.
The big picture:
President Biden looks set to be possibly most substantial Democratic President since Truman or (partially) Johnson.
He has reinvigorated NATO, and US leadership of the broader “Western Alliance”, and put down markers for future follow-up (eg AUKUS)
His industrial/strategic approach is at last addressing the critical lapses in US production and resource access that were allowed to develop since the 1990’s.
Unions have received some important support.
Perhaps most important of all, in the really big picture, and despite recalcitrance on his own side *waves at Senator Manchin* the US is making decisive moves towards a low-to-zero net-carbon economy.
The big missing thing, perhaps, is a decisive move on voting rights.
But given a now Republican House, and the current Supremes for that matter, one might as well wish for the moon and sixpence.
It may be presumptuous for a foreign onlooker to say so, but I can see no substantive reason not to vote for him, and age be damned.
@Gustopher:
The “likable enough” comment was made at the January 2008 debate.
@The Q:..Raise your hands lib boomers if you quite vociferously thought Reagan was too old in 1984.
I was born in 1948 and have voted for the Democrats in every election. I never thought Ronald Reagan was too old. I just thought he was a fascist pig.
@The Q:
Which again, begs the question: since Trump is just three years less old than Biden + three times more rotund, whither the mainstream media concern trolling about Trump’s age and obesity?
If Republicans get to be tribal about Trump’s health, why shouldn’t Democrats do the same for their guy? The left can’t always bend to assymetrical warfare.
@Gustopher:
Yes, Bernie refused to drop out despite being mathematically eliminated after Super Tuesday, contesting her convention and driving up her negatives with months of attacks. This turned some of the “progressive” left against her in ways that were difficult to heal before November, and probably contributed to many would-be Hillary voters staying home.
In a contest decided by 80,000 votes in three states, this probably helped Trump. Wikipedia and Putin aimed much of their propaganda at Berniebros, who in the summer of 2016 did a dry run of Trump’s “It’s rigged!” nonsense.
The idea that “everyone” preferred Bernie was not true, certainly not among the women and voters of color who blocked Bernie’s nomination. Bernie seems to have been preferred by youth voters, independents, whites, and men. The rest of the Democratic primary’s vote polled as very enthusiastic about Hillary.
But some white male political commentators have a very bad habit of presenting their personal political reality and preferences as speaking for “everyone” (I’m looking at you Ruy Texeira). This is how we get so many pundits stereotyping working class “normie” voters as Republican and Democrats as affluent and out-of-touch — a conclusion reached only by erasing from the existence the nonwhite working class, single women, and others. Hillary and Biden won households under $50k by a 10-point landslide. Trump and Republicans won households at $100k and over. But the pundit class refuses to incorporate this fact into its preferred narratives.
@DK:
It just galls me that Republicans are so much better at messaging and talking points than Democrats are. Everything you enumerated above (economy, abortion, etc.) is fodder. Hell, even AI could write competent talking points and political ads for Democrats right now.
—–
@Michael J Reynolds:
Dead on. If this was Gretchen Whitmer, Gina Raimundo, or Amy Klobuchar polling would be north of 50% right now.
@JohnSF:
I’m mystified by our foot-dragging here. No way NATO would have sent its own troops towards Russian minefields and trenches without decent air cover. What are we waiting for?
If it was a question of potential nuclear payback, the rejoinder is Russia has not escalated in response to increasing strikes within Russia by Ukrainian weapons. With Russia fracturing and on the defensive, shouldn’t we be going all-in now on helping Ukraine land decisive victories on Ukrainian terrority?
I guess the counter is 1) we don’t want to totally deplete NATO weapons stockpiles and 2) more cynically, our real objective is seeing Russia quagmired in Ukraine with a slow suicide as long as possible, no matter the human cost to Ukrainians. I tend to prefer trying to get Russia to lose more quickly, not just morally but strategically. Russian defeat deters China and — along with the US defeat in Afghanistan — signals an end to the era of warmongering Cold War imperialism.
@al Ameda:
I listened to Mike Murphy on The Bulwark podcast this week, and his hot take was Democrats are already banking too much on abortion and Trump’s criminality — and that the economic messaging is there but not been properly nuanced yet. Everyone panicking about Trump 2.0 has opinions I guess.
Murphy also thinks Biden should not run again. So.
We’ll all be dead before historians figure out if our approach to supporting Ukraine has been deliberately and slowly raising the temperature (so the frog boils alive and yes I know that’s not actually true), or continuous ad-hoc adjustments. And then some other historians will argue the opposite position.
As satisfying as it might be to imagine how things would be if the West went all-in from the beginning with aid, it’s truly an open question how Putin and Russia would have reacted if we immediately sent everything. Not just basic equipment, medical supplies, intelligence, communication gear, ATG’s and MANPAD’s. Add artillery, HIMARS (and other long range missiles like Britain’s excellent Storm Shadows), more robust anti-air like Patriots, and IFV’s. Mass training efforts. Main battle tanks. Now air support. Doing this incrementally (I think) made it harder for Russia to react to any single step, while also making it easier for the public to swallow (or end up ignoring) the rather staggering amount of assistance actually being provided.
Practically, regardless of the moral implications and how people are so careful to parse words, but we ARE in a proxy war with Russia paid for with Western dollars and Ukrainian blood, and most of the public isn’t paying attention to that fact at all. A position that would have been unthinkable if Western leaders had tried to go all in from the beginning. Whether that was cold-blooded, deliberate, 3 dimensional chess or pure happenstance…who knows?
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
Masha Gessen claims in their book that Dugin wanted a full, all-out invasion of all Ukraine in 2014, when Mad Vlad took Crimea. As opposed to supporting separatists and fomenting chaos in eastern Ukraine. He didn’t have that kind of influence back then.
I wonder whether Vlad might have been successful had he done just that. It would have been before the US and Europe had provided any military gear and training (remember that was partly what the call that resulted in the first impeachment was about).
So maybe the West should have been quicker and more forceful supporting Ukraine, but the other side made worse miscalculations, hindsight or no.
But then, too, the war in Chechnya lasted several years as well. So it’s not like Vlad’s military machine were suspected of being capable of quick and easy supremacy, say like the US and allies did in defeating Iraq in 2003 (yes, that led to an even bigger blunder, but the initial invasion was successful).
It’s all such a silly argument. Wise Democrats knew, when they nominated Biden in 2020, they were signing up to support him again in 2024. The alternative – Biden announcing a few months back that he wasn’t going to run again – would have seen (a) an instant lame duck presidency, and (b) chaos in the government as cabinet members resigned to run against the sitting vice president, quite probably Bernie Sanders, and whoever else felt like getting into the race. Republicans would have seized on the differences between candidates with glee, while pundits dusted off their ‘DEMS IN DISARRAY!’ stories.
As to the polls, I would only mention that in August of his third year in office, “just 36% of the public said they wanted to see Reagan — who subsequently went on to win his second term by an 18-point margin — run for reelection.” In November 2011, “half of Americans say Obama does not deserve to be reelected, versus 40 percent who say he does”. The issue is not whether voters would prefer an imaginary younger nominee – it’s notable that few pundits suggest who that might be – but whether they will vote for Biden or Trump.
@DK: “I listened to Mike Murphy on The Bulwark podcast this week, and his hot take was Democrats are already banking too much on abortion and Trump’s criminality”
Yeah, Murphy’s been singing this same tune for years now, insisting that abortion is not a dominant factor among voters as it has dominated Democratic win after Democratic win. He’s a smart guy, but he’s got a total blind spot on this.
@Just Another Ex-Republican: “As satisfying as it might be to imagine how things would be if the West went all-in from the beginning with aid, it’s truly an open question how Putin and Russia would have reacted if we immediately sent everything.”
Putin has repeatedly talked massive sh*t about what he’d do to the West, and has always backed down.
Biden is doing a job that visibly ages people who are in their 50s. Meanwhile, most people his age and with his money are retired and spend their time playing golf and bothering their kids with questions about tech. It is just a simple fact that by any normal standard of society he is just old for doing what he is doing.
And honestly if Biden loses (and not because right-wing judges rule for Trump after the election) it’s going to be people like Michael in swing states. Suburban/exurban voters who have had it with the Left and the fact there was a shifty-looking guy asking for money in Home Depot. Plus they read an article about San Francisco and how dangerous it is due to the Left. That’s how Trump will win–playing on the resentments of voters who can’t point to anything real that’s happened to them, so they have to invent a Left who hates normal things. And if Trump wins, the Democrats will bring out all the tropes they were going to use in 2022 about the Left and their squeamishness about not wanting to ‘something something something’ to homeless people/shoplifters/the War on Common Sense. Meanwhile, the mainstream Dems with some power are all pretending to be like yes it’s normal that 80-year old men are running things and not retired. Happens every day.
@DK: “Which again, begs the question: since Trump is just three years less old than Biden + three times more rotund, whither the mainstream media concern trolling about Trump’s age and obesity?”
BuT ThaT’S DifFerent!