In Politics, There Are No Indispensable Men... Unless You Mean Cult Leaders Like Hitler Or Pol Pot

Bernie's Older Than Biden & Trump-- And Much Fitter Than Either

Yesterday I was getting ready to drive 90 minutes to Topanga to an awards ceremony where Jane Fonda and Steve Donziger were the attractions but where I would get the “Lila Garrett Award for Journalism in Pursuit of Peace and Justice.” I was told that I would be expected to make a speech between 5 and 7 minutes. Throughout my life I could talk without coming up for air for an hour. 5 to 7 minutes didn’t seem like anything I had to give a second thought to. But I’m 75 now and I’ve noticed that sometimes it takes me longer to remember things that were always foremost in my mind. Yesterday, Roland, who knows me best, told I had slowed down and that I would be better off if I made some notes about what I wanted to speak about. In the end, I had a plan-- introducing Maebe A. Girl-- and didn’t make any notes. It was like walking a tight rope without a net.

The day before, I had tweeted that Pelosi, who will be 85 when she is next sworn in for her 200th term in Congress, ought to call it a day. No one in power is as indispensable as they imagine they are. And sure enough, hours later she was telling Jonathan Martin "that she was as motivated by fervent desire to reclaim the House majority and block Trump’s return." She also defended the idea that 90 year old Dianne Feinstein, virtually a vegetable and utterly incapable of being a sentor, isn’t retiring.

“[W]hile Pelosi emphasized her driving motivation was to help San Francisco,” wrote Martin, “without prompting, Friday she brought up her recent trip to Italy, during which she gave a handful of speeches and met with high-ranking European officials. ‘People there were so concerned about our democracy, as concerned about what happens if what’s-his-name ever would become president again in terms of Ukraine, in terms of NATO, in terms of the transatlantic alliance and the rest,’ she said. ‘It was amazing, I mean, I was on the front page of the four leading newspapers of Italy because of their concern about all of this.’ Pelosi was, though, sensitive to the suggestion that she wanted to see through Trump’s second, and perhaps final, defeat for the presidency. ‘My decisions in life are not predicated on his insanity,’ she said, but quickly added that ‘it’s important to make sure that our flag is still there.’ That has been Pelosi’s watchword in recent weeks. It’s her favorite phrase from the National Anthem, the working title of a book she plans to write next year and her shorthand for confronting threats to American democracy.

One more hurrah… for the good of the city, the party, the country, mankind… convenient. Andrew Sullivan wrote a kind of open letter to Joe Biden Friday urging him to pack it in: It's Time For Biden To Leave The Stage. Biden, who saddled the Democrats with an unelectable vice president— who can’t be gotten rid of and couldn’t beat Trump (or anyone else)— is convinced he’s the only person who can stop Trump. Like Pelosi, he’s indispensable. He’s doing it for the sake of the country.

“Every time you see Biden walk,” wrote Sullivan, “he seems, well, in his eighties: he’s slow, careful, stilted. Every time you hear him speak, he’s also just a little off, eyes now barely visible in the ancient, botoxed, fillered face, words often slurred, a ghostly white mane peeking over his collar in the back, occasionally rallying to the point, or strangely loud-whispering.”

The American people see it— in Biden, not in Trump where an actor knows how to make it less obvious— and they’re uncomfortable that we’re being put in a position where we have to pick between two unacceptable men. On the right, they make a point of saying the choice is between Trump and Kamala Harris. If Biden wins and survives, he’ll be 86 when the ordeal is over. Almost half the Democrats say he’s too old to run again. Aside from the 49% of Dems who say he’s too old to run, wrote Sullivan, “An additional 20 percent said their ‘biggest concern’ is either: his ‘mental competence, sharpness, senility,’ his ‘health,’ his ‘stamina’ or his ‘risk of dying.’ So in fact, nearly 70 percent of his own party thinks his age is a serious concern. Overall, only one in four Americans believe he has the ‘stamina and sharpness’ to serve as president, and 67 percent of his own party want someone else to run in 2024.”

Making his campaign about resisting MAGA extremism— and barely campaigning in person because of Covid— worked last time. It won’t next year. The Establishment has had three years to paint Trump as a threat to democracy and a rogue, lawless maniac— and the failure to persuade the public at large of this is all around us. This is not for lack of material: the January 6 Committee did a great job; at least two of the indictments are damning to any neutral observer; and Trump’s behavior is still clearly deranged and getting crazier all the time.

And yet the two candidates are basically neck-and-neck in the polls. What Trump has done— again!— is a form of jujitsu: he’s using the actions of law enforcement to empower his paranoid narrative of the establishment set against him. He’s turned every attack on him into a kind of qualification for his base and those alienated by everything related to the establishment. I wish he hadn’t. But he has. His ability to survive and actually thrive these past three years is staggering. It’s part of a political genius his enemies continue to under-estimate.

Yes, Trump is almost as old as Biden. But he has the energy and stamina and obsessiveness of the truly mentally ill. I started to read his interview this week with High Hewitt, and yes, it was a festival of delusion and lies and occasional decent points. But what struck me also was the zeal, untempered by time, the persistent, angry passion, the untiring drive to regain power. He is not what he was, and, appearances to the contrary, is mortal. But up against Biden, he seems like raw energy.

Trump’s political rebirth came with the first indictment— a trivial one about hush payments to Stormy Daniels, setting the stage for the Trump victim narrative. Alvin Bragg, take a bow. Trump now has the aura of the American outlaw, a victim of the Biden DOJ, a man on the run. Look at that mug shot. He’s trolling the Constitution. I once wrote about Trump in the context of Shakespeare’s Richard III: it’s hard not to root for the monster in some mischievous way. Even if you accept that the indictments are valid— the Georgia one, in particular— you have to acknowledge the reality that instead of delegitimizing Donald Trump, the American justice system now risks delegitimizing itself with half the American public.

Those of us looking at these numbers and checking our own gut are, of course, “bedwetters” in the words of Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager in 2012. This is the same Messina, mind you, who in early 2016 proclaimed, “I wake up every morning and drop to my knees and pray, ‘Please, God, give me Donald Trump [as the GOP nominee].’” David Frum predicts a “Biden blowout.” He reassured me of a Hillary blowout a week before the election in 2016. We’re all fallible. But I think they were wrong about Trump’s strength then and wrong about him now.

The case for Biden is that he has some big achievements in infrastructure, climate change, the CHIPS Act, lowering inflation, and boosting wages in a surprisingly resilient economy. These fundamentals will sink in eventually; and the prospect of a Trump return will rally the troops. I aired this case thoroughly with Josh Barro, and it’s not without merit.

The trouble is: not much of this has an instant effect, and terrible inflation wrought lasting harm to core Democratic constituencies, especially poorer black and Latino voters, in Biden’s first two years. Prices began surpassing wages almost as soon as he took office and only this year have things shifted. For many items, the price is permanently higher— as voters are reminded every time they go to the supermarket.

Gas prices, now mercifully declining, are still far higher— 63 percent— than when Biden took over. The precariousness of many low-level jobs makes even slightly higher real incomes less comforting. Biden’s embrace of the far left on race (equity over equality) and gender identity (transing children before puberty) has further alienated more culturally conservative blacks and Hispanics. The massive influx of immigrants, enabled by Biden, almost all fraudulently claiming asylum, is testing Democrats in the big cities, as Eric Adams’ most recent outburst demonstrates.

The post-BLM surge in murder rate— almost exclusively of young black men killing other young black men with no fear of consequences— and the pullback of policing in many cities, makes the underwhelming black support for Biden more comprehensible. They have borne the brunt of the violence unleashed on them by white upper-class leftists. Yes, violent crime and murder rates are finally declining— but, again, the unraveling of social norms is unmissable in many cities, and rates are still higher than before Covid. The toll of opioids continues to rise.

And there’s understandable nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy, when blacks and Hispanics, in particular, thrived. It did not surprise me that the NYT poll this week found that “a modest but important 5 percent of nonwhite Biden voters now support Trump, including 8 percent of Hispanic voters who say they backed Biden in 2020.” This isn’t much, of course, but if you also consider the likelihood of low turnout in these populations, Trump must be grinning.

Biden is not the only reason for declining non-white support for the Dems, but his presidency has done nothing but accentuate it. His ad campaign this week targeting minority voters— “notably the largest for a reelection bid this early in the cycle”— is a sign that the White House knows how deep the problem is. Biden’s net approval is lower than any previous president who’s been re-elected. And incumbency is not the advantage it might have been because, in many ways, as Damon points out, Trump is also an incumbent. We’ll have two one-term presidents competing for a second.

I voted for Biden; if he’s up against Trump, I’ll do it again. Apart from his cultural extremism and immigration, I’m fine with much of his policies— and admire him for getting us out of Afghanistan. And yet when I think of the presidency right now, it feels like an empty space. The drift so many now feel as religion recedes from American life, as social media eats away at any sense of the common good, as all the worst elements of society are replayed on our phones over and over, is palpable. We need someone to chart some kind of future that feels better. Biden cannot really do that now, let alone next year in a grueling campaign. The past clings to him, partly because he is the past.

“But who else?” the Democrats say. I don’t know. But that’s what primaries are for. Harris is an obvious non-starter, which goes a long way to explaining why we’re stuck where we are. But there’s no reason she couldn’t throw her hat in the ring (and Biden should stay strictly neutral). RFK Jr is another non-starter, but look how he far he gone despite being completely bonkers. Even Marianne Williamson has polled as high as nine percent. There are plenty of popular Dem governors— Polis, Shapiro, Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker, and Moore come to mind. Senators Warren, Klobuchar or Booker could run again, as could Buttigieg. Others will emerge. Yes, there’s a risk in Biden pulling an LBJ. But there’s a risk with him in staying in place, as all the energy propels Trump back to power.

A new candidate would immediately shift the dynamic of the race. The Democrat would represent the future; and Trump the polarized past. A younger candidate would instantly reverse the age argument in the Democrats’ favor. The news cycles would be full of Dem debates, fights, campaigns and energy— and not dictated by the defensive torpor of a frail octogenarian, or the unending narrative of Trump against the corrupt elites.

And Biden can say, persuasively: I did my part. I saved us from Trump. I’ve remade the economy. I’ve done what Trump couldn’t on infrastructure and the climate and trade. I’ve brought manufacturing back to the US. I’ve revived the NATO alliance. I’ve ensured America’s technological edge. Now it’s time for me to hand this legacy over to someone fresher who can chart the future. Biden was elected as a means to check Trump; the logic of his presidency was always that the old man would get us back to normal; and that argument makes much more sense for a one-term presidency. And what an atmosphere-changing gesture than relinquishing power voluntarily when so many are clinging to it with arthritic fingers.

There is no shame, Mr President, in acknowledging human limits. Your stamina for an 80-year-old is admirable. But it cannot prevent human decline; and the chance of a sudden change for the worse in your health is very real. There is a dignified way out— and forward. Please take it. You’ve served your country well. But we need to turn the page. And there could be no worse legacy than handing the country back to the monster you rescued us from.

On Thursday, Bill Scher wrote that Ageist Attacks Aren’t New in Presidential Campaigns, And They Haven’t Worked. His history of ageist attacks is interesting and worth reading if you like history. But not reassuring for someone like me worried about a fascist takeover of my country.

“Biden, who turns 81 in November,” wrote Scher, “is facing openly ageist attacks, free of any coy subtlety. Trump, who is only four years younger, has said Biden ‘can’t string two sentences together’ and has the ‘mind, ideas, and I.Q. of a first grader.’ Other Republican candidates, such as Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, have speculated, or flatly asserted, that Biden won’t live out a second term, so a vote for him is a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris— an echo of Stevenson’s charge that a vote for Ike was a vote to make Vice President Nixon commander-in-chief. Polling suggests age is a potent avenue for attack. A recent analysis by the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake argues that Biden isn’t just facing an age issue but a ‘perceived mental-sharpness problem, and the gap between him and former president Donald Trump on such questions has also expanded.’ While Blake stops short of concluding it’s politically fatal, he cautions: ‘The problem is that the margins are just so fine, and this issue presents the vast majority of voters with a historically unusual liability, however compelling they might ultimately find it, to balance against Trump’s liabilities.’”

Without question, we have several historically unusual factors. Biden is our first octogenarian president (although life expectancy is much higher than in the 19th century, and for 80-year-old white males, average life expectancy is another 7.8 years.) Biden also has to perform in a 24-7 media culture, so visible aspects of aging, such as his more prevalent stammer, can’t be hidden. Age will be an X-factor of unknown relevance until the votes are tallied.

But it is also true that almost every time there is an age gap between the candidates, the younger candidate’s campaign tries to exploit it. And in each of those instances, age was not the factor that determined the outcome.

Even today, we don’t have any firm evidence that concerns about Biden’s age are turning Democratic voters into Republican voters. Any softness in Biden’s level of support is more easily attributable to the lingering effects of high, albeit cooling, inflation, though it is difficult to separate the impact of age and inflation on Biden’s numbers.

After the Wall Street Journal polled voters on their concerns regarding age and mental fitness, it followed up with a North Carolina Democrat who wished there was another option for her party’s nominee. She said, “It’s 100% because of his age. He’s done a great job. He’s good right now. But somebody at the age of 80 has a high risk of things going wrong physically and mentally.” But when asked if the choice is Biden or Trump, she was clear: “I can’t say it strongly enough, absolutely Biden.”

That’s just one anecdote, but the logic is sound. If you are satisfied with the incumbent’s record, you will almost certainly stick with the incumbent.

Sure, it would be helpful to Biden’s cause if he spoke more crisply and put to rest any concerns about his fitness. But what Biden needs most is continued declining inflation, increasing real wages and disposable personal income, low unemployment, and solid economic growth so more voters will be satisfied with his record on Election Day.