Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell struck up a friendship during their nearly quarter-century in the Senate together. Now in their 80s, the Democratic president and the Senate GOP leader appear to be giving political cover to each other as they fend off questions about their advanced age and health issues.
Notably, McConnell, R-Ky., 81, hasn’t joined Donald Trump, 77, and other Republicans who have attacked Biden’s age, health and mental acuity as he seeks re-election.
And after McConnell’s second freeze-up last week, Biden was one of the first to call McConnell, telling reporters that his “friend” sounded like “his old self” and that such episodes are a “part of his recovery” from a fall and a concussion this year.
complicate attacks on Biden’s age
No they really don’t. They’ll talk about Biden’s “obvious mental decline” and they’ll just not talk at all about Mitch’s very public 30 second Journeys Beyond the Stars. They’ll absolutely say Biden is too old but that Trump, who is only 3 years younger, isn’t. The right is absolutely capable of that level of doublethink. Stop assuming anything matters to them other than getting power they can use to hurt people. They don’t care about policy. They don’t care about seeming like hypocrites. They’ve been whipped into a paranoid frenzy and they’ll do anything they need to do in order to hurt the people they’re afraid of. Start looking at their behavior through that lens and see if it doesn’t start to make a lot of sense to you.
I think Trump is younger. He’s a monster, but still younger than Biden.
Yup, Biden is 3 years older than trump.
I don’t see any mental decline… Biden has always been a gaffe machine and he has a stutter he struggles to suppress. He’s the same as ever.
While on the other side, Trump seems to be already through with his mental decline…
And Biden still jogs & bikes.
Trump doesn’t exercise which means his battery remains fuller than Biden, who frivolously depletes his battery through exercise. Humans have a finite amount of energy and you have to conserve it (this is an actual thing he believes.)
This is a big fucking deal!
He might gaffe but he’s not wrong lol
My mistake, edited. Ty!
Indeed, so if Trump was theoretically elected, he’d be the oldest elected president of all time, beating Joe from 2020 lol.
He’s also wildly unhealthy, and if his lifestyle is to be believed, he probably should’ve died years ago. The only thing keeping him going is fake tan, hair dye, and hate.
Biden is too old, but he at least looks somewhat healthy.
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I do have to admit, after getting concussed I also appeared to freeze but I was thinking hard of what the right word is to say next.
That said, probably anyone in concussion recovery should be on leave from legislating. The brain will heal more slowly, and your work will be of poor quality.
That’s all before getting into the actual politics of having a gerentocracy.
I know a lot of people have talked a out adding an age limit, but it seems to me most of the ancient ones are skating by on incumbent effect. If we had term limits it would resolve that. Alternatively something like the Virginia Gubernatorial rules where you cannot hold the position successively.
I have the same occasional issue with forgetting words after a TBI, and have worked with people in recover who have it much worse than I. It’s an interesting outcome when simple words just cannot be recalled. To fabricate an example; I know what this object is, a tool for writing, it’s in my hand, it has ink, but what the hell is it called. (a pen) - it can be for the most mundane and common words.
However; I don’t go slackjaw and become completely nonresponsive for 10-20 seconds. This guy needs to be in medical care.
You’re right, it’s never as long as this. I am young, though so I don’t know how it would show in an ancient man hahaha.
I don’t see the appeal in insisting everything is fine. I would rather see my leaders saying “hey, I don’t feel good so I’m going to take some time to get healthy”.
The hubris of man
I appreciated that about Fetterman. I feel as though he presented his injury as something humans go through. He will continue his job, at times with assistance, and do the best he is able. He didn’t need to step down and he is not incapable of doing his job, but he has a flaw and is honest of it.
Literally just yesterday Fox had some other attack piece on Biden and the picture they used of Biden he looked totally zonked-out.
McConnell’s walking-dead impersonation changes nothing for Republicans. Hypocrisy means nothing to those people.
Fox is so fucking bizarre. I mean, everyone hears about it, but unless you’re stuck in some type of torture chamber where you can’t switch the channel, you just can’t comprehend how overt and low effort the fake propaganda is on there. It blows my mind every year or three when I get stuck somewhere where it’s on.
You’d be surprised at the number of American households that voluntarily put themselves in such a torture chamber
I have a couple friends who’s older family members just run Fox 24/7. And from what they tell me, it’s not fun having family members like that. I feel very lucky.
It is not. Before Fox we had Alex Jones, Coast-to-Coast, Imus, and Rush on all the time at my house growing up. Mom would get really angry if you tried to turn the radio volume lower. Of course we lived in the middle of nowhere so it was mostly static. It was this constant background noise of my childhood.
I can still remember being about 6 or so and asking my mom “what did liberals do to that man to make him so angry all the time?”. Pretty sure it was Rush I was referring to but might have been some other screaming radio guy. My dad lost it when Imus said something bigoted, and got fired. I endured two weeks of rants about it.
Part of the reason why I avoid talking about politics around my kids. I am a bit leftwing and that is my thing, my kids don’t need to be captive audiences to me about this stuff. Besides we got Legos and woodwork to do.
The same people who voluntarily put themselves in that torture chamber then tell me that Fox “has really gone downhill” so they’ve gotta get their Newsmax. Totally disconnected from the reality of the world.
What annoys me is their main demographics are about the same age. I would have thought moving the elderly while begging for their vote was a bad idea but I guess that is why I am not in politics.
This would be devastating if conservatives cared at all about hypocrisy or logical consistency.
No one over 70, period. Go home. Retire. Make way.
Keep in mind that includes Bernie Sanders.
And that would be okay.
Correct. Bernie needs to retire
Age limit tied to Social Security retirement age and joining the military, voting, smoking, and drinking tied to the same age (18 or 21, take your pick). We either need to say people are of the appropriate age to do these things, or not. This cherry-picking bullshit has to go. Also, term limits. The constitution wasn’t meant for a congressperson or senator to be in the same seat for 40+ years.
I totally agree with the sentiment but a small nitpick I have is that you lumped voting age in with the possibly lethal choices of military enlistment or being able to purchase alcohol and tobacco. Those last three should be together, I agree, and that age (IMO) should be the earliest age of least potential harm done, i.e. probably not right out of highschool when most people don’t have a good foundation and can easily fuck up their life with one bad choice. Voting should definitely be available at age of legal maturity, though. If society says you’re old enough for your parents to kick you out with no repurcussions they’d damn better let you at least say you’d like that one guy, who wants to make things easier for homeless 18 year olds, to be in charge.
I disagree. I understand your viewpoint, but we need a more clear cut way to determine someone’s “maturity” to make their own decisions. Voting can be indirectly lethal (using the term very loosely here). Ask one of the women who couldn’t get an abortion and died from delivery complications, or the recent study that said the rollbacks the last president made for pollution is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of deaths, or lack of COVID restrictions enforcement. It’s also currently arbitrary whether someone is tried as an adult in the case of a teenager that commits a homicide. So is the ability to give consent for intercourse, and that has a remote possibility of lethality too (delivery complications, STDs, etc.).
If only there was some sort of system by which voters could choose who their candidates are. Like before the general election parties could have internal elections to decide the candidates.
They could call it like a “First election” or even a “Primary election.”
At this point it is economically unfeasible for anyone under 40, unless you are an affluent trust fund baby, to pay all the money required to run for a presidential campaign.
This is why it’s always skewed towards old white men (hint: they can afford losing millions).
Literally no one ever has paid all of the money required to run a Presidential Campaign.
Sounds like you can easily run for president then, eh? Hypothetically speaking, if you were forced by gunpoint to run, what’s stopping you in particular?
My criminal history wouldn’t play well with voters. Small time drug possession, misdemeanor. It’s since been expunged (hence me having my current job), but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t come up.
Fun fact: I was actually offered the opportunity to run for state gov by my states party, and turned it down due to aforementioned criminal history.
I don’t know what fucking fantasy reality you live in where no criminals run for office; we the attorney General of Texas, George Santos indictment, Americas mayor Rudy Juliani indictment, fucking Trump. We can keep going on literally forever listing criminal pieces of shit who have been in government positions.
Your argument here is failing.
You’re describing situations that the public very much is aware of.
I’m not concerned with getting in trouble. I was concerned with winning the election and I know who my potential constituents would have been and their feelings on marijuana possession.
It’s on the ballot to be recreational in my state so maybe I’ll revisit after that passes, as the optics would improve significantly.
I’m not interested in running an already-uphill campaign with an albatross around my neck. Consider that, as a potential candidate, I have superior knowledge of my electorate than some random dude who doesn’t even know where I live.
Judging from the Republicans presidential candidates debate, the selection is limited to idiots, stupid idiots, and dangerous idiots.
That’s who their voters want. You’re mad at republican voters. I don’t know why people don’t realize that.
I am constantly angry at ignorant, uneducated, rural removed. Yes, you are correct.
It’s all about the slime of political relationships and whom you know for politicians, not actual work capacity.
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IMHO Bernie is best suited to be an advisor or advocate, if he wants to continue.
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he couldn’t even get his own party’s nomination
Tell me more about politics please.
No they don’t.
It’s incredible how fucking stupid news media is, huh?
Imagine what a cakewalk it would be if the Democrats could scrape up a viable candidate under 65
democrats don’t want to win all the time, then they’d have to do stuff and keep improving
He polled terribly in his 2016 run. His popularity improved during Trump’s presidency, especially during the impeachment hearings, but the Republicans will hammer him on his relationship with the alleged Chinese spy Christine Fang
I honestly don’t care what the Republicans say, he’s a great representative and that’s what we need. Look at what they’re saying about Biden while he’s doing a pretty great job. It doesn’t matter.
I’m just saying it wouldn’t be a cakewalk with Swalwell. Honestly I don’t think it’s possible for any candidate to have a sweeping victory like Reagan vs Mondale anymore. The voters loyal to Trump at this point are just frothing at the mouth for a dictator. That alone should give any Democratic nominee a cakewalk victory, but we all saw how close the 2020 election was. The Republicans will use Christine Zang to whip up the MAGA base and that will be enough to make it close, at least without a double-digit surge in voter turnout. But again, if defeating the literal fascists isn’t enough to bring out the non-voters, then I can’t believe there exists a candidate who can motivate the independent and progressive non-voters to come out and vote with the liberals and centrists.
Trump had private meetings with Putin and does Putin’s bidding, do you really think they’ll have a leg to stand on? A bunch of them went to celebrate the 4th of July in Russia. You keep saying her name over and over and I had to look her up. They got nothing.
Trump had private meetings with Putin and does Putin’s bidding, do you really think they’ll have a leg to stand on?
No, I don’t. But that doesn’t matter to the republican voters. And that’s where I think the original assertion that the democractic party would have a cakewalk in 2024 with a candidate who is under 65 falls apart (let’s be honest, by definition a non-viable candidate can’t win, and Trump changed the definition of viable in 2016).
You keep saying her name over and over and I had to look her up. They got nothing.
You and I know that. But when Swalwell was seeing his approval ratings going up during Trump’s first impeachment hearing, this story is exactly what the republicans drudged up against him. And loyal republican voters will bring it up again if he runs for president again. And they’ll have no problem saying they have to vote against Swalwell because of it.
I like Swalwell. I would vote for him in the general if he’s the nominee based on what I know right now. But I’m saying I don’t think there is any candidate who could unify the progressive, liberal, centrist, independent, and non-voters enough to make the election a cakewalk. It should have been a cakewalk in 2016, but it wasn’t. It should have been a cakewalk in 2020 but Trump actually received more votes than in 2016. He actually won the second most votes in the history of the country in 2020! And he’s out here spouting literal fascism, while actively being prosecuted for like 100 felonies, including trying to subvert our democracy (ie fascism) and he’s trouncing the other republican primary candidates! He’s polling over 50% in the primary, and the second place candidate has less than a third of that!
The democrats could run literally Jesus, and I still think it would be a close election due him being a Jewish immigrant who hangs out with poor people and prostitutes (bunch of welfare moochers who just want free stuff and promote crime, think of the children), preaches we should sell our belongings to fund clothing, feeding, and sheltering the poor (communism!), and the whole love your neighbor thing (ie he’d probably tell Israel to chill out and be nice to the Palestinians, so that would totally ruin the Evangelicals’ plans for armageddon and the rapture).
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Right. Hence why I don’t think there will ever be a cakewalk of an election.
Or this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ossoff
Wow, I’ve never heard of him but he does look good.
- Bachelor’s from Georgetown.
- Master’s from the London School of Economics.
- Experience as an Investigative journalist in Africa and the Middle East.
- Interned in the Senate under civil rights icon John Lewis.
- First ever millennial Senator.
- Progressive (by American standards).
Definitely well qualified.
The only downside is that he’s pretty unknown, having only been a senator since 2021.
Wait. Trump, three years younger than Biden, is attacking Biden on his age?
Trump also thinks he’s 215 pounds.
I’m 6’2 230 lbs and I look WAY slimmer than Trump. He is lying about all of it.
My guess is if you took away the lift shoes and actually measured the guy he’d be a bit shy of 6 foot and well over 300
He was already attacking Biden on his age during the election. At the age Trump now is.
Why do Democrats keep entertaining the notion that rank hypocrisy will ever be a dealbreaker for Republicans? They have decades of evidence to the contrary.
See also: finally, this heinous act will make Republicans see the light and abandon the assholes manipulating them!
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There’s a 4 year age gap between Trump and Biden. Funny how 4 years ago Trump was saying Biden was too old for the job…
If trump were smart, (lol, bear with me) he would say “people didn’t mind voting for Biden at this age, so they shouldn’t mind me at this age either. But I promise not to run after the age of 80, unlike that frail old man who just wants to hide in his basement” or some shit like that. He lies all the fucking time, so he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by spinning that just a little bit.
If Trump were smart, he would have also said “we have the best scientists, and I only hire the best, you know, my personal friend Dr Fauci agrees with me that all patriots should wear masks to beat the China virus, and we’re going to have beautiful vaccines, the very very best vaccines, and we’re gonna use so much of them you won’t believe how great we are at beating this virus, we’re gonna be sick of being healthy.” and would probably have handily won reelection.
I mean, he did at first. Lmao and then (idk the order in which it happened) he flipped with his base to “vaccines will give you rabies and chemically castrate you” when they started coming out. He initially bragged about how fast he was helping companies develop the vaccine, then it came out and he decided to trash them
They celebrate Operation Warp Speed at the same time they talk about being “pure blooded” lmao
These people do not have brains.
Not only that, but he could’ve made millions off of red maga facemasks too. All he had to do was let the experts run the shit they’re experts in while taking credit for putting the right people on top of it. The election wouldn’t have even been close. It would’ve been like the Reagan reelection.
what a timeline that would be
More than anything I just hope this could get the US term limits. If an older person gets elected so be it, but let’s get rid of people serving in Congress for 20+ years. Two terms Senate, two House gets you twenty years, that is long enough and follows the existing model with the Presidency.
Amen to that.
There’s a few good dynasty reps, but for every one good one it seems like there’s 4-5 bad ones.
Being a representative is not supposed to be a career job. You can’t represent the people if you haven’t been one of the people for 20+ years and you have no idea what life in your district is actually like.
Plus there’s a natural predisposition to re-elect incumbents. Thus you get dinosaurs like McConnell and Pelosi who both should be in nursing homes but they stick around because they have seniority. These people are not doing a good job of representing the will of their constituents, if only because it’s been longer than anyone can remember since they’ve been one of those constituents.
This exactly. This is at the heart of so much of the corruption. Someone in public service shouldn’t be able to make it a life time appointment and come out 100s of millions in net worth.
Bought and sold by corp interest all along the way. It becomes a lot harder to purchase power when there’s a regular rotation of new people every 4-8 years
You make a good point- along with term limits there has to be something to prevent a revolving door of people going between government regulating industry and the industry they regulate. An insider trading law for Congress is a good start- if not requiring investments to go into a blind trust, to at least require Congress representatives and spouse to publicly declare all holdings and trades so insider trading would be obvious.
I’d really like to make elections publicly funded though. Get the money out of Washington.
And while we’re at it, let’s reform primaries by removing them entirely. Let anyone with some number of petition signatures get on the main ballot, and use ranked choice voting so you can vote ‘for’ the best guy without losing your vote ‘against’ the worst guy. Then we might actually get some GOOD politicians.
Fundamentally disagree. You are just opening the system to cheaper bribery. Senators like Bernie Sanders would be thrown out even when he has one of the highest approval ratings by his constituents. Term limits do nothing for congress but make said congress people look for their next opportunity after the gig (which is already a problem). Its on voters to make sure candidates like Mitch McConnell or Dianne Feinstein get replaced. The call for term limits is just change for change without any thought on its possible effects. You may ask why do I have this double standard for congress but not the president? The simple answer is there are 100 senators and 435 House Representatives, most people barely fucking know who their senators/reps are but you are just making for a revolving door to disincentivize even caring about them now since eh they are going to disappear in a couple years anyway, the power difference between being the sole power of a branch of government vs being merely a member with either 1/100 or 1/435 the power of the body changes things since congress is far more a collective than any of the other branches.
Trumps age complicate republican attacks on bidens age…
Why do we get Biden? Is there NO other democrat that can beat Trump, etc? None whatsoever?
The Dems need to stop fighting one election at a time. They’re fighting on their back foot!
There are at least 2 other democrats in the running that could beat Trump that are polling >10%, but the DNC won’t allow debates. If the DNC believed in Biden, they should allow debates to show all of us that he’s competent.
Dnc has been entirely fucked since they froze out Bernie. That’s why Trump won.
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Who are those 2?
I’m assuming they are talking about Kennedy and Williamson. Which are absolute batshit insane people that have no chance at beating trump. They say a lot of progressive stuff that sounds great but then you find out the crystal healthcare program and that anti semitism
Yeah RFK is a joke and is bankrolled by the far right. Republicans like him more than Dems. Calling him a serious contender is a joke and a half.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rfk-jr-democrat-republican-primary-favorability/
complicate attacks on Biden’s age
Do they, though? For that to be true, the following would also have to be true:
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The people mad about Hunter Biden making money on his dad’s name would also be mad about Trump’s kids doing that
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The people mad about Obama taking vacations (or golfing) while in office would also have been mad when Trump took more vacation time and golfed more
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The people mad about Clinton lying about a blowjob would also be mad about Trump’s infidelity and lying
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etc.
I’m going with: it doesn’t complicate anything. They don’t care about their people living up to the standards they demand others live up to, the point for them is that double-standards are a feature, not a bug.
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