Editor’s Note: Jon Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com, a forum for conservative podcasts, and he is an opinion contributor to The Arizona Republic. Follow him on Twitter at @ExJon. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
It’s official: President Joe Biden announced Tuesday he is running for reelection. Also official: Nobody is very excited about it.
According to CNN’s Poll of Polls, Biden’s approval rating among all adults is stuck at 41%, with 55% disapproving, tied for the second lowest for any modern president. Even Trump’s polls were better at this stage of his presidency.
The last time Biden’s approval has been at or above 50% was 21 months ago, per Gallup.
But the news gets worse as Americans look to the future. An NBC News poll found that 70% of Americans believe Biden should not run for reelection, including 51% of Democrats. About half of those who said he shouldn’t run believe his age is a major reason.
What’s worse is that Biden’s age is apparent whenever he appears in public. It seems every speech Biden offers delivers another gaffe, every appearance on stage, another stumble. Even his 2024 campaign launch video shows a man largely hiding from the camera.
If inaugurated a second time, Biden will be 82 years old and 86 by the term’s end. But Biden is not the only old public servant in office. Much of our federal government is also led by people well past retirement age.
America today is less a democracy than a gerontocracy.
As much grief as Baby Boomers get, Biden is a pre-boomer, belonging to the Silent Generation. The president passed the average US life expectancy four years ago. For comparison, the median age for Americans is 38.8 – less than half his age. Ultimately, this isn’t an argument about age but about a detailed understanding of our fast-moving world.
Technological advancements are obvious, but social, political and international changes have been equally significant. Our society and the world at large look a whole lot different than they did half a century ago.
That’s why we need a president offering fresh ideas, innovative solutions and the ability to anticipate near-term changes. Instead, Biden remains mired in the past.
Age wasn’t as much of an impediment in 2020. Biden is less than four years older than Donald Trump, which didn’t set much of a contrast. Outside of Trump, the GOP primary features a young field, with the likely leader being 44-year-old Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring yet.
Last time around, Biden was an ideal antidote to Trumpism. The former vice president was portrayed as a kindly grandpa, slightly goofy, yet an old, reliable hand in the center of the Democratic Party. Pull the lever for Joe and you can get back to ignoring politics. No scandal-of-the-day or late-night tweetstorms, just the bland guy you’ve seen in the news for 50 years.
Independents and moderate Republicans voted for Biden and awaited the promised return to normalcy. That’s not what they got.
Scandals were replaced with crises. Everything from the deadly Afghanistan pullout to soaring immigration to a broken supply chain to Ukraine, not to mention the worst inflation in four decades. Every time voters filled their tank or headed out for groceries, they were reminded of Biden’s failure.
Mean tweets were replaced by an increasing number of gaffes, misstatements and troubling behavior by America’s oldest president in history. During the campaign, it was passed off as “Joe being Joe,” but it keeps getting worse.
These complaints used to come from the right, but more and more Democrats have spoken out.
Last year, Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod warned against a reelection run. “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job, and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” he told the New York Times.
Former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton Robert Reich also pointed to Biden’s age and reduced faculties. “This isn’t an ‘ageist’ prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights,” Reich wrote in The Guardian, “so much as an understanding that people in mid-80s do wither.”
Nevertheless, the Democratic Party has all but canceled their presidential primary. The Democratic Party said they’re backing Biden’s reelection bid and have no plans to sponsor primary debates, according to the Washington Post. At the moment the only declared opponents are fringe characters like Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We wish everyone the best health and many more happy years. All of us are getting older and we’ll be lucky to live as long as Biden. But if Democrats want to preserve their future, they have to cut their party leader loose. Sooner rather than later.
