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      The Question of Joe Biden

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      Nearly two decades ago, I tried to write a group biography about the senators whose offices happened to be on the second floor of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill. The group included John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel. I got to know and study each of those senators during that long-ago-abandoned project.The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of the underdog. I’ve rarely met a politician so rooted in the unpretentious middle-class ethos of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has a seemingly instinctive ability to bond with those who are hurting.Our politics have gotten rougher over the ensuing years but that hasn’t dampened Biden’s basic humanity. When he was vice president, I remember a searing meeting with him shortly after his son Beau died, his grief raw and on the surface. And like many, I’ve felt the beam of his empathy and care myself. A year and a half ago, the day after my oldest friend fell victim to suicide, Biden heard about it and called me to offer comfort. He just let me talk about my friend and through his words and tone of voice joined me in the suffering. I experienced the solace of being seen.He has his faults — the tendency to talk too much, the chip on his shoulder about those who think they are smarter than he is, the gaffes, that episode of plagiarism and the moments of confusion — but I’ve always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction.But I’ve also come to fear and loathe Donald Trump. I cannot fathom what damage that increasingly deranged man might do to this country if given a second term. And the fact is that as the polls and the mood of the electorate stand today, Trump has a decent chance of beating Biden in November of next year and regaining power in 2025.Voters know both men very well at this point, so when I hear Democrats comforting themselves that people will flock to Biden if the alternative on the ballot is Trump, I worry they are kidding themselves. Biden’s approval ratings are stubbornly low. In a recent ABC poll, only 30 percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy and only 23 percent approve of his handling of immigration at the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of American voters say that Biden, at 80, is too old to seek a second term. There have been a string of polls showing that large majorities in his own party don’t want him to run again. In one survey from 2022, an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted a different nominee.I thought Biden’s favorability ratings would climb as economic growth has remained relatively strong and as inflation has come down. But it just hasn’t happened.So I’m emotionally torn these days, the way so many are — feeling strong affection and appreciation for Joe Biden, and yet feeling gripped simultaneously by a pounding fear that a Biden-led party will lose next year, and lead to a Trumpian Götterdämmerung. Like many Americans, I’ve found myself having The Conversation over and over again, with friends, sources and people who work in Democratic politics: whether Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump, his chances of winning, if there’s some better course.Some Democrats tell me in these talks that they hope their party leaders will somehow persuade Biden to retire and open the door for a fresher candidate. Others argue that Biden needs some stiff primary competition. Most of the filing deadlines for the early primaries are approaching — Nevada and New Hampshire this month, Michigan and California and more in December. There’s still time for other Democrats to jump in the race.But many party leaders act as if this is madness, speaking with a fervor that is loyal but also patronizing: Biden is vehement about running again, and there’s zero chance he’ll be talked out of it, so Democrats had better just deal with that fact. Plus a serious primary challenge would merely weaken the inevitable Biden candidacy, the way Ted Kennedy weakened Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Pat Buchanan hurt George H.W. Bush in 1992. We just have to pull this guy over the line.I don’t find this passive fatalism compelling. The party’s elected officials are basically urging rank-and-file Democrats not to be anxious about a situation that is genuinely anxiety-inducing. Last month Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told The Times, “This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself.” Really? Surely if there’s a lesson we should have learned from the last decade, it’s that we should all be listening harder to what the electorate is trying to say.I’ve tried to set aside my affection for the man and look anew at the question of Biden and 2024: Should we really do this?***The thing that so many of us are stuck on is Biden’s age, of course. On this subject I have some personal observations. I’ve been interviewing the man for a quarter century, including during his presidency. The Republicans who portray him as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration. In fact, I’ve noticed some improvements in his communication style as he’s aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he’s more disciplined. When he’s describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less.What about four or five years from now, at the end of a second term? Will he still be competent enough to lead? Biden is fit, does not smoke or drink alcohol, exercises frequently and has no serious health conditions, according to the White House. A study in The Journal on Active Aging of Biden’s and Trump’s health records from before the 2020 elections found that both men could qualify as “super-agers” — the demographic that maintains physical and mental functioning beyond age 80.But Biden’s age is obviously and understandably going to be a greater concern than it was in 2020. It seems especially to worry some White House staff members or whoever is trying to cocoon him so he doesn’t make a ruinous tumble. But if the president I see in interviews and at speeches is out campaigning next year against an overweight man roughly his own age, then my guess is that public anxieties on this front will diminish.To me, age isn’t Biden’s key weakness. Inflation is. I agree with what Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: Biden’s domestic legislative accomplishments are as impressive as any other president’s in my adult life. Exactly as he should have, he has directed huge amounts of resources to the people and the places that have been left behind by the global economy. By one Treasury Department estimate, more than 80 percent of the investments sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act are going to counties with below-average college graduation rates and nearly 90 percent are being made in counties with below-average wages. That was the medicine a riven country needed.But it is also true that Biden’s team overlearned the lessons of the Obama years. If Barack Obama didn’t stimulate the economy enough during the Great Recession, Biden stimulated it too much, contributing to inflation and the sticker shock people are feeling.Anger about inflation is ripping across the world, and has no doubt helped lower the approval ratings of leaders left, right and center. Biden’s 40 percent approval rating may look bad, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s approval rating is 36; in Germany Olaf Scholz is at 29; in Britain Rishi Sunak is at 28; in France Emmanuel Macron is at 23; and in Japan Fumio Kishida is also at 23. This is a global phenomenon. As the journalist Josh Barro argued recently, “Inflation is the reason Biden could not deliver on his core promise to return the country to normal and the main reason his poll numbers are bad.”Because of inflation, Americans now trust Trump to handle the economy more than Biden. As ABC News reported, voters are looking back and retroactively elevating their opinion of Trump’s presidency. When he left office only 38 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. Today, 48 percent do, his high-water mark.Inflation also contributes to a corrosive national mood that you might call American Jaundice. Nearly three out of every four Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Bitterness, cynicism and distrust pervade the body politic. People perceive reality through negative lenses, seeing everything as much worse than it is. At 3.8 percent, America’s unemployment rate is objectively low, but 57 percent of voters say that the unemployment rate is “not so good” or “poor.”The nation’s bitter state of mind is a self-perpetuating negativity machine. Younger people feel dismissed; the older generations are hogging power. Faith in major institutions is nearing record lows. The country is hungry for some kind of change but is unclear about what that might look like. As the incumbent, Biden will be tasked with trying to tell a good news story of American revival, which is just a tough story to sell in this environment. And Biden is not out there selling it convincingly.The bracing reality is that Trump’s cynicism and fury match the national mood more than Biden’s faithful optimism. It’s one of the reasons Trump is now leading Biden by 1.2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. It’s one of the reasons Trump is in a stronger polling position now than at any point in 2016 or 2020. It’s one of the reasons even some Republicans are mystified by the way Democrats are standing pat behind their incumbent.“They seem hell bent on nominating the one Democrat who would lose to Donald Trump,” Karl Rove told me recently. “They’ve got a lot of talent on their side, let’s not kid ourselves,” he continued, pointing to younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker.***But once you start to think carefully about whether Democrats could nominate one of those non-Biden alternatives, all sorts of other concerns rise into view. First, there is the Kamala Harris problem. If the door were open, the vice president would probably run even though her poll numbers are lower than Biden’s. Her shambolic 2020 presidential campaign does not inspire confidence, and her record includes being a leading player on the administration’s divisive immigration policies. People can make an all-star wish list of other Democratic nominees, but in the real world there is simply no easy way to push Harris aside.Then there’s the fact that there is no other viable candidate in the Democratic Party with a national base of support. The rising Democratic stars Rove referred to are all talented, but none have compellingly stood on the national stage. In the polling right now, possible candidates not named Biden or Harris are in the low single digits.Plus, there are good reasons no major Democrat has so far stepped up to mount a challenge. Anyone who did throw a hat in the ring would face such vitriolic contempt from the party establishment, it would probably be career-ending. Such a candidate might also face withering criticism from rank-and-file Democrats. As a former Obama administration official, Dan Pfeiffer, has pointed out, Biden has higher favorability ratings among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans. Democrats may be anxious about the old guy running, but that doesn’t mean they’d automatically warm to someone trying to take him down.Finally, and most important, when you really start to imagine what it would look like if the Democrats didn’t nominate Biden, one whopping issue becomes clear.A lot of the dump-Biden conversations are based on a false premise: that the Democratic Party brand and agenda are somehow strong and popular enough that any number of younger candidates could win the White House in 2024, and that if Biden were just to retire, all sorts of obstacles and troubles would go with him.But Biden is not the sole or even primary problem here. To the extent that these things are separable, it’s the Democratic Party as a whole that’s ailing. The generic congressional ballot is a broad measure of the strength of the congressional party. Democrats are now behind. According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin.When pollsters ask which party is best positioned to address your concerns, here too, Democrats are trailing. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent of Americans say Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous over the short term while only 39 percent thought that of the Democrats. Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that the Republicans would do a better job keeping America safe, while only 35 percent favor the Democrats. These are historically high Republican advantages.Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures.This is about something deeper than Joe Biden’s age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me.When I think back to the glory days of the Democratic Party, the days of the New Deal and the Great Society, even to the days when Joe Biden was a young senator being mentored by the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party was at its core a working- and middle-class party. Over the last half century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.It is not news that the Democrats have been losing white working-class voters ever since the emergence of the Reagan Democrats. But today, the party is bleeding working-class voters of all varieties. As John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira point out in their forthcoming book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” Democrats have been losing ground among Hispanics for the last few years. In 2012, Barack Obama carried nonwhite voters without a college degree by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Biden carried this group with a 48-point margin. Today, the Democratic ticket leads among this group by a paltry 16 points.But Democrats are losing something arguably more important than a reliable base of supporters. The party is in danger of letting go of an ethos, a heritage, a tradition. The working-class heart and soul the Democrats cultivated through the Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy years rooted Democratic progressivism in a set of values that emphasized hard work, neighborhood, faith, family and flag. Being connected to Americans’ everyday experiences kept the party pinioned to the mainstream.As the party became dominated by the more educated activist and media sectors, it lost touch with some of what can be called its psychological and emotional power sources. It grew prone to taking flights of fancy in policy and rhetoric, be it Medicare for All or “defund the police,” going to places where middle-of-the-road voters would not follow. It became more vulnerable to the insular outlooks of its most privileged and educated members.This is what happened in 2020. There were moments in that campaign when it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to run away with the race, sending the party into uncharted ideological waters. Most of the other candidates sprinted leftward. In a June 2019 debate, nine of 10 Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands when asked if they supported decriminalizing border crossings. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand were even further left than their colleagues. The year prior, both of them called for dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. College-educated voters are less worried about illegal immigration than high school-educated voters and that influence showed.Joe Biden was nominated in 2020 because he was the cure to this malady. He was the guy most plainly with roots in the working and middle class. He was the guy who didn’t engage in the culture war and identity politics theatrics. He was the most moderate major candidate in the race. Democrats from James Clyburn on down swung to Biden because he offered the most plausible connection back to the Democrats’ working-class soul — and it worked. Biden gave the party what it needed to come back to life.And that is the fact I keep returning to. Biden is not what ails the party. As things stand, he is the Democrats’ best shot at curing what ails the party.There is no other potential nominee who is so credibly steeped in knowing what life is like for working- and middle-class people, just as there was no other potential nominee in 2020. After watching him for a quarter century, I think he is genuinely most comfortable when he is hanging around the kinds of people he grew up with. He doesn’t send out any off-putting faculty lounge vibes. On cultural matters he is most defined by what he doesn’t do — needlessly offend people with overly academic verbiage and virtue signaling. That is why I worry when he talks too stridently about people on the right, when he name-calls and denounces wide swaths of people as MAGA.These cultural and spiritual roots give him not just a style but a governing agenda. He has used the presidency to direct resources to those who live in the parts of the country where wages are lower, where education levels are lower, where opportunities are skimpier. Biden’s ethos harks back to the ethos of the New Deal Democratic Party, but it also harks forward to something — to a form of center-left politics that is culturally moderate and economically aggressive. Aggressive in investing resources in the left-behind places, aggressive in using industrial policy to revive manufacturing, green tech and other industries, aggressive in using federal largess to bolster the care economy. His administration has put racial justice at the top of the agenda. It has moved the party beyond the technocratic centrism of the Clinton-Obama years.It is a first glimpse, but only a first glimpse, of a future Democratic Party that could once again compete for working- and middle-class support and would once again rest on its historical values.Something almost spiritual is at play here, not just about whether the Democrats can win in 2024, but who the Democrats are.As I’ve thought about Biden’s chances in 2024, I find myself deeply conscious of all the disadvantages that he and the Democrats have as they try to retain power, and preparing for what that could bring. But I also find myself arriving foursquare at the conclusion that rejecting the president now would be, in the first place, a mistake. He offers the most plausible route toward winning the working- and middle-class groups the Democrats need, the most plausible route toward building a broad-based majority party.But it would be worse than a mistake. It would be a renunciation of the living stream of people, ideas and values that flow at the living depths of the party, a stream that propelled its past glories and still points toward future ones.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Democratic Party Has an Old Problem and Won’t Admit It

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      President Biden’s advanced age (80) gets rehashed endlessly, because the human condition makes it inescapable. A deft politician can wait out almost any other liability: Scandals and gaffes fade over time; the economy bounces back; governing errors can be corrected. But Mr. Biden will never be (or appear) younger than he is today. The problem of his age will never fade.In our fixation on Mr. Biden’s age, we often gloss over the role the Democratic Party has played in promoting and lionizing its older leaders, then muddling through when illness or death undermines their ability to govern. The party’s leaders seem to believe implicitly in the inalienable right of their aging icons to remain in positions of high power unquestioned, long after it becomes reasonable to ask whether they’re risking intolerable harm.The party has come to operate more like a machine, in which lengthy, loyal service must be rewarded with deference. It is why Mr. Biden has not drawn a credible primary challenger, when polling and reporting alike suggest that Democrats are deeply anxious about his ability to mount a vigorous campaign and serve another full term.And it is that deference, from those who seek to protect Democratic leaders from all but the mildest criticism, that ensures that we keep reliving the same bad dream, where each subsequent election comes with higher stakes than the last. It leaves grass-roots supporters to see all their hard work — and democracy itself — jeopardized by the same officials who tell them they must volunteer and organize and donate and vote as if their lives depend on it. And for millions of younger voters, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that any of it matters: If defeating Republicans is a matter of existential urgency for the country, why is the Democratic Party so blasé about elevating leaders who are oblivious to the views of the young people who stand to inherit it?I peg the beginning of this recurring nightmare to the year 2009, when Senator Ted Kennedy’s death nearly derailed President Obama’s signature health care reform and ultimately deprived Democrats of their Senate supermajority, which they might have used to pass more sweeping legislation than they did. Eleven years later, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also died in office. Her death was a hinge point where history turned and swept much of her substantive legacy into the dustbin; worse, it left living Americans to toil indefinitely under the legacy that replaced hers.There were gentle behind-the-scenes efforts and a robust public persuasion campaign meant to convince Justice Ginsburg to retire when Democrats still controlled the Senate and President Obama could have appointed her replacement, but there were plenty of liberals urging her to stick it out. Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, who was then the House minority leader, cheered Justice Ginsburg for ignoring the calls for her to step down. “You Go Ginsburg! Resist that sexist Ageism,” she wrote.Despite all of this terrible history, we face a similar challenge today: an aging party, and a Democratic establishment not just unwilling to take decisive action to stave off disaster but also reluctant to even acknowledge the problem.When Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (90) developed complications from shingles earlier this year and was unable to fulfill her duties, leaving Senate Democrats unable to swiftly advance judicial nominations, the elder Ms. Pelosi framed the calls for Ms. Feinstein to step aside as a form of injustice. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters.She herself has ignored years of (gentle, always gentle) hints that it was time to step aside in favor of younger leaders with less political baggage. She did finally relinquish her leadership role in 2022, after losing the House majority for the second time in 12 years, but earlier this month, she said she would run for her House seat again.The end of Ms. Pelosi’s speakership has reduced the overall risk level somewhat. If she or Ms. Feinstein were to die in office, it wouldn’t be terribly destabilizing, the way it was when Mr. Kennedy and Justice Ginsburg died, and the way it would if Mr. Biden did. But it does feed the deeper and perhaps more insidious problem: a widespread sense of alienation among the young voters Democrats desperately need to turn out in elections.This should not go on. Liberals are apparently doomed to white-knuckle it through 2024, but there are affirmative steps Democrats could take to better allow younger leaders to displace older ones.Paradoxically, the G.O.P. may provide a model the Democrats can use. Although the Republican base is older, it does a better job insulating itself from gerontocracy than Democrats do. Republicans are obviously far from perfect champions of their own self-interest. Their penchant for personality cults has wedded them to Donald Trump, who also happens to be old, but they are vulnerable to charlatans of all ages. That’s in part because they take steps to reduce the risk that they lose power by the attrition of elderly leaders. Justice Anthony Kennedy timed his retirement so a Republican president could replace him; the House G.O.P. has cycled through several leaders over the past decade and a half, none of them terribly old. When Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear defeated the Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, encouraged his allies in the Kentucky Legislature to circumscribe Mr. Beshear’s appointment power — to ensure partisan continuity in Washington, should a Senate seat become vacant. So although Mr. McConnell seems committed to serving out his term, he has a succession plan.Democrats could adopt a similarly hard-nosed attitude about retiring their leaders in dignified but timely ways. Republicans term-limit the chairs of their congressional committees, which guarantees senior lawmakers cycle out of their positions and make way for younger ones.Even just acknowledging this issue — and encouraging good-faith dissent — would boost Mr. Biden’s credibility with younger voters. While a political conversation that sidesteps this uncomfortable topic, along with any number of others, might soothe anxious partisans, it will leave them unprepared for hard realities.Democratic Party actors may be able to convince themselves that there’s something high-minded about muzzling this discourse entirely — that vigorous intraparty criticism is self-defeating, and that complaining about Mr. Biden’s age when nothing can be done about it is a form of indulgent venting that only inflames public misgivings about the president. But they’d be wrong. We can see without squinting that his advanced age has created meaningful drag on his polling, and that it is a gigantic problem for the Democratic Party if younger voters, who are overwhelmingly progressive, come to view it as a lifestyle organization for liberals who have grown out of step with the times. Airing out widely held frustrations with the party’s gerontocracy might persuade younger voters that their leaders get it, and that their time in power will come to an end sooner than later.Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) writes Off Message, a newsletter about politics, culture and media.Source images by Liudmila Chernetska, Adrienne Bresnahan and xu wu/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democratic Leaders Are More Optimistic About Biden 2024 Than Voters

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      Party leaders have rallied behind the president’s re-election bid, but as one top Democratic strategist put it, “The voters don’t want this, and that’s in poll after poll after poll.”As President Biden shifts his re-election campaign into higher gear, the strength of his candidacy is being tested by a striking divide between Democratic leaders, who are overwhelmingly unified behind his bid, and rank-and-file voters in the party who harbor persistent doubts about whether he is their best option.From the highest levels of the party on down, Democratic politicians and party officials have long dismissed the idea that Mr. Biden should have any credible primary challenger. Yet despite their efforts — and the president’s lack of a serious opponent within his party — they have been unable to dispel Democratic concerns about him that center largely on his age and vitality.The discord between the party’s elite and its voters leaves Democrats confronting a level of disunity over a president running for re-election not seen for decades.Interviews with more than a dozen strategists, elected officials and voters this past week, conversations with Democrats since Mr. Biden’s campaign began in April, and months of public polling data show that this disconnect has emerged as a defining obstacle for his candidacy, worrying Democrats from liberal enclaves to swing states to the halls of power in Washington.Mr. Biden’s campaign and his allies argue that much of the intraparty dissent will fade away next year, once the election becomes a clear choice between the president and former President Donald J. Trump, the dominant leader in the Republican primary field.But their assurances have not tamped down worries about Mr. Biden from some top Democratic strategists and many of the party’s voters, who approve of his performance but worry that Mr. Biden, who will be 82 on Inauguration Day, may simply not be up for another four years — or even the exhausting slog of another election.“The voters don’t want this, and that’s in poll after poll after poll,” said James Carville, a longtime party strategist, who worries that a lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Biden could lead to lower Democratic turnout in 2024. “You can’t look at what you look at and not feel some apprehension here.”James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist, is among those who worry that the party’s voters are not enthusiastic enough about Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.Raul E. Diego/Anadolu Agency, via Getty ImagesIn recent days, a barrage of grim news for Mr. Biden, including an autoworkers strike in the Midwest that poses a challenge to his economic agenda and the beginning of impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill, has made this intraparty tension increasingly difficult to ignore. Those developments come amid a darkening polling picture, as recent surveys found that majorities of Democrats do not want him to run again, are open to an alternative in the primary and dread the idea of a Biden-Trump rematch.A CNN poll released this month found that 67 percent of Democrats would prefer Mr. Biden not be renominated, a higher percentage than in polling conducted by The New York Times and Siena College over the summer that found half would prefer someone else.In quiet conversations and off-the-record gatherings, Democratic officials frequently acknowledge their worries about Mr. Biden’s age and sagging approval ratings. But publicly, they project total confidence about his ability to lead and win.“It’s definitely got a paradoxical element to it,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat who is among a group of governors who put aside their national ambitions to support Mr. Biden’s re-election bid. “This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself.”Many party officials say that Mr. Biden is making a high-stakes bet that the power of incumbency, a good political environment for his party and the fact that Democrats generally like the president will eventually outweigh the blaring signs of concern from loyal supporters. Any discussion of an alternative is little more than a fantasy, they say, since challenging Mr. Biden would not only appear disloyal but would also most likely fail — and potentially weaken the president’s general-election standing.One Democratic voter who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, James Collier, an accountant in Houston, sees the situation slightly differently. He said he would like Mr. Biden to clear the way for a new generation that could energize the party’s base.“I think he’s a little — not a little — he’s a lot old,” Mr. Collier, 57, said. “I’m hoping he would in his own mind think, ‘I need to sit this out and let someone else do this.’”There are no indications that anyone prominent will mount a late challenge to Mr. Biden, though strategists working for other elected officials say that a number of well-known politicians would probably jump into the race if, anytime before the end of the year, the president signaled he was not running.The situation is almost the opposite of the Republican field, where Mr. Trump holds a commanding lead among the party’s base but remains far less beloved by a political class that fears his unpopularity among moderate and swing voters will lead to defeat in 2024.William Owen, a Democratic National Committee member from Tennessee, was full of praise for Mr. Biden and said he was puzzled by surveys that consistently showed the president struggling to win over Democratic voters.“I’m looking at all the polling, and I’m amazed that it has so little to do with reality,” he said in an interview this past week. “A big part of it is just pure ageism. The American people are prejudiced against old people.”Yet in describing his interactions with Democrats around Knoxville, which he represented for years in the Tennessee legislature, Mr. Owen said he could not escape questions about Mr. Biden’s health.“People ask me: ‘How’s Joe doing? Will he last another four years?’” Mr. Owen said. “That’s the real question. Will Joe Biden last another four years? I’m happy to say, yes, he will. He’s going to live to be 103.”Officials in Mr. Biden’s campaign insist that hand-wringing about his age is driven by news coverage, not by voters’ concerns. They dismiss his low approval ratings and middling polling numbers as typical of an incumbent president more than a year away from Election Day.A campaign spokesman cited articles about Democrats’ fretting about President Barack Obama before his second term and noted the limitations of polls so far from an election, suggesting that Mr. Biden had ample time to make his case.“President Biden is delivering results, his agenda is popular with the American people and we are mobilizing our winning coalition of voters well ahead of next year’s general election,” said Kevin Munoz, the spokesman. “Next year’s election will be a stark choice between President Biden and the extreme, unpopular MAGA agenda.”Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania, who is Black and has issued public warnings about Mr. Biden’s standing with Black voters, said that simply casting the election as a referendum on Mr. Trump and his right-wing movement — as Mr. Biden’s campaign did in 2020 — would not be enough to energize the Democratic base. Mr. Davis has urged the White House to be more aggressive about highlighting the impact of Mr. Biden’s accomplishments, particularly with Black voters.“Everyone is kind of exhausted by the fight between Biden and Trump,” he said. “People really want to hear leaders talk about how they’re going to improve the lives of their families.”Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania has cautioned Democrats against framing the 2024 election as a referendum on former President Donald J. Trump.Matt Rourke/Associated PressOther Democrats argue that Mr. Biden’s campaign must make clearer that the stakes are bigger than just the president.“It’s about showing people that the future of American democracy is at stake,” said Representative Jennifer McClellan of Virginia, who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “It’s not just about which president can get through the day without tripping or stumbling over their words, which everybody is going to do, but which president is going to lead this country forward in a way that helps people solve problems and keeps American democracy intact.”Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential bid, said Mr. Biden needed to show voters that he was fighting for the American public, pointing to battles like his administration’s legal fight with pharmaceutical companies over their new Medicare pricing plan.“The question that I would want to answer is, is he is a strong leader?” Mr. Shakir said. “When people see he is a strong leader, they will feel different about his age. They will feel different about the economy. They will feel different about a lot of things.”Malcolm Peterson, 34, a waiter in St. Paul, Minn., said he thought Mr. Biden had done a good job tackling issues related to climate change during his first term, but worried about the president’s outlook for a second term.Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesMalcolm Peterson, a waiter from St. Paul, Minn., whose foremost political concern is climate change, said he generally approved of Mr. Biden’s work as president and thought he had done a good job tackling environmental issues. But he said he worried about whether the president would be able to continue that work in a second term.“I just wonder, because he’s quite old, what does he look like in another four years?” Mr. Peterson, 34, said. “I’m not a doctor. I just know what I’ve seen.” More

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      Why We Are So Obsessed With Biden’s Age

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      To our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term, I’d like to add this question: How would we even notice Donald Trump’s lapse into incoherence, when derangement is essentially his brand?Pretty much any interview he gives is a babble bonanza, and his recent lovefest with Tucker Carlson was no exception. He went on wacky tangents, including one about the wages of building the Panama Canal: “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito. Malaria. We lost 35,000 people. We lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world.”“One of the nine wonders,” he added, then corrected himself. “No, no, it was one of the seven.” Seven, nine – he seemed unable to decide, unwilling to commit. “You could make nine wonders,” he ventured. I guess that’s some limit. Once you hit 10, they’re just curiosities. Wonder-ettes.But was there a bevy of headlines about a brain ravaged by time? Were there notations that Trump, at 77, was already as old as Ronald Reagan at the end of his presidency, and that after another four years in the White House, Trump would be a touch older than Biden at the end of his first term and thus the oldest president ever?Most certainly not. And that’s both noteworthy and troubling, because we can’t know — really know — that Biden’s occasionally prolonged, futile search for the right word or name is firmer evidence of cognitive fade than Trump’s hallucinatory musings are.I’m not claiming that Biden, 80, and Trump project the same degree of vigor. I have eyes and ears. Trump talks louder and faster than Biden does and moves with a thudding force. He’s like a freight train to Biden’s cable car, or a big, bulbous tuba to Biden’s tremulous piccolo. Listening to Biden, I want a volume knob I can turn up. Listening to Trump, I crave nonsense-canceling headphones.I’m also aware and suspicious of the paucity of Biden’s interactions with journalists, his avoidance of unscripted public appearances and a schedule that can seem strangely light. I’ve heard from influential Democrats who have crossed paths with him and were alarmed by how slowly he was moving and how disoriented he seemed.But the situation is more complicated than that, and the conversation about it omits dynamics that it shouldn’t. Trump is a mere three years younger than Biden, and he’s overweight. His diet is garbage. His cardio is golf putts. Biden, on the other hand, is a trim tribute to regular exercise.And Trump diverts attention from his age by going to significant lengths to conceal it.A thought exercise: Imagine Biden with more hair — or at least some swooping, swirling, painstakingly contrived facsimile of more hair. Color it a shade of orange-gold that’s less a sneaky evasion of gray than a desperate pummeling of it. Now get to work on his face. Cloak his age spots under a fake tan. Spackle his wrinkles with makeup. Then dress him in suits so dark and baggy that they veil time’s toll on the body they’re tenting.You’ve turned Biden at least partway into Donald Trump. Does he seem a little less ancient?In several recent surveys, roughly three in four Americans, including a majority of Democrats, deemed Biden too old to be effective through a second term. In a recent Associated Press/NORC poll, a much smaller fraction — just over half — expressed reservations about Trump’s age.At least a bit of that discrepancy surely reflects right-wing media organizations’ obsessive focus on Biden’s stumbles and mumbles and such. Their left-wing counterparts don’t home in on Trump’s dubious physical fitness in the same way –— they have so much else on their radar. After all, a candid image of Trump in flab-revealing golf wear or a shot of the wind exposing the truth about his tresses matters little next to candid audio of him hectoring a state official in Georgia to steal the 2020 election.With Trump, it is always thus: The frequency of his outrages and volume of his vices guarantee that no single flaw stands out as it should. It’s just another ingredient in a gumbo of God-help-us.We should also bear in mind that all the hints of Biden’s feebleness are amplified by a larger narrative of older politicians clinging to power despite their obvious physical deterioration. Every image of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, being wheeled through the Capitol hurts Biden. So does every second that Senator Mitch McConnell, 81, stands frozen and speechless before a group of journalists.“I see people lumping every old person together and using the term ‘gerontocracy’,” Rosanne M. Leipzig, who specializes in geriatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, told me. But Biden isn’t McConnell, no more than McConnell is Feinstein. “There’s no group of people who are more different than older adults,” Leipzig said. “We even have a term for it — the heterogeneity of aging.”Biden is also hurt, in a different way, by Representative Nancy Pelosi, 83, who seems amply vigorous but surrendered her position of House Democratic leadership last year with the proclamation that “the hour has come for a new generation.” If that’s true in the House, why not in the White House?Bob Kerrey, a former senator and onetime governor who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, told me: “I would rather Joe did what Nancy did.” Kerrey turned 80 himself just two weeks ago, and he said that he’d never pursue the presidency at his age.“It’s an offensive act if I were to do it,” he said. “I had my chance.” He added that there are “plenty of 40- and 60-year-olds who can step up and run.” But he’s cognitively up to the task, he said, and so is Biden. Believing in generational change doesn’t mean disbelieving Biden’s competence.And judging competence can be a guessing game, given the partial and selective information that most older political candidates and their physicians divulge. To determine aging’s impact “through superficial means is not an accurate measure,” Bob Blancato, the national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition, a bipartisan advocacy group, cautioned. “Aging is a profoundly personal journey.”Similarly, our takes on it are subjective — and can be colored by irrelevant details. Leipzig noted that to some people, Biden’s cultural frame of reference, embrace of tradition and old-fashioned vocabulary (“God love ya’,” “c’mon man,” “malarkey”) read old, while Trump’s rebel pose reads young.I happen to think that Democrats would be safer with a nominee who’s younger than Biden is and radiates more energy than he does. But I believe at least as strongly that if the unideal choice before Americans winds up being Biden, with his imperfections, or Trump, with his, rejecting Biden because of how old he has grown isn’t a grown-up decision.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden Is Old and Trump Is on Trial. Will Anything Else Matter?

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      Thirty-six years in the Senate, eight as vice president, nearly three in the White House — President Joe Biden has a long record to be judged by, a deep familiarity with Washington that Americans can decide to see as an asset or an impediment. But what happens in November 2024 may have significantly less to do with how he has navigated the corridors of power than with how he moves from the edge of the stage to the lectern and from subject to verb.Is there a wobble in his step? A quiver in his voice? He’s 80, and that’s not just a number. In a poll published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, 73 percent of registered voters said that Biden had too many years on him to seek four more. In a survey by The Associated Press and NORC released last week, 77 percent of adult Americans, including 69 percent of Democrats, said that he’s too old to be effective during a second term.But that doesn’t mean they won’t give him one, because their alternative would probably be Donald Trump, who has been charged with an array of felonies, 91 in all. That, too, is not just a number. It’s an irrefutable measure of his indecency and his rapacity, no matter what jurors decide about the criminality of his conduct.It’s also a preview of how Trump will spend much if not most of the 14 months between now and Election Day — preparing his defense, railing about prosecutors and judges, and possibly sitting and seething through testimony about his transgressions. His legal odyssey overshadows everything else about his bid to return to the White House, which could come down to what the small group of persuadable swing voters make of the evidence against him and the spectacle of it all.Biden’s age. Trump’s trials. One man’s attempt to manage the rigors of a presidential campaign without being or seeming depleted by them. Another man’s challenge to manage any kind of presidential campaign at all with the sword of imprisonment dangling over his head. I can’t shake the feeling that the 2024 presidential election hinges on those anomalies, with all the usual dynamics minimized or rendered irrelevant by the uncharted terrain that both Biden and Trump are traversing.Granted, there could be an eventual matchup other than Biden versus Trump. The seeming inevitability of that face-off prompts me to distrust it: Life in general and politics in particular are seldom as tidy and predictable as that.And even if it does turn out to be the choice before us, we’ll hear plenty about matters other than Biden’s health and Trump’s indictments — about inflation, Hunter Biden, migrants, Hunter Biden, NATO, Hunter Biden, abortion, Hunter Biden. In terms of values and policy as well as demeanor, Biden and Trump have governed and will govern as differently as two leaders can.But questions about Biden’s physical and cognitive fitness aren’t going away. In private and in whispers, many Democrats express doubts about his robustness and crispness. They entertain the possibility of — and in some cases, wish for — a turn of events by which someone else becomes the party’s nominee. They contemplate how much is at risk.As well they should. “If Trump beats Biden next year, there won’t be another free and fair election,” A.B. Stoddard wrote in The Bulwark recently, an assessment that I find as correct as it is blunt.Trump’s chances of prevailing are bound up in what happens with his indictments and how they mature in the public mind. Until now, they seem to have helped him with the Republican primary electorate by feeding his martyr act, by supporting his portrayal of himself as a proxy for Americans who don’t meekly obey elite liberals’ orders.But that could change. I suspect it will. Even a part played as well as Trump’s poor, persecuted me suffers from overexposure, and even an electorate as polarized as ours includes some voters who make their decisions along practical lines. The uncertainty of Trump’s legal fate and the mess and melodrama of every second of his existence will matter to them.If they’re wise, it will matter more — much, much more — than Biden’s diminished brio. Picking between Biden and Trump wouldn’t be about surrendering to the lesser of two evils. It would be about distinguishing imperfection from evil, about recognizing that one route preserves democracy while the other opens the door to autocracy, about realizing that there would be remedies for Biden’s limitations but no reprieve from Trump’s excesses.Old is workable. Depravity is a dead end.Words Worth Sidelining (the Iconic Edition)Buyenlarge/Getty ImagesWhen I started working at The Times, way back in the Mesozoic Era, I learned quickly that certain sloppily used words rankled the news organization’s vigilant copy editors much more than others. “Unique” was prominent among them.We overexuberant writers regularly tried to shuttle it into our articles to ramp up their drama and puff up their significance, and we were repeatedly and rightly slapped down: Was the “unique” sequence of events or the “unique” political actor really one of a kind? Without peer? Without replica?The answer, almost always, was no. “Unique” didn’t apply. So “unique” didn’t survive. We grudgingly settled for “unusual.” We made peace with “atypical.”Why hadn’t we started out there? I think there’s a reason beyond a reflexive purpling of our prose. Regardless of our professions, many of us humans — certainly, many of us Americans — tend to see the circumstances and challenges of our own moment in the grandest, most self-inflating terms. And so we tend to describe them in the grandest, most self-inflating terms.“Unique” isn’t unique. It belongs to a whole lexicon of hyperbole, an entire brood of overstatements. Two in particular rankle you. I know that because they pop up frequently in emails that you send me, urging me to call them out. You’ve had quite enough of “unprecedented.” And the ubiquity of “iconic” is driving you mad.Like “unique,” “unprecedented” is fitting only under strict conditions, and after Donald Trump stormed onto the presidential scene in 2015, news events met them more often than usual. But once writers and commentators extracted “unprecedented” from their verbal tool kits, many used it indiscriminately. It was a hammer with such a resounding, rewarding thwack. Enamored of that sound, they reduced it to white noise.To overuse a word is to undermine it, and “iconic” illustrates that as well. Recently, I did a Google search of its mention in news sources over the prior week. I found references not only to “iconic” hotels (fair enough) and “iconic” dishes (ditto) but also to “iconic” raincoats, “iconic” images of the track star Usain Bolt and “iconic” beauty serums. There was even a list of the actress Blake Lively’s seven “most iconic roles.” Seven?! One was her shark-terrorized surfer in “The Shallows.” I’ve seen “The Shallows” (don’t ask), and I can vouch that her character musters considerable courage and ingenuity. But that doesn’t make her some soggy Erin Brockovich.It’s time for restraint — with “unprecedented,” with “iconic” and with another exaggeration that has been making the rounds. How many “unicorns” can there be? They’re multiplying like deer in the suburbs. Here a unicorn, there a unicorn, everywhere a unicorn, chomping on linguistic purity like a doe on my neighbor’s hostas. Let’s end the feast.Words Worth Sidelining is a recurring newsletter feature. Thanks to Shane Sahadi of Brentwood, Calif., and Kathy Simolaris of Wilbraham, Mass., among many others, for flagging “unprecedented,” and to Adam Eisenstat of Pittsburgh and Norma Howard of Seattle, among many others, for sounding the alarm about “iconic.”For the Love of SentencesJimmy Buffett in the 1970s on his sailboat in Key West.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThe musician Jimmy Buffett died last week, and journalists paid vivid tribute to a colorful character. In The Washington Post, Amy Argetsinger and Hank Stuever framed him in terms of the rock band that gave us “Hotel California,” writing that Buffett “looked like an Eagle, or at least someone an Eagle might have hired to replace the kitchen cabinets in a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, who winds up staying the weekend, playing guitar.” (Thanks to Tom Davis of Green Bay, Wis., and Augusta Scattergood of Washington, D.C., for nominating this.)In The Times, Guy Trebay appraised Buffett’s sartorial style by what he eschewed: “not for Mr. Buffett the hippie-adjacent suedes and leathers of his musical contemporaries.” (Alan Stamm, Birmingham, Mich.)The Times also resurfaced Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2018 profile of Buffett as a late-blooming and lavishly compensated entrepreneur: “Jimmy Buffett — the nibbling on sponge cake, watching the sun bake, getting drunk and screwing, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere Jimmy Buffett — has been replaced with a well-preserved businessman who is leveraging the Jimmy Buffett of yore in order to keep the Jimmy Buffett of now in the manner to which the old Jimmy Buffett never dreamed he could become accustomed.” (Charles Ellis Harp, Victoria, B.C., and Chip Pearsall, Greenville, N.C., among others)The past week was a good one for spirited takes on college football. On ESPN’s website, David Hale provided context for the Colorado Buffaloes’ upset victory, in the first weekend of college football, over the T.C.U. Horned Frogs, who played in the national championship game some eight months ago: “Sure, this wasn’t last year’s T.C.U. That team was like the guitar solo in ‘Free Bird’ — chaotic, rollicking, lasting far longer than it had any right to, but never truly earning the respect of the cultured class of critics. But those Frogs had a host of N.F.L.-caliber players. This year’s team — well, it’s a little like seeing Skynyrd today. There’s no one from the original band left.” (Chris Wheatley, Port Ludlow, Wash.)And in The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., Luke DeCock questioned the wisdom of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s admission of S.M.U., the University of California and Stanford University into its fold. “It was a late-night deal at Food Lion: Buy one irrelevant football program, get two free,” he wrote. (Eric Walker, Black Mountain, N.C.)Moving on to politics, Peter Sagal in The Atlantic explained that abducting and deprogramming MAGA cultists wasn’t a workable strategy, given the cult’s size: “It would take half the country kidnapping the other half of the country, and then who would feed the pets?” (Donna Cameron, Brier, Wash.)In The Times, Vanessa Friedman pondered the moral to the promiscuous use of Donald Trump’s mug shot in merchandise produced not only by his supporters but also by his critics: “What does it mean, exactly, that no matter our allegiances at this particular moment, or our different versions of recent history, we share a common ground right in the middle of an ocean of consumer kitsch? That while we may have lost the skill of constructive dialogue, we all still speak T-shirt?” (Barbara Buswell, Oakland, Calif.)And this is how Jack Shafer, in Politico, described Mitch McConnell’s most recent incident of sudden speechlessness: “The top Republican powered down for 30 seconds as if an unseen hand had removed the lithium ion battery from his chassis.” (Tim White, Moncure, N.C.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal NoteLaysan albatrosses on Laysan Island, Hawaii.NetflixWhen it’s close to bedtime and I’m too tired to read or to follow the plot of a movie or series, I favor nature documentaries. I luxuriate in images of scenery inaccessible to the casual traveler. I marvel at the patience and prowess of whoever managed to capture footage of a mature lion at the moment it killed, a young albatross at the instant it took flight.But what we humans can do is arguably paltry next to the animals’ feats. That’s always one of my takeaways. Operating on ancient instinct, birds migrate across or between entire continents. Salmon make that crazy trek upstream. Polar bears swim for miles and miles, from ice floe to ice floe, in the frigid hope of sneaking up on a seal.All those phenomena appear in resplendent color and breathtaking detail in “Our Planet II,” a four-part documentary that began streaming on Netflix in June. It means to awe, and it succeeds. But it does something even more powerful and important: It humbles.I don’t know how any person can behold the diversity and majesty of the wildlife on display in “Our Planet II,” or in many similar celebrations of the natural world, and not question the presumptuousness and recklessness with which we often disturb and destroy what’s around us. I don’t know how anyone can shake off the reminder that we share the Earth with creatures too extraordinary to be taken for granted.As a warming planet melts ice floes, those polar bears swim longer and harder, at risk of starvation. As our garbage pollutes the oceans, albatrosses sometimes choke on plastics that they mistake for food. They have no say in our behavior, but they’re often at the mercy of it. Maybe that makes some people feel godlike. In light of how we’ve comported ourselves, it makes me feel ashamed. More

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      ¿A qué edad deberían retirarse los políticos?

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      Dos momentos preocupantes que involucraron a los senadores Dianne Feinstein y Mitch McConnell provocaron preguntas sobre el envejecimiento de los líderes electos.Tras una serie de momentos preocupantes en Estados Unidos la semana pasada, a los ciudadanos, a los estrategas e incluso a los políticos les resulta imposible eludir una pregunta incómoda: ¿hasta qué edad se puede ocupar un cargo público?Durante años, como les sucede a tantos hijos de padres que envejecen en Estados Unidos, los políticos y sus asesores en Washington trataron de eludir esa difícil conversación y no dijeron nada sobre las preocupaciones que suscitan sus líderes octogenarios. Pudieron mantenerse en silencio gracias a las tradiciones de una ciudad que dota a las figuras públicas con un batallón de asistentes que gestionan casi toda su vida profesional y personal.“No sé cuál sea el número mágico, pero me parece que, como regla general, pues, cuando tienes más de ochenta es hora de pensar en relajarte un poco”, dijo Trent Lott, de 81 años, quien fue líder de la mayoría republicana del Senado y se retiró a los 67 años para fundar su propia empresa de cabildeo. “El problema es que te eligen para un mandato de seis años, estás en excelente forma, pero cuatro años después puede que no estés tan bien”.La semana pasada, dos episodios que han sido objeto de un minucioso escrutinio han hecho que el tema de envejecer con dignidad en un cargo público salga de los pasillos del Congreso estadounidense y se convierta en tema de conversación nacional.El miércoles, circuló en internet y en las noticias un video en el que se puede ver al senador Mitch McConnell, de 81 años, paralizarse durante 20 segundos frente a las cámaras. Menos de 24 horas después, apareció otro video de la senadora Dianne Feinstein, de 90 años, en el que se le veía confundida cuando se le pidió votar en una comisión.Desde hace meses, se ha venido desarrollando un debate político sobre la cuestión de la edad, a medida que Estados Unidos se enfrenta a la posibilidad de una contienda presidencial entre los candidatos de mayor edad de la historia del país. El presidente Joe Biden, de 80 años, quien ya es el presidente más veterano en la Casa Blanca, aspira a un segundo mandato, y Donald Trump, de 77 años, lidera la contienda de las elecciones primarias republicanas.“Cuando digo que tenemos que pasar la batuta a las generaciones más jóvenes, no estoy hablando de personas muy jóvenes”, dijo Dean Phillips, representante por Minnesota, de 54 años, el único demócrata en el Congreso que declaró que Feinstein debería dimitir y que Biden no debería presentarse a la reelección. “Solo me refiero a una generación razonablemente menos mayor”, explicó.El hiato de McConnell creó una nueva oportunidad para que los contendientes más jóvenes planteen la cuestión de un modo más enérgico. El viernes, el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, de 44 años, uno de los principales aspirantes republicanos a la presidencia, criticó la gerontocracia política del país.“Los funcionarios solían servir en su mejor momento y luego le pasaban la batuta a la siguiente generación, y me parece que esta generación no ha estado tan dispuesta a hacer esto”, dijo DeSantis a la comentarista conservadora Megyn Kelly y señaló que Biden se convirtió en senador en 1973, cinco años antes de que DeSantis naciera.Cabe destacar que Trump, quien tendría 82 años al final de un segundo mandato, defendió a Biden, al afirmar que el presidente no debe ser menospreciado por su edad. “No es un anciano”, publicó Trump este mes en Truth Social, su plataforma de redes sociales. “De hecho, ¡la vida empieza a los 80!”.Los médicos de Biden han dicho que goza de buena salud. Se sabe menos de la salud de Trump tras su salida de la Casa Blanca.Desde que en junio Biden cayó al suelo tras tropezar con un saco de arena, los asistentes de la Casa Blanca se han vuelto cada vez más sensibles a cualquier insinuación de que está disminuido físicamente.Ahora suele utilizar una escalera más corta para subir al Air Force One, observación que apareció en un reportaje de Politico y que llevó a sus asistentes a difundir 13 fotos de presidentes anteriores que también utilizaron escaleras que parecen tener una longitud similar. Desde principios de mayo no ha ido a comprar el helado que tanto le gusta ni se le ha visto en ningún otro comercio para hacer una visita improvisada a la ciudadanía. La Casa Blanca dice que la apretada agenda de viajes de Biden no ha permitido tales paradas este verano.Algunos de los principales asesores de Biden argumentan que su campaña debería abordar directamente el tema de la edad como una ventaja política —y una realidad innegable— en lugar de evitar el tema.“La edad es un superpoder”, declaró Jeffrey Katzenberg, magnate de Hollywood de 72 años, a quien Biden nombró copresidente de su campaña. “No puedes huir de ella porque tienes 80 años, ¿verdad? No se puede negar. He sido del bando que cree firmemente que es una de sus mayores ventajas”.Las encuestas indican que los electores opinan distinto, pues a muchos demócratas les preocupa la edad de Biden en medio de los ataques republicanos. En un sondeo realizado por YouGov el año pasado, la mayoría de los estadounidenses están a favor de que haya límites de edad para los servidores públicos que llegan a un cargo mediante elecciones, pero no hubo ningún consenso sobre el límite exacto. Poner un límite de 60 años impediría que el 71 por ciento del Senado pudiera ejercer su cargo, mientras que un tope de 70 años haría que el 30 por ciento de los legisladores fueran inelegibles, halló un análisis del grupo.En Dakota del Norte, un activista conservador empezó esta semana a circular peticiones para forzar un referéndum estatal el año que viene que prohibiría a cualquier persona que para el final de su mandato tenga 81 años postularse o ser electa para un escaño en el Congreso.Cuando Biden es interrogado por el tema de la edad, minimiza las preocupaciones con bromas y hace énfasis en su experiencia política. McConnell adoptó una estrategia similar cuando dijo a los periodistas que bromeó con el presidente sobre su lapsus de salud diciéndole que “se tropezó con un saco de arena”, una referencia a cómo Biden se rio de su propia caída.Está claro que ni siquiera una buena ocurrencia puede acabar con la realidad del envejecimiento. Tras la parálisis de McConnell, diversos artículos plantearon interrogantes sobre su estado de salud, ya que en marzo se ausentó del trabajo durante varias semanas por una conmoción cerebral.Por su parte, Feinstein, quien ha tenido problemas de memoria y se ausentó varios meses del Senado mientras se recuperaba de un herpes zóster, en ocasiones ha parecido incapaz de responder a preguntas sobre su estado de salud.Exasistentes afirman que parte del problema es la relación de interdependencia que se desarrolla entre los políticos y su equipo. Si un senador o senadora se retira, todo su personal —integrado por varias decenas de personas— puede quedarse sin trabajo de un día para otro.¿Y quién quiere decirle al jefe que, tal vez, ya pasó su mejor momento? Puede ser más fácil simplemente disimular los desafíos haciendo que los asistentes elaboren políticas, limiten el acceso a los reporteros y traten de evitar momentos sin un guion definido.“El Senado es un lugar tan cálido y reconfortante que puedes vivir dentro de esa burbuja”, dijo Jim Manley, de 62 años, quien trabajó para los senadores Ted Kennedy y Harry Reid. “Tienes personal a tu entera disposición, gente que te abre las puertas todo el tiempo”.Mientras que otros sectores tienen edades de jubilación obligatoria, incluidas algunas empresas que cotizan en bolsa y compañías aéreas, los congresistas han sido renuentes a adoptar políticas que equivaldrían a votar para verse obligados a dejar su cargo. Ni siquiera los votantes parecen ponerse de acuerdo sobre cuándo es suficiente y se muestran divididos cuando se les pregunta por un límite de edad concreto.La decisión de abandonar un puesto tan importante y poderoso es difícil, pero la alternativa —envejecer ante la opinión pública— podría ser peor, advirtieron algunos senadores retirados.“Es desgarrador, vergonzoso, pero cada quien decide cómo enfrentar la realidad”, dijo Chuck Hagel, de 77 años, quien fue senador por Nebraska y dejó el cargo en 2009. “La realidad es que no vamos contrarreloj, sino que todos envejecemos. A mis 77 años, comparados con los 62 que tenía cuando dejé el Senado, ahora tengo dolores que ni siquiera sabía que tendría”.Lisa Lerer es corresponsal de política nacional que cubre campañas electorales, votaciones y poder político. Más sobre Lisa LererReid J. Epstein cubre campañas y elecciones desde Washington. Antes de unirse al Times en 2019, trabajó en The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday y The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Más sobre Reid J. Epstein More

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      Videos of Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell Resurface Questions About Age

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      Two troubling moments involving Senators Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell thrust questions about aging in office out of Congress and into the national conversation.After a series of troubling moments this week, an uncomfortable question has become unavoidable, leaving voters, strategists and even politicians themselves wondering: Just how old is too old to serve in public office?For years, like so many children of aging parents across America, politicians and their advisers in Washington tried to skirt that difficult conversation, wrapping concerns about their octogenarian leaders in a cone of silence. The omertà was enabled by the traditions of a city that arms public figures with a battalion of aides, who manage nearly all of their professional and personal lives.“I don’t know what the magic number is, but I do think that as a general rule, my goodness, when you get into the 80s, it’s time to think about a little relaxation,” said Trent Lott, 81, a former Senate majority leader who retired at the spry age of 67 to start his own lobbying firm. “The problem is, you get elected to a six-year term, you’re in pretty good shape, but four years later you may not be so good.”Two closely scrutinized episodes this week thrust questions about aging with dignity in public office out of the halls of Congress and into the national conversation.On Wednesday, video of Senator Mitch McConnell, 81, freezing for 20 seconds in front of television cameras reverberated across the internet and newscasts. Less than 24 hours later, another clip surfaced of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, appearing confused when asked to vote in committee.A political discussion on the issue of age has been building for months, as the country faces the possibility of a presidential contest between the oldest candidates in American history. President Biden, 80, already the oldest president to sit in the White House, is vying for a second term, and Donald J. Trump, 77, is leading the Republican primary race.“When I say we need to pass the baton to younger generations, I’m not talking about youthful generations,” said Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, 54, the only Democrat in Congress to say that Ms. Feinstein should step down and that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election. “I’m talking about simply a reasonably less aged generation.”Mr. McConnell’s stumble created a fresh opening for younger contenders to raise the issue more aggressively. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 44, a top Republican presidential candidate, took a jab at the country’s political gerontocracy.“You used to serve in your prime and then pass the baton to the next generation, and I think this generation has not really been as willing to do that,” Mr. DeSantis told the right-leaning commentator Megyn Kelly, noting that Mr. Biden became a senator in 1973 — five years before Mr. DeSantis was born.Notably, Mr. Trump, who would be 82 at the end of a second term, has defended Mr. Biden, saying that the president should not be discounted because of his age. “He is not an old man,” Mr. Trump posted this month on Truth Social, his social media platform. “In actuality, life begins at 80!”Doctors for Mr. Biden have said he is in good health. Less is known about Mr. Trump’s health since he left the White House.After Mr. Biden was captured tripping over a sandbag in June, White House aides have grown increasingly sensitive to any insinuation that he is physically diminished.He now regularly uses a shorter set of stairs to board Air Force One, an observation noted in a report by Politico that prompted aides to circulate 13 photos of his predecessors using stairs that appear to be of a similar length. He has not gone out to get his beloved ice cream, or dropped into any other business for an impromptu visit with voters, since early May. The White House says Mr. Biden’s crowded travel schedule has not allowed for such stops this summer.Some top advisers to Mr. Biden argue that his campaign should directly embrace his age as a political asset — and undeniable reality — rather than avoid the issue.“Age is in fact a superpower,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, 72, the Hollywood mogul whom Mr. Biden named as a co-chairman of his campaign. “You can’t run from it because you’re 80 years old, right? There’s no denying it. I’ve been of the camp that believes strongly this is one of his greatest assets.”Surveys indicate that voters disagree, with many Democratic voters worrying about Mr. Biden’s age amid Republican attacks. In polling conducted by YouGov last year, a majority of Americans supported age limits for elected officials but were split over the precise cutoff. A cap at age 60 would bar 71 percent of the Senate from holding office, while a limit of 70 would render 30 percent ineligible, an analysis by the firm found.In North Dakota, a conservative activist this week began circulating petitions to force a statewide referendum next year that would prohibit anyone who would turn 81 by the end of their term from being elected or appointed to congressional seats.When asked, Mr. Biden dismisses worries about his age with jokes and boasts about his political experience. Mr. McConnell took a similar approach, telling reporters that he joked with the president about his health scare by saying that he had been “sandbagged” — a reference to how Mr. Biden laughed off his fall.Of course, even a good quip can’t stop the realities of growing older. After Mr. McConnell’s freeze, reports raised additional questions about his health since he missed weeks of work for a concussion in March.For her part, Ms. Feinstein, who has struggled with memory problems and a long absence from the Senate while she recovered from shingles, has appeared at times unable to respond to questions about her condition.Part of the problem, former aides say, is the interdependent relationship between politicians and their staffs. If a senator retires, his or her entire office — several dozen employees — can be suddenly out of work.And who wants to tell the boss that they are, perhaps, past their prime? It can be smoother to simply paper over the challenges by having aides craft policy, limit access to reporters and try to avoid unscripted moments.“The Senate is such a warm, comforting place that you can live inside that bubble,” said Jim Manley, 62, who worked for Senators Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid. “You have staff at beck and call, people opening doors for you all the time.”While other industries have mandatory retirement ages, including some publicly traded companies and airlines, members of Congress have shown little desire for policies that would amount to voting themselves out of a job. Even voters can’t seem to agree on when enough is enough, remaining divided when asked to back a specific age limit.The decision to leave a defining and powerful post is difficult, but the alternative — aging in the public eye — might be worse, former senators warned.“It’s heartbreaking, embarrassing, but it’s up to the individual to come to grips with reality,” said Chuck Hagel, 77, a former Nebraska senator who left office in 2009. “The reality is we are not going backwards; we’re all getting old. At 77, versus 62 when I left the Senate, I have pains now that I didn’t even know I should have.” More

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      Hard Questions if Biden’s Approval Doesn’t Follow Economy’s Rise

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      This is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.President Biden promoting domestic chip manufacturing.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDoesn’t it feel as if everything’s breaking President Biden’s way lately?His chief rival — whom Mr. Biden already beat in 2020 and whom Democrats, in a sense, beat again in the midterms — is facing criminal indictments and yet currently finds himself cruising to the nomination anyway.The economy — which teetered on the edge of recession for two years with inflation rising and real wages declining — seems as if it might be on track for a soft landing, with inflation falling, real wages rising and the stock market recovering.The backlash against “woke” — a topic Republicans seemed most keen on exploiting in the Biden era — appears to have receded significantly, whether because Donald J. Trump has taken up much of the oxygen; conservatives have overreached; or progressives have reined in their excesses and fallen back to defense after conservatives went on offense.It’s probably too soon to expect these recent developments to lift Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, which remain mired in the low 40s. But if these trends persist, many of the explanations for Mr. Biden’s low approval will quickly become less credible. If his numbers don’t start to move over the next several months — with the wind seemingly at his back — it will quickly begin to raise more serious questions about his standing heading into the 2024 election.To this point in his presidency, it has been fairly easy to attribute his low ratings to economic conditions. Yes, unemployment was low and growth remained steady. But inflation surged, real incomes dropped, stocks fell into a bear market, a recession seemed imminent, and voters could see the signs of a struggling economy everywhere, including supply chain shortages and onerous interest rates.It’s fair to question whether economic conditions have actually been as bad as voters say, but it’s also fair to acknowledge these kinds of conditions can yield a pessimistic electorate. Two bouts of inflation that are reminiscent of today’s post-pandemic economy — the postwar economies of 1920 and 1946 — were catastrophic for the party in power, even as unemployment remained low by the standards of the era.Historically, it can feel as if almost every major political upheaval comes with inflation, whether it’s the Great Unrest in Britain, the Red Summer in the U.S. or even the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany. If high bread prices can be argued to have helped cause the French Revolution, it’s easy to accept that 9 percent inflation (at its peak in June 2022) could hurt Mr. Biden’s approval ratings by five or 10 percentage points.But if inflation has been what’s holding Mr. Biden back, it’s hard to say it should hold him back for too much longer. Annual inflation fell to 3 percent last month, and real incomes have finally started to rise. The stock market — one of the most visible and consequential measures of the economy for millions of Americans — has increased around 15 percent over the last six months. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index surged 13 percent in July, reaching the highest level since September 2021 — the first full month Mr. Biden’s approval ratings were beneath 50 percent.There’s another factor that ought to help Mr. Biden’s approval rating: the onset of a new phase of the Republican primary campaign, including debates. As the Republican candidates become more prominent in American life, voters may start judging Mr. Biden against the alternatives, not just in isolation. Some of the Democratic-leaning voters who currently disapprove of Mr. Biden might begin to look at the Biden presidency in a different light.Perhaps in part for these reasons, this is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were clearly on the upswing at this stage of the election cycle — though both were still beneath 50 percent — as voters began to see and feel an improving economy.We will see in the months ahead whether Mr. Biden’s ratings begin to increase. I wouldn’t expect it to happen quickly: Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton’s ratings increased by less than a point per month between roughly this time and their re-election. Barack Obama’s ratings increased at a similar, if slightly slower, pace from his post-debt-ceiling-crisis nadir a little later in the year.But even if it is not quick, I would expect Mr. Biden’s ratings to begin to increase if these conditions remain in place. Today’s era may be polarized, but there are plenty of persuadable and even Democratic-leaning voters — who disapprove of his performance — available to return to his side.If the economy keeps improving and yet his ratings remain stagnant in the months ahead, it will gradually begin to raise hard questions about the real source of his weakness — including the possibility that his age, by feeding the perception of a feeble president, prevents voters from seeing him as effective, whatever his actual record. More