Democrats are beginning to acknowledge publicly the lingering private concerns about how President Joe Biden’s age will affect his ability to win reelection in November.
Party operatives and Democratic lawmakers, who have been on defense over the president’s long history of blunders since he launched his 2020 campaign, have been peppered with questions about his fitness to serve in recent days.
The matter was brought to the forefront last week after special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s misuse of classified materials accused the president of experiencing severe memory lapses.
Hur’s report included examples from the president’s interview with investigators, which were featured while explaining the rationale for not prosecuting Biden. The report stated that the president could not remember, “even within several years,” when his son Beau Biden died, among other important dates.
The president, his lawyers, and his allies have forcefully pushed back on the comments, along with the overarching narrative about his age. While Democrats on Capitol Hill were quick to reiterate their continued support for Biden’s reelection bid, a few acknowledged having some anxiety to the Washington Examiner.
“I’m nervous,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) said. “But I’m pretty confident that people will make the right decision.”
Asked if he was fearful of Republicans seizing on the narrative that the president is not up to the job, Hickenlooper replied: “They’ve been pushing that forever. There are Democrats pushing it.”
“It certainly appeared to have a lot of information there that was not complementary to the president but didn’t really have to do much with the decision, but that’s politics,” he added. “I’m not up in arms about it. I don’t think there should be an inspector general looking into it. I think it’s where we are in our political universe right now.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) acknowledged that “some people are” nervous about the president’s ability to win reelection but said those are “generally” Democrats who “have some kind of an agenda.”
Still, he said pundits and the media shouldn’t “normalize” comments by former President Donald Trump by getting outraged at “petty” claims about Biden in Hur’s report.
“Yes, President Biden is old. Trump is old. They’re essentially the same age. One has gaffes. The other has gaffes. One has files. The other one has files,” Fetterman said. “It’s pretty much the same thing, but one of us isn’t saying, ‘If you don’t pay bills, I want Russia to invade you.’ And saying really crazy kind of s***.”
“If we’re going to be choosing on memory and the two that we have in front of us right now, whether it be President Biden or whether it be President Trump, we’re in trouble,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is allegedly considering a third-party White House bid.
“I think, basically, we should be choosing on character,” he replied when asked if Biden was mentally fit to be president. “Character should be the thing we choose on.”
The president himself forcefully rejected the claims in Hur’s report at a press conference from the White House last Thursday.
“There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare do they raise that?” Biden told the nation from the State Dining Room. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, ‘Was it any of his damn business?’ I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”
“I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing,” he added.
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Vice President Kamala Harris, the former attorney general of California, said on Friday the report was “politically motivated” and that she disputed Hur’s description of Biden’s demeanor on the days he was interviewed by Hur last October.
“The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly, politically motivated, gratuitous,” Harris said. “When it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like that, we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw.”
