After months of holding off, Democratic presidential rivals are now taking jabs at what many campaign operatives view as front-runner Joe Biden’s biggest vulnerability: his age.
A prominent South Carolina Democrat who is a supporter of California Sen. Kamala Harris has been the most direct in attacking the 76-year-old former vice president, who was first elected to public office in 1970. “Joe Biden has been running for president since before I was born,” former state senator Bakari Sellers said this week.
“Joe Biden is nearly 80 years old and he’s running to be president of the United States. My dad was president of an HBCU and will be 75 this year and his doctors told him he couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t have the energy and strength to lead that campus anymore. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great man and a great leader and a great visionary. But it is a justifiable conversation.”
Speaking anonymously, other Democrats are even more brutal about Biden. “It’s like the corpse is already rotting,” an adviser to one of Biden’s competitors told Politico over the weekend, referring to his campaign.
If elected, Biden — who suffered two brain aneurysms in 1988 and turns 77 in November — would be the oldest person ever to occupy the Oval Office. When inaugurated, Biden would be will be 78 years and 51 days old, President Ronald Reagan was 77 years and 349 days old when he left office.
Until now, Biden’s rivals have been hesitant to address his advanced age, in part because he is a beloved figure among many grassroots Democrats. But his continued presence at the top of opinion polls has made it more imperative to try to shift the dynamics of the contest. Biden’s repeated fumbles have given them an opening.
He mistakenly referred to Vermont when he was in New Hampshire, referred to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, as “tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan,” and said that “over 40 kids” were shot at the 1970 Kent State protest in which four were killed and nine injured, among other stumbles.
The most outspoken have been candidates in the low single-digits who are desperate to break through. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, 46, said last week: “I just think Biden is declining. I don’t think he has the energy. You see it almost daily. And I love the guy.” In New Hampshire over the weekend he said: “It is a concern you’re hearing from a lot of people in the country. I’m just saying that it’s unclear sometimes ― when he is articulating positions there’s a lack of clarity. And I’ll leave it at that.”
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s campaign manager, Jennifer Ridder, wrote in a recent memo sent to donors and supporters that “Biden may be unable to take down” President Trump.
[Related: ‘Am I fit enough?’ Biden says questions about his age are ‘totally appropriate’]
Though California Rep. Eric Swalwell, 38, has ended his brief presidential bid, he offered a direct attack on Biden’s age during a June primary debate and urged Biden to “pass the torch.”
Some candidates subtly draw attention to Biden’s age, highlighting his old-school political positions and style.
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 37, makes generational change a key theme of his campaign and has hinted at the age divide between himself and Biden. “There’s not going back to normal. Don’t listen to anybody in either party who says we can just go back to what we were doing,” he Buttigieg said in Des Moines, Iowa, in June.
Over the weekend, he said: “Every single time we have tried to play it safe with the most established, and let’s say Washington-tenured, figures — every time we’ve come up short. If we really want to win, we have to present a different kind of message.”
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, 46, has said: “You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that’s good enough,” O’Rourke has described Biden as a “return to the past.”
“I was six years old when a presidential candidate came to the California Democratic Convention and said it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans,” Swalwell said. “Joe Biden was right when he said that 32 years ago. He is still right today.”
Biden has rejected the notion that he is too old to be president, but says questions about his age are fair game. “People have a right to question all of our ages. It’s a totally legitimate thing. All I can say is, watch me. Just watch me,” he said in June.
His campaign aides downplay his flubs and blame the media for negative coverage. “If you listen to what the candidates say all day as they’re out campaigning, they’re out in front of cameras, they’re in front of people, they’re talking all day. Everybody’s going to slip up and misstate a name or a date or a location. It happens all the time,” his top aide Kate Bedingfield said last month.
