A new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted Feb. 9-10 found that 86% of respondents believe President Joe Biden is “too old to serve a second term.” This number includes 91% of independent voters, those who will decide the election, and shows a 12% jump in voter concern over Biden’s age from a similar ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in September.
While the results of the poll weren’t exactly great news for former President Donald Trump — 62% said he is also too old to serve — neither were they devastating. Even the New York Times admitted that, “As a matter of politics, age has been a bigger liability for Mr. Biden than for Mr. Trump, according to polls, perhaps because of the president’s physical presentation, particularly the shuffle when he walks.” An understatement, yes, but we’ll take it.
The new poll is getting a lot of attention because it was taken after the release of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hur’s recommendation that Biden not be charged because a jury would see him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” was a kill shot right through the heart of Biden’s bid for a second term.
Although Democrats have taken to the airwaves to characterize the Feb. 8 report as a “political hit job” and a “disgrace,” they are well aware that its release, along with Biden’s hastily called prime-time address later that day, was a watershed moment for his presidency. His gaffe-filled remarks to the press only strengthened Hur’s case and made it clear that Biden’s condition has become too glaring for his handlers to hide.
By Saturday, Biden’s betting odds for the Democratic nomination had plunged from 71.6% to 60%, as per the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Alarmingly, former first lady Michelle Obama’s odds jumped to 15%, easily eclipsing both Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) with 9.8% and Vice President Kamala Harris with 7.4%.
At Monday’s White House briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to minimize Hur’s report. She reminded reporters that Hur was a Republican and that ”he’s not a medical doctor. He’s just not.” Nice try, but he was hand-picked by the Biden Justice Department.
Unlike Jean-Pierre, however, the New York Times seems to realize the jig is up. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd summed up the situation perfectly: “Democrats should grab their smelling salts for a long case of the vapors. Stealth about health is no longer possible, and the sooner President Joe Biden’s team stops being in denial about that, the better off Democrats will be.”
The New York Times‘s Ross Douthat wrote a weekend editorial titled, “The Question Is Not if Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.” He began by declaring that “Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst.” As he sees it, “The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer.”
In a separate article, the New York Times‘s Peter Baker wrote: “Mr. Biden’s performance at his news conference on Thursday night was intended to assure the public that his memory is fine and argue that Mr. Hur was out of line; instead, the president raised more questions about his cognitive sharpness and temperament, as he delivered emotional and snappish retorts in a moment when people were looking for steady, even and capable responses to fair questions about his fitness.”
The piece went on to say that, “His assurances, in other words, didn’t work. He must do better — the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump, who has a very real chance of retaking the White House.”
These editorials show a serious pivot in the New York Times‘s coverage of Biden.
Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham after the president’s press conference, historian Victor Davis Hanson suggested that journalists who have covered up for Biden’s cognitive decline for years are now trying to salvage what little credibility they have left.
“Well, I think they’ve jumped the proverbial shark,” Hanson said, “and I think right now, there’s a lot of journalists who are saying, ‘I want to get out of Dodge, and I want to go on record that I’ve always said I always believed he had mental problems.’ … And I think they’re going to try to be the first to say, ‘I have integrity. I’m empirical. I’m disinterested.’”
They did the same thing in the spring of 2019 when special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election came up empty-handed. It didn’t stop them from going all-in a few months later on the farce over Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that resulted in his first impeachment.
Still, it’s progress. Evidently, “saving our democracy” no longer means we must reelect a senile man.
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Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner, Power Line, and AFNN, and she is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation Academy. She is a past contributor to RedState, Newsmax, the Western Journal, and Bongino.com. Her articles have appeared on RealClearPolitics, MSN, the Federalist, and many other sites. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
