Pirate's Cove

The politics section of the NY Times looks a lot like the opinion section (free at Yahoo)

Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024

When President Joe Biden appeared at a last-minute news conference Thursday night, he hoped to assure the country of his mental acuity hours after a special counsel’s report had devastatingly referred to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Instead, a visibly angry Biden made the exact type of verbal flub that has kept Democrats so nervous for months, mistakenly referring to the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, as the “president of Mexico” as he tried to address the latest developments in the war in the Gaza Strip.

The special counsel’s report and the president’s evening performance placed Biden’s advanced age, the singularly uncomfortable subject looming over his reelection bid, back at the center of America’s political conversation.

Why would Democrats be nervous for months if they are just verbal slips? Everyone does that, right? It’s not like he just said he met with Francois Mitterand, who’s been dead for 25 years, instead of Emanuel Macron just a few days beforehand. Or forgot the name of Hamas. Has to use smaller stairs for Air Force One. Or that President Putin was “clearly losing the war in Iraq”. Or when he ended a speech on gun grabbing with “God save the Queen, man.” Calling the UK Prime Minister “Mr. President.” Referring to Trump as still president, calling Kamala president multiple times. You can add tons and tons of gaffs, along with incidents that make him look frail, just from his time as president.

Yet, the Times calls this a verbal slip

The 81-year-old president — already the oldest in the nation’s history — has for years fought the perception that he is a diminished figure. “My memory is fine,” he insisted Thursday from the White House.

Yet in a single cutting phrase, the report from Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who had investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, captured the fears of Democrats who hold their breath when Biden appears in public and the hopes of Republicans, especially former President Donald Trump and his allies. The Trump operation has made plain its intent to use Biden’s stiffer gait and sometimes garbled speech to cast him as weak.

Well, yeah, it’s politics.

The Biden campaign has built its strategy around telling voters that the November election is a choice between the president, whatever doubts the public has about his age, and an opponent in Trump, 77, whom they paint as a threat to democracy and personal freedoms.

What freedom is that? Taking away our guns? Forcing us to drive certain vehicles, while actually trying to force the peasants onto public transportation? Expanding the IRS? Dictating what we can and cannot say? Telling social media companies to censor Wrongthink?

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who is close to Biden, predicted that he would receive more calls from “people expressing concern.” But he said he would respond by recounting his direct experiences with Biden, which he said demonstrated that the president was “sharp, engaged and purposeful.”

Is that why he has to head for a restful weekend in Delaware or Camp David most weekends after working around 30 hours a week?

Still, Biden’s mix-up of Egypt and Mexico came soon after a couple of slips in the past week regarding deceased European leaders. First, during a campaign swing in Nevada, he confused François Mitterrand, a former French president who died in 1996, with the country’s current president, Emmanuel Macron. Then, on Wednesday, he referred twice to having met in 2021 with Helmut Kohl, a former German chancellor who died in 2017, instead of with Angela Merkel, who led the country three years ago.

Trump has made his own series of verbal stumbles — he recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and previously mixed up the leaders of Hungary and Turkey — but polls show that voters do not question his sharpness the same way they do Biden’s. An NBC News poll released this week found that voters gave Trump an advantage of 16 percentage points on the question of who was more competent and effective — a 25-point swing since 2020, when Biden held a 9-point edge on that question.

Trump doesn’t have a pattern of doing so while also looking frail and old. He isn’t squinting at the podium, eyes barely open. He doesn’t have that flat footed old person walk. He doesn’t fade out during short speeches. He doesn’t bizarrely bring up his dead son Beau constantly while also lying about how he died. He doesn’t just wander off during events leaving people hanging. Melania or a handler doesn’t constantly have to come over and steer him away from talking to people. Trump doesn’t have an issue speaking or forgetfulness.

It’s actually rather disgusting that Democrat bigwigs trotted Biden out in 2020 to start with, because it was quite clear he wasn’t all there, and continue to do so. He’s not well, and you know he’s really not the one making policy. It’s the people in the background, doing Obama’s bidding. Joe’s just there.