Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell struck up a friendship during their nearly quarter-century in the Senate together. Now in their 80s, the Democratic president and the Senate GOP leader appear to be giving political cover to each other as they fend off questions about their advanced age and health issues.
Notably, McConnell, R-Ky., 81, hasn’t joined Donald Trump, 77, and other Republicans who have attacked Biden’s age, health and mental acuity as he seeks re-election.
And after McConnell’s second freeze-up last week, Biden was one of the first to call McConnell, telling reporters that his “friend” sounded like “his old self” and that such episodes are a “part of his recovery” from a fall and a concussion this year.
complicate attacks on Biden’s age
No they really don’t. They’ll talk about Biden’s “obvious mental decline” and they’ll just not talk at all about Mitch’s very public 30 second Journeys Beyond the Stars. They’ll absolutely say Biden is too old but that Trump, who is only 3 years younger, isn’t. The right is absolutely capable of that level of doublethink. Stop assuming anything matters to them other than getting power they can use to hurt people. They don’t care about policy. They don’t care about seeming like hypocrites. They’ve been whipped into a paranoid frenzy and they’ll do anything they need to do in order to hurt the people they’re afraid of. Start looking at their behavior through that lens and see if it doesn’t start to make a lot of sense to you.
I think Trump is younger. He’s a monster, but still younger than Biden.
My mistake, edited. Ty!
Indeed, so if Trump was theoretically elected, he’d be the oldest elected president of all time, beating Joe from 2020 lol.
He’s also wildly unhealthy, and if his lifestyle is to be believed, he probably should’ve died years ago. The only thing keeping him going is fake tan, hair dye, and hate.
deleted by creator
I do have to admit, after getting concussed I also appeared to freeze but I was thinking hard of what the right word is to say next.
That said, probably anyone in concussion recovery should be on leave from legislating. The brain will heal more slowly, and your work will be of poor quality.
That’s all before getting into the actual politics of having a gerentocracy.
I know a lot of people have talked a out adding an age limit, but it seems to me most of the ancient ones are skating by on incumbent effect. If we had term limits it would resolve that. Alternatively something like the Virginia Gubernatorial rules where you cannot hold the position successively.
I have the same occasionally issue with forgetting words after a TBI, and have worked with people in recover who have it much worse than I.
However; I don’t go slackjaw and become completely nonresponsive for 10-20 seconds. This guy needs to be in medical care.
You’re right, it’s never as long as this. I am young, though so I don’t know how it would show in an ancient man hahaha.
I don’t see the appeal in insisting everything is fine. I would rather see my leaders saying “hey, I don’t feel good so I’m going to take some time to get healthy”.
The hubris of man
I appreciated that about Fetterman. I feel as though he presented his injury as something humans go through. He will continue his job, at times with assistance, and do the best he is able. He didn’t need to step down and he is not incapable of doing his job, but he has a flaw and is honest of it.
I dunno I don’t feel good about setting laws about who should be eligible to run for public office. The voters should decide who is eligible and who isn’t.
Yeah there’s a lot of dumb voters out there, but the general idea that we’re smarter than the voters and therefore need to make laws that supersede the voters feels wrong to me.
I think the problem of voters being dumb is just something we have to accept about democracy.
Voters being dumb and electing incumbent yet incapable people is not just democracy, but populism. Especially when those in power have been in power for so long that they meddle in education funding to keep said voters dumb
Democracy and populism are mutually exclusive?
Especially when those in power have been in power for so long that they meddle in education funding to keep said voters dumb
Improving education is indeed the solution to the problem. And it’s a thing that is more likely to happen than a law prohibiting those currently in power from running again.
That’s the beauty of the “can’t hold the position consecutively” rule.
It doesn’t matter what age, party, or how long you’ve been in office.
You can always run for a different office, or wait for the next term to run again.
Might be a bit weird with the House.
I don’t know either. It feels shortsighted and bigoted to do things like that. The issue is that when votes in Kentucky vote the rest of us have to endure how they vote. Term limits could and should be tried. So even when the voters make a mistake the mistake doesn’t linger around.
It would solve a lot of problems of the Senate if we set the term limit to 0.
The solution is simply better education. Which solves a lot of problems beyond codgers like Mitch McConnell. There are plenty of other terrible people running for office that wouldn’t be prevented from doing so by such laws. But these terrible people wouldn’t have a chance of winning an election in a better educated population.
Literally just yesterday Fox had some other attack piece on Biden and the picture they used of Biden he looked totally zonked-out.
McConnell’s walking-dead impersonation changes nothing for Republicans. Hypocrisy means nothing to those people.
What annoys me is their main demographics are about the same age. I would have thought moving the elderly while begging for their vote was a bad idea but I guess that is why I am not in politics.
Fox is so fucking bizarre. I mean, everyone hears about it, but unless you’re stuck in some type of torture chamber where you can’t switch the channel, you just can’t comprehend how overt and low effort the fake propaganda is on there. It blows my mind every year or three when I get stuck somewhere where it’s on.
You’d be surprised at the number of American households that voluntarily put themselves in such a torture chamber
I have a couple friends who’s older family members just run Fox 24/7. And from what they tell me, it’s not fun having family members like that. I feel very lucky.
The same people who voluntarily put themselves in that torture chamber then tell me that Fox “has really gone downhill” so they’ve gotta get their Newsmax. Totally disconnected from the reality of the world.
This would be devastating if conservatives cared at all about hypocrisy or logical consistency.
No they don’t.
It’s incredible how fucking stupid news media is, huh?
And that’s the problem. People aren’t well informed because of their sources. Media literacy/ skepticism/ critical thinking should be taught throughout our education. But that would transform the whole system , so it won’t. If you know how to do it, pass it on.
No one over 70, period. Go home. Retire. Make way.
Keep in mind that includes Bernie Sanders.
Correct. Bernie needs to retire
Age limit tied to Social Security retirement age and joining the military, voting, smoking, and drinking tied to the same age (18 or 21, take your pick). We either need to say people are of the appropriate age to do these things, or not. This cherry-picking bullshit has to go. Also, term limits. The constitution wasn’t meant for a congressperson or senator to be in the same seat for 40+ years.
I totally agree with the sentiment but a small nitpick I have is that you lumped voting age in with the possibly lethal choices of military enlistment or being able to purchase alcohol and tobacco. Those last three should be together, I agree, and that age (IMO) should be the earliest age of least potential harm done, i.e. probably not right out of highschool when most people don’t have a good foundation and can easily fuck up their life with one bad choice. Voting should definitely be available at age of legal maturity, though. If society says you’re old enough for your parents to kick you out with no repurcussions they’d damn better let you at least say you’d like that one guy, who wants to make things easier for homeless 18 year olds, to be in charge.
If only there was some sort of system by which voters could choose who their candidates are. Like before the general election parties could have internal elections to decide the candidates.
They could call it like a “First election” or even a “Primary election.”
At this point it is economically unfeasible for anyone under 40, unless you are an affluent trust fund baby, to pay all the money required to run for a presidential campaign.
This is why it’s always skewed towards old white men (hint: they can afford losing millions).
Literally no one ever has paid all of the money required to run a Presidential Campaign.
Sounds like you can easily run for president then, eh? Hypothetically speaking, if you were forced by gunpoint to run, what’s stopping you in particular?
My criminal history wouldn’t play well with voters. Small time drug possession, misdemeanor. It’s since been expunged, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t come up.
Fun fact: I was actually offered the opportunity to run for state gov by my states party, and turned it down due to aforementioned criminal history.
I don’t know what fucking fantasy reality you live in where no criminals run for office; we the attorney General of Texas, George Santos indictment, Americas mayor Rudy Juliani indictment, fucking Trump. We can keep going on literally forever listing criminal pieces of shit who have been in government positions.
Your argument here is failing.
You’re describing situations that the public very much is aware of.
I’m not concerned with getting in trouble. I was concerned with winning the election and I know who my potential constituents would have been and their feelings on marijuana possession.
It’s on the ballot to be recreational in my state so maybe I’ll revisit after that passes, as the optics would improve significantly.
I’m not interested in running an already-uphill campaign with an albatross around my neck
Judging from the Republicans presidential candidates debate, the selection is limited to idiots, stupid idiots, and dangerous idiots.
That’s who their voters want. You’re mad at republican voters. I don’t know why people don’t realize that.
I am constantly angry at ignorant, uneducated, rural retards. Yes, you are correct.
It’s all about the slime of political relationships and whom you know for politicians, not actual work capacity.
As long as you take Bernie with you. As a liberal I hate the hypocrisy of calling for term limits, while rallying behind Bernie, an ineffectual career politician who can’t get shit done and is all nice soundbites. He’s also a dinosaur.
IMHO Bernie is best suited to be an advisor or advocate, if he wants to continue.
Why do Democrats keep entertaining the notion that rank hypocrisy will ever be a dealbreaker for Republicans? They have decades of evidence to the contrary.
deleted by creator
There’s a 4 year age gap between Trump and Biden. Funny how 4 years ago Trump was saying Biden was too old for the job…
If trump were smart, (lol, bear with me) he would say “people didn’t mind voting for Biden at this age, so they shouldn’t mind me at this age either. But I promise not to run after the age of 80, unlike that frail old man who just wants to hide in his basement” or some shit like that. He lies all the fucking time, so he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by spinning that just a little bit.
If Trump were smart, he would have also said “we have the best scientists, and I only hire the best, you know, my personal friend Dr Fauci agrees with me that all patriots should wear masks to beat the China virus, and we’re going to have beautiful vaccines, the very very best vaccines, and we’re gonna use so much of them you won’t believe how great we are at beating this virus, we’re gonna be sick of being healthy.” and would probably have handily won reelection.
I mean, he did at first. Lmao and then (idk the order in which it happened) he flipped with his base to “vaccines will give you rabies and chemically castrate you” when they started coming out. He initially bragged about how fast he was helping companies develop the vaccine, then it came out and he decided to trash them
what a timeline that would be
Not only that, but he could’ve made millions off of red maga facemasks too. All he had to do was let the experts run the shit they’re experts in while taking credit for putting the right people on top of it. The election wouldn’t have even been close. It would’ve been like the Reagan reelection.
Wait. Trump, three years younger than Biden, is attacking Biden on his age?
Trump also thinks he’s 215 pounds.
I’m 6’2 230 lbs and I look WAY slimmer than Trump. He is lying about all of it.
My guess is if you took away the lift shoes and actually measured the guy he’d be a bit shy of 6 foot and well over 300
He was already attacking Biden on his age during the election. At the age Trump now is.
These are people that have mastered doublethink, there is absolutely no such complication for people inside the GOP bubble. For everyone else, yeah, it’s one more minor bit of hypocrisy, but it’s not even a thing for the bleach-koolaid drinkers.
No it doesn’t, because the same people complaining about Biden are usually masters of doublethink anyway.
Well it’s not like they both arent too old or anything…
The choice is between a kindly (somewhat weird) old man and a mean, petty (and extremely weird) old man.
I hate to break it to everyone, but we’re all weird. You just stop trying to hide it at a certain age, or forget to. But yes, Biden weird and Trump weird are two different universes.
Yeah really. Biden might sniff your hair, Trump wants to sniff his daughter’s pubic hair.
All water is wet. Not all water contains cyanide (trump).
I paid with my phone in the grocery store today and the 80yo behind me was mind blown.
You have to have a sense of irony for that to be true, and conservatives tend to lack a sense of irony.
They also don’t care about hypocrisy. So shit like this doesn’t phase them one bit, yet MSM still hasn’t gotten the memo lol.
Trumps age complicate republican attacks on bidens age…
Ok, no attacks. But are we talking about how experience is far less valuable in the age of information and that average cognitive ability peaks at around 30, begins to decline at 45, then - on average - rapidly deteriorates after 70?.. because it definitely seems like something we should be talking about.
experience is far less valuable in the age of information
Oh ya? Brings to mind this maxim, “there’s no substitute for experience like being 16”
Hello, I don’t think I’m understanding the maxim correctly. Does it mean that the boldness of youth is better than experience or the other way around?
I take it to mean a 16 year old thinks they know everything and have the whole world figured out.
