Once again, the 2024 election is clear: Joe Biden vs. fascism

Too many are falling for the media's obsession over the president's age. The press is doing a "both sides," as if the issue is equal to the massive dangers of Trump. It's not.

I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to write about Joe Biden’s age.

It was in September of last year when I wrote a piece headlined, “I wish this were the last thing I'd have to write about Biden's age.” (Only a week before that, I wrote, “The 2024 election is clear: Joe Biden vs. fascism,” when Mitt Romney called for Biden to step aside based on his age.)

But such wishes don’t come true, not with a click-crazy, ratings-obsessed, “both sides”-promoting corporate media that is giving the issue a ludicrously overwhelming amount of attention.

And one reason seems to be that they really have nothing else on Joe Biden that’s “negative” to balance their (very appropriately) negative coverage of Trump, who is doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding and is hellbent on a dictatorship.

Notice how the “age” issue has ramped up just as the economy got better and inflation came down. Then the completely unethical report from the Trump-appointed special counsel, Robert Hur, was like jet fuel for the media to set the whole thing ablaze again.

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The New York Times has been the most egregious, and they’ve gotten a lot of hell—and, at least according to a lot of people on social media, likely have seen subscription cancellations. There is simply no coordination, it seems—or maybe it is in fact all by design—but to see the story covered across the various sections of the paper, where you have 12-plus “Biden is old” stories in a matter of days on the home page, is ridiculous. The criticism has triggered the Times. Publisher A.G. Sulzberger issued a defensive—and condescending and clueless—retort. I thought this part was rather telling:

But not all criticism, and not even all good criticism, is really aimed really at correcting the record. Often it's aimed at intimidating independent reporting. So our job is to help give the staff confidence to do those stories that explore unpopular positions and wade into controversial areas that challenge conventional wisdom. 

The good news is that journalists are a pretty tough bunch. Most good journalists have a little bit of a contrarian streak because they always wonder what they’re missing in the story.

He’s equating “independence” with “contrarianism," which is going against the grain just for the sake of it, not necessarily because there are facts that support it. (Webster’s dictionary of contrarian: a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion.)

Sometimes popular opinion, of course, is wrong, but that’s when it should generate news—not just to provide a "contrary" view for the sake of supposed balance.

And actually, the Biden age issue is a perfect example of popular opinion being wrong. Mental health professionals argue the public is wrong about deducing the president's decision-making capacity by his flubbing a word here or there. That should actually be the thrust of the coverage, according to Sulzberger's own standard—not the other way around.

Sulzberger also positions Times reporters as victims, couching criticism as “aimed at intimidating” them when it’s more often than not actually been a plea for accurate—and balanced—reporting.

All of the media’s scary headlines have some Democratic and liberal bedwetters now falling for the “time for Biden to step aside” narrative. The latest was none other than New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who, in his podcast, called for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race while spending most of the podcast lauding Biden for the great job he’s done.

The argument appears to be that even though Biden’s done a great job, perception is reality, and performance on the campaign trail is more important than performance in the Oval Office, where Biden is making sound decisions. Even if this were true, it negates that Biden is running against a fascist, a known quantity who is a danger to the country, and people know—or will come to see—that they don’t have the luxury of worrying about Biden getting a word wrong here and there.

Klein’s proposed solution would be an unmitigated disaster: a brokered convention where party hacks rather than primary voters decide who the candidate will be, picking from a field that includes Governors Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and others—all of whom do worse against Trump in polls than Biden—three months before the election.

Again, that would be a catastrophe. Taking down the accomplished incumbent because of bedwetters worried about age, but then taking a much bigger risk?

The people who have advocated this, by the way, are the same who have said Biden should do what Lyndon Johnson did in 1968, deciding to pull out after a dismal performance in the New Hampshire primary over anger at the Vietnam War, even as Johnson’s domestic measures—including civil rights legislation—were historic. (Johnson’s approval numbers had been dismal throughout ‘67 but shot up well over 50 later in ‘68, in the months after he announced he wouldn’t run.)

How did that end? Well, with a brokered Democratic convention, and incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey getting the nomination by the delegates—and losing the general election to Richard Nixon.

So, I dunno—this doesn’t seem like a great idea, folks!

Then there are those—maybe call them the underwear wetters as opposed to bed wetters—who don’t think Biden should drop out but think we need to “talk” more about Biden’s age and not “ignore” it.

But as TargetSmart’s Tom Bonier notes, “Here's a newsflash—everyone is aware of his age. I understand why it might worry you, because the stakes are so high. But what are we asking for here?”

Exactly. What does talking about it do? Everyone knows the president is 81. And yes, it’s an issue for a lot of people—they’d rather have a younger president—but it’s not a dealbreaker when the other guy is Donald Trump. Polls (since they’re so concerned with polls) have borne that out, that it’s not a dealbreaker for those who voted for Biden in 2020. So what is the point of talking about it a lot?

Wouldn’t it be better to instead talk more about the dangers of Trump and Project 2025 and the agenda of the GOP, which is following Trump into a fascist dictatorship? Wouldn’t it be better to talk about the president’s accomplishments, which have been amazing in his first term, and talk about building on them? 

Sure, Biden himself can and should talk about age—confirming for people that he’s up to the job, joking about the criticism, and pointing to Trump’s mental decline—but I’m not sure what we all gain from discussing it ad nauseam ourselves,  just to assuage the underwear wetters, when we have a lot more to discuss. I’ll say it again: It’s Joe Biden vs. fascism. That’s the message, pure and simple.