Biden goes on the attack

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This article was published 09/03/2024 (604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“We can fight about fixing the border or we can fix it … Send me the border bill now.” U.S. President Joe Biden, State of Union Address, March 7, 2024

Two months ago on this page, I focused on why Donald Trump was on the road back to White House.

It wasn’t that voters were OK with 91 criminal counts against him and civil suits amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, including a jury decision that found Trump liable for the sexual abuse of columnist E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996.

In my January view, the key question on voters minds was not about Trump’s low character. No fair minded human beings could possibly see Trump as a role model for their children and grandchildren. His likely return to power wasn’t about him.

It was about the man who replaced him. “To most Americans, the current occupant of the White House is too old. Worse than that, many think that his eggs are scrambled. That may be neurologically inaccurate. But it’s politically truthful,” I wrote.

Despite my feelings about the former president, I do get that he leads Joe Biden in the national horse race. And he is ahead in all the key battle ground states, including Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The issue that plagued Joe Biden in January isn’t absent in March and is not likely to evaporate on Election Day, Nov. 5.

It’s age.

And since the president of the United States isn’t going to be younger eight months from now, many people who aren’t comfortable with Trump are even less comfortable with the calendar.

Joseph R. Biden was born on Nov. 20,1942. If he is re-elected this November, he will be 82 when he puts his hand on the Bible and swears the presidential oath for the second time in January of next year. And that means if he serves a full second term, he will be helicoptered off the White House lawn at the age of 86.

I don’t know how many optimists there are in the United States of America. But it’s difficult to find many people who are optimistic that a person deep into their 80s can effectively do the most important job in the world’s most consequential country.

While I still think Trump is likely to win in November, President Biden refused to cave in to the cave dweller, just 48 hours ago.

He went on offence, relentlessly and mercilessly attacking Trump, who he referred to only as his predecessor. The State of the Union address wasn’t the clumsy calumny of a leader well past his prime.

Biden fought like a champ.

His two hours of prime-time pugilism smashed Donald Trump’s glass jaw over the largest public issue in the election so far — the bleeding border.

Trump regularly demonizes migrants coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump says migrants want to poison the blood of Americans. He calls them vermin.

It’s no secret in Washington that Biden and his Democrats successfully negotiated a bipartisan agreement with the Republicans to significantly beef up the border.

The only reason the bill hasn’t been placed on the president’s desk is because Donald Trump has been engaged in vermin-like behaviour.

He chewed up the agreement by commanding his Republican puppets in Congress not to sign it.

During his Thursday night address, the president stated the facts about how his predecessor sabotaged the bill.

While the president made the case, a network camera focused on a conservative Republican architect of the bill. You didn’t have to a professional lip reader to see the Oklahoma representative say “True” when Biden spoke the God’s honest truth.

Two things are as true today as they were at the beginning of the year.

No. 1, I think Donald Trump is returning to the White House.

No.2, I want old Uncle Joe to prove me wrong.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com