WASHINGTON – President Biden turned 81 on Monday — extending his record as the oldest commander-in-chief after polls showed most voters thought he was too old for the job as he sought a second term.
Biden will leave office at the age of 86 if he wins re-election and serves the full four years until January 2029.
The president will host the annual pre-Thanksgiving turkey pardon at the White House on Monday before a family vacation to Nantucket starting Tuesday.
In recent public appearances, Biden tried to laugh off questions about his age by stating that he was hundreds of years old.
At one point, he even walked robotically around the stage to mock a clip distributed by his distraught-looking critics leaving his podium.
But polls consistently show age is a major liability heading into next year’s election — as much as, if not more than, concerns about Biden’s handling of the economy and other issues.
A New York Times poll this month found 71% of swing state voters said Biden was “too old to be an effective president,” while only 39% said the same of former President Donald Trump, 77, who is seeking a rematch against Biden next year.
A Wall Street Journal poll released in September found that 73% of registered voters believe Biden is too old, compared to 47% who say the same about Trump.
Many voters think Biden is too old to serve successfully.AFP via Getty Images
And a Washington Post-ABC News poll in June found that only 32% of voters believed Biden had the mental acuity needed to be president — while 54% said the same about Trump.
Biden didn’t help the effects of his age by collapsing several times in public while in office. He has also mistakenly referred to Kamala Harris, his vice president, as “the president” at least seven times and told false stories about dead Amtrak conductors at least 12 times since taking office.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) launched a long-term primary challenge to Biden last month, warning his fellow party members that “it looks like the way we’re going right now, the Democrats are going to lose and Trump is going to be our president again.”
David Axelrod, the former chief strategist to then-President Barack Obama, said last week on CNN that “in front of the camera, what he’s showing is causing people to worry, and that’s troubling.”
Over the weekend, Axelrod told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that he put Biden’s chances of winning re-election at “a 50-50 score here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse.”
“He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky,” Axelrod said, adding that the White House “is in real trouble if they expect Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary [Clinton] do that [in 2016]also.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
