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.
Yup, Biden is 3 years older than trump.
I don’t see any mental decline… Biden has always been a gaffe machine and he has a stutter he struggles to suppress. He’s the same as ever.
While on the other side, Trump seems to be already through with his mental decline…
This is a big fucking deal!
He might gaffe but he’s not wrong lol
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.
Biden is too old, but he at least looks somewhat healthy.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
It is not. Before Fox we had Alex Jones, Coast-to-Coast, Imus, and Rush on all the time at my house growing up. Mom would get really angry if you tried to turn the radio volume lower. Of course we lived in the middle of nowhere so it was mostly static. It was this constant background noise of my childhood.
I can still remember being about 6 or so and asking my mom “what did liberals do to that man to make him so angry all the time?”. Pretty sure it was Rush I was referring to but might have been some other screaming radio guy. My dad lost it when Imus said something bigoted, and got fired. I endured two weeks of rants about it.
Part of the reason why I avoid talking about politics around my kids. I am a bit leftwing and that is my thing, my kids don’t need to be captive audiences to me about this stuff. Besides we got Legos and woodwork to do.
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 occasional issue with forgetting words after a TBI, and have worked with people in recover who have it much worse than I. It’s an interesting outcome when simple words just cannot be recalled. To fabricate an example; I know what this object is, a tool for writing, it’s in my hand, it has ink, but what the hell is it called. (a pen) - it can be for the most mundane and common words.
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.
IMO it’s useless talking about what laws or policies need to change to fix this because the people with the power to change it know that doing so will affect their ability to stay in power and just won’t change it to their detriment. It’s the same reason protesting won’t ever fix the fundamental issues. The people currently at the top aren’t just going to hand their power away or cripple their ability to easily generate or access wealth. If it comes to it, they’ll go to war before giving that up.
Then it follows that it’s also useless to even discuss such things on the internet. So why even bring up these topics if it’s impossible to change anything?
Or are you just spending time posting on the internet in an attempt discourage others from trying to improve things?
Solving a problem requires understanding it. I’m not trying to discourage improvement but want more people to see what I see about the nature of what’s going on and how many of these flaws in the system aren’t seen that way by the people who pass the laws and make the policies.
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.
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.
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I disagree. I understand your viewpoint, but we need a more clear cut way to determine someone’s “maturity” to make their own decisions. Voting can be indirectly lethal (using the term very loosely here). Ask one of the women who couldn’t get an abortion and died from delivery complications, or the recent study that said the rollbacks the last president made for pollution is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of deaths, or lack of COVID restrictions enforcement. It’s also currently arbitrary whether someone is tried as an adult in the case of a teenager that commits a homicide. So is the ability to give consent for intercourse, and that has a remote possibility of lethality too (delivery complications, STDs, etc.).
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.
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.
See also: finally, this heinous act will make Republicans see the light and abandon the assholes manipulating them!
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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.
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
They celebrate Operation Warp Speed at the same time they talk about being “pure blooded” lmao
These people do not have brains.
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.
what a timeline that would be
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.
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I paid with my phone in the grocery store today and the 80yo behind me was mind blown.
Yeah bruh, I’ll take Brandon over any traitor republican.
I’ll take my neighbors over any rich ass hole.
Trumps age complicate republican attacks on bidens age…
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.
Why do we get Biden? Is there NO other democrat that can beat Trump, etc? None whatsoever?
The Dems need to stop fighting one election at a time. They’re fighting on their back foot!
There are at least 2 other democrats in the running that could beat Trump that are polling >10%, but the DNC won’t allow debates. If the DNC believed in Biden, they should allow debates to show all of us that he’s competent.
Dnc has been entirely fucked since they froze out Bernie. That’s why Trump won.
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Who are those 2?
I’m assuming they are talking about Kennedy and Williamson. Which are absolute batshit insane people that have no chance at beating trump. They say a lot of progressive stuff that sounds great but then you find out the crystal healthcare program and that anti semitism
Yeah RFK is a joke and is bankrolled by the far right. Republicans like him more than Dems. Calling him a serious contender is a joke and a half.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rfk-jr-democrat-republican-primary-favorability/
