James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Theresa May as Prime Minister, 2016-2019.
In Washington D.C. last week, my firm ran our first ‘pollsters’ panel’ of the 2024 Election. Attendees from across politics, business, and the media heard from Jim McLaughlin, a Donald Trump pollster, Stan Greenberg, a Democrat polling legend and former Clinton pollster, and Patrick Ruffini, a leading researcher.
The debate was lively with areas of agreement (“the election could change on a dime”, Trump was unlikely to go to prison) and disagreement (whether the GOP would win the Senate, whether Minnesota and other states were in play in November).
But one reaction stood out: the room’s mix of laughter and gasps as I showed them the words American voters most associate with Joe Biden. “Old”, “incompetent” and “senile” flashed up on the screen.
Biden’s age was a semi-taboo subject for some time. Even now the occasional Democrat mouthpiece tries to argue he has a stammer. But the public knows what they see, and it goes across party lines with “old” being the top word that comes to mind about the president even for Democrats.
As every day goes it is becoming a bigger issue in this campaign. And with every video.
In the last twelve days, there have been at least five viral videos of Joe Biden looking lost and disorientated. First, we had his blundering exit from a car at the D-Day commemorations. On June 11th, Biden gave a frozen stare, mouth ajar, while a band performed at the White House.
Then three days later at the G7, he veered off during a military demonstration, looking the wrong way much to the obvious concern of his fellow leaders. Later a meeting with the Pope was downright painful to watch as Biden appeared to press his forehead against an uncomfortable Pope Francis. Then, perhaps the most embarrassing for the president, he was led off a fundraising stage in LA at the start of this week by his hand by a visibly bemused Obama.
This is not normal, and it is sad to watch. It is no regular or advisable schedule for an 81-year-old. In the last twelve days, he has gone from France for the D-Day celebrations to Washington for Juneteenth celebrations, to Wilmington for his son’s conviction in a drugs trial, to Italy for the G7, then to the West Coast for the fundraiser. That is not stamina, it is stupidity.
The videos are important because every day they go viral, racking up millions of views on X, TikTok, and Instagram. They are cutting through and causing substantial damage.
They are stopping him from campaigning effectively. Biden’s message on D-Day, where he drew a line between the defence of democracy at Normandy with the dangers of a Trump presidency, was all but lost as the viral videos dominated instead.
They mean he is not able to capitalise on his opponent’s mistakes. Polling by J.L. Partners last week found that, though 13 per cent of voters who have changed their voting intention in the last few weeks said they took a more negative view of Trump after his conviction for falsifying business records in New York, this was more than offset by the 18% who said they had changed their mind because of Biden’s poor performance and age.
They mean he could ultimately lose the election to Trump in November, an unpopular candidate who would surely be beatable by other candidates.
The two face off on June 27 in the first head-to-head debate of the campaign. The public is so concerned that seven in ten voters expect Biden to mess up his words, four in ten expect him to have problems standing up, four in ten expect him to walk off the wrong side of the stage, and 49 per cent expect Biden to forget where he is.
The absurdity is that these low expectations probably keep him in the race. Biden is suffering from his age but it is unlikely he is going to collapse or clam up on stage. Just as at the State of the Union earlier this year, Biden is likely to surpass rock-bottom public expectations fostered by Republicans, killing off any attempt by Democratic elites to try and remove him from the ticket at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Not that that is likely. His re-appointment of the deeply unpopular Kamala Harris as his running-mate makes little political sense, until you realise that it makes a challenge to his candidacy much more difficult than if he had a popular upstart in the position. Voting rules at the Convention also mean that the nomination could be completed digitally a week prior, minimizing the opportunity for backstage skullduggery. Only Joe Biden, and his wife Jill, can decide enough is enough and step aside.
If Biden had handed over the reins of the Democratic candidacy at the start of 2024, he would have gone down as both a great stabilizing president and a great radical one, having calmed the nation after the Trump years and having stewarded through nation-changing legislation.
Back at the event in DC, Donald Trump’s wordcloud was no more flattering: “criminal”, “evil”, and “disgusting”.
The problem of Joe Biden’s age means the criminal is on course to beat him.
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Author: James Johnson
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