Joe Biden was born on November 20th, 1942.
Before the first electrical computer.
Before the Marshall Plan.
Even before the fall of the Nazi Party. He has always been born in the year 1942.
Because time is linear, Biden will be 81 on November 5th: The 2024 election day. So why did it take until mid-July for Democrats to internalize what it means to be an 81-year-old Presidential Candidate? And why did it all of a sudden become a serious issue, as if the Primary Elections never happened?
I began this piece before Biden decided to announce dropping from the race on X, an outlet I thought rather ridiculous. No wonder Americans cannot tell the difference between social media and news media– a separation no longer exists. Regardless, I still stand by my sentiments on Joe Biden and believe his treatment in the media exposed a lot of problems with how the average voter functions within our democracy.
I don’t love Joe Biden. I begrudgingly selected his name on the ballot mostly because I wanted someone younger and did not feel like he could beat Trump a second time. However, the Democratic Party provided no alternatives. Maybe they should have considered that Trump is more of a cult leader than a Republican. It feels as though there was no thought, no consideration from 3,894 of the 3,937 delegates committed to Biden.
I am not arguing he was mentally fit enough for the job, I am simply asking why now when there were already signs of his cognitive decline? Many argue that his mental state was not as bad before the debate. However, NBC, a left-leaning media source, has written articles about his memory loss since early February. Addressing President Zelensky as President Putin was not the first time he mixed up names of importance. He referred to meeting with dead European leaders instead of current ones twice in one week.
Americans only decide to be politically conscious when it is too late to do anything. We like complaining more than acting. We’d rather not vote in November because we claim there are “no good options” instead of realizing the Primaries are the chance to promote someone you do feel fit. But that requires work and reading, something that has gone out of style with our thirty-second attention spans. The minute Americans did wake up– Biden was no longer on that Ballot. It was the internet reaction and news obsession with his debate performance that pushed donors to drop Biden more than anything.
I don’t particularly hate Joe Biden either. In 2020 he made sense as the candidate. We have forgotten that he adopted this country in the midst of a pandemic, and we safely went maskless fairly soon after. The E.P.A has required municipal water systems to ban chemicals associated with cancer in tap water– a new regulation, many species returned to the endangered species list after being removed by the Trump Administration, and also introduced legislation that requires federal agencies to consider a project’s impact on the environment and low-income communities. Despite the Republican narrative, he is a great president for the blue-collar worker. One example is the banning of Noncompete Clauses, which places more power in the hands of workers than corporations. Biden will not go down in history as the best President, but his name does not deserve to go next to Buchanan’s or Johnson’s failures.
Many young Americans do not like the direction of this country. But our biggest issue is we fault Biden for policies he has no control over because we do not know how our government functions.
In a recent TikTok video, content creator James Charles screams about how Joe Biden is the reason Roe vs. Wade is no longer a law. Now I do not claim that James Charles is still relevant, or that his video is anything more than rage bait. Regardless, he still reaches a massive amount of people– and too many agree with what he says in the comments.
Biden cannot influence the rulings of the court because that’s how the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. However, a president can nominate three extremely non-partisan judges in order to push his own political agenda, like Trump successfully has done with Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch. In a short amount of time, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe V. Wade, the Chevron Deference Doctrine– giving an exorbitant amount of power to corporations, and granted the President immunity from crimes against the country. However, many cannot recognize that this is not a result of the Biden administration but the former. Biden cannot control the aftermath of the Trump Administration. The Supreme Court is actively taking away more protection from the people than our current president.
Israel-Palestine is a pressing issue for young liberal voters. Although I do not believe Biden has done all he can do to stop Netanyahu from ceasing the attacks on innocent Palestinians, it is easy to assume Trump will do even less, considering he placed a ban on Muslims in the U.S.
For many moderates, it always comes down to the economy. But what is exactly wrong with Biden’s economy? When moderate voters were surveyed about Biden and Trump’s economy, they could not point to what they wanted to see, or even what Biden was doing wrong. They could only express that they felt better off with Trump. However, this makes sense considering one president started with a pandemic, and the other did not. The Federal Reserve is independent from the president and at the end of the day, economists agree that neither Trump nor Biden is at fault for inflation that the country has faced. The “inflation” that Americans are feeling is not inflation at all but rather corporate greed, something that isn’t going to subside with Trump in power with his proposed tax cuts for the rich.
Liberals tend to shoot themselves in the foot as they are overly critical of their own candidates. This leads extreme liberals to either not vote because they do not feel their views are adequately represented or to vote third party. Voting third party will do nothing in this election, like every other election; our outdated electoral college does not accurately reflect the views of its people, nor give any party, but the big two, a fighting chance. Now is not the time to experiment.
So in mid-July, I was particularly peeved with actors like George Clooney, and high-ranking democrats who all of a sudden began to voice their opinions about Joe Biden needing to drop out. Where were they in January when this conversation should have been happening?
This is not 1968. Our dream candidate was not assassinated. We have not been left to scramble before the Democratic Convention to find a replacement. We had four years and did nothing. I believe Kamala has a fighting chance to appeal to undecided moderates, however, had we supported her from the start, or someone else, the party could have been even stronger.
As a bartender at a local dive bar, I watched one of my customers laugh at the news headline and call Biden a “clown” while wearing his NRA t-shirt. Now I don’t know this man’s political persuasions but I could take an educated guess. Republicans often believe themselves to be the more patriotic party and label the left as the instigators of “The Great Awokening”, but I think Biden could be considered one of the most patriotic presidents that this country has had. He placed his own pride aside knowing it would be best for the country which is more than most politicians can say. In a lot of ways, dropping the race made me respect him more.
Even though he is fond of hyperbole, Biden was not dramatizing one fact: this election will determine the fate of our democracy.
Sophomore Lily Andrey is the Campus Life Editor. Her email is landrey@fandm.edu.