Joe Biden's Age Problem Tears Democrats Apart

Just over a month after a special counsel report brought questions over Joe Biden's age to the forefront of the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrats are torn about the best way of addressing what is becoming one of the election's defining issues.

The president, 81, and his advisers struck back after Special Counsel Robert Hur's report on February 8 depicted him as an "elderly man with a poor memory."

Biden staged a rare evening press conference within hours. In the days that followed, Vice President Kamala Harris called the report "politically motivated," and First Lady Jill Biden joined a chorus of surrogates vouching for Biden's fitness and energy.

But as the president and his team have tried to move on from the damage caused by the report, White House allies and other Democrats have grown increasingly worried that the strategy of downplaying Biden's age as a distraction is the wrong approach to an issue that can't be easily swept under the rug. While party insiders are privately fretting that Biden isn't making a more forceful case for why he can serve as president well into his 80s, Democrats disagree over what the best message is to dispel the public's fears about his age—and whether Biden or his surrogates are the most effective messengers.

The concerns and competing theories about Biden's best path to winning reelection reflect the anxiety many Democrats feel about a general election rematch against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Biden's historically low job approval numbers and lackluster showing in head-to-head polls against Trump have fueled increasingly intense chatter that Democrats would be better off picking someone else.

"Democrats have a better option than Biden," Ezra Klein, a progressive columnist and vocal Trump critic, wrote in The New York Times soon after Hur's report came out. Hur added more fuel to the fire by drawing attention to what polls show is one of Biden's biggest vulnerabilities. "In a way, the special counsel did Biden a favor because some of us have been screaming aggressively from the sidelines that people who work with him on a regular basis need to come out and say" that he's doing his job well, said a former senior Biden administration official who remains in contact with the White House and asked not to be named in order to speak candidly.

Despite growing calls for Biden and his surrogates to mount a more robust defense, there's debate in the party about what that should look like.

Harris voiced the frustrations of White House and Biden campaign officials when she said Hur's focus on Biden's age was "gratuitous" and "clearly politically motivated." Hur is a former U.S. attorney for Maryland who was nominated to the post by Trump.

But it was Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, who appointed Hur to serve as special counsel in the probe into Biden's handling of classified documents after he served as vice president. Hur found that Biden retained classified information after leaving the vice presidency but said investigators did not uncover enough evidence to warrant criminal charges.

The finding was in line with a Justice Department policy against charging sitting presidents with a crime.

But the decision was overshadowed by Hur's conclusion that the president had a "limited memory" and could not recall key moments in his professional or personal life, among them the date of his son Beau Biden's death.

Hur, who has resigned as special counsel, defended the report at a House oversight hearing March 12.

"My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President's memory was necessary and accurate and fair," Hur said in his opening statement at the hearing. He added that he "did not disparage the president unfairly."

Defending Biden's Mental Capacity

Harris was far from the only Democrat with sharp words for Hur's characterization of Biden. Democrats in Congress, administration officials and other supporters have also responded in recent weeks by heaping a steady diet of praise on Biden's energy and work ethic.

"Joe is 81, that's true, but he's 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day," Jill Biden wrote in a campaign email to supporters after the special counsel report was released.

Some Democrats have since warned it's a mistake for the Biden campaign to lean too heavily on surrogates to defend him, or for supporters to make claims about his health that may come across to some voters as exaggerated.

"Surrogates going out there and saying he's as sharp as a tack, that doesn't get him anywhere," said Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic strategist. "Biden has to do most of this himself."

Yet when Biden has tried to defend himself, the effort has sometimes backfired. The press conference he held the day the special counsel report was made public offered a stark reminder.

"My memory is fine," Biden said in response to questions about the findings. Minutes later, he took a question about the Middle East and mixed up the leaders of Egypt and Mexico.

The mistake came the same week that the president said he had spoken with dead European leaders when he meant to refer to the current leaders of France and Germany.

Several White House officials dismissed it as a common slip-up, and multiple people who've known Biden for years said he has never had a knack for remembering names. The Biden campaign did not respond to a request from Newsweek for comment.

One longtime Biden adviser argued that his verbal miscues should not be viewed as evidence that he's not up to the job of being president and said not enough attention is paid to Biden's physical fitness for a man his age.

"He works out several days a week with a trainer, and he's in better physical shape than he was 15, 20 years ago," said the adviser, who asked not to be named. "He got more attentive to his physical condition."

Biden's physical stamina and mental acuity were also under the microscope more recently in his State of the Union address. More than 32 million people watched the speech, one of the largest audiences Biden will have between now and Election Day in November.

The president spoke for over an hour and took time to address his age directly, a possible preview of his messaging on the issue in the general election. Biden noted that he's faced questions about his age since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 at age 29.

"In my career I've been told I'm too young and I'm too old," he said. "Whether young or old, I've always known what endures. Our North Star. The very idea of America."

Biden also joked about his age, something he's done in speeches and during a recent appearance on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers.

"I know I may not look like it, but I've been around a while," Biden said.

Trump Would Be Second Oldest President

The president's allies also claimed that he is in better shape than Trump, who is 77 and would be the second oldest U.S. president ever after Biden. Democrats argued that in campaign appearances Biden comes across as more stable than Trump, pointing to Trump's tendency to forget facts, misspeak and make false claims. Polls consistently show most Americans think both men are too old to serve another term, but also reveal more think that way about Biden than about Trump.

Among American adults, 59 percent said they thought both of them were too old to serve second terms as president, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the special counsel report was released. Yet 27 percent said only Biden was too old, compared with just 3 percent who said only Trump was.

"Biden is really the one that is seen as having an age problem," said Cliff Young, the president of public affairs at Ipsos. "It's definitely a partisan issue."

He added: "Republicans are much more critical of Biden's age than Democrats are critical of Trump's age."

Perhaps wary of age-related attacks himself, Trump has not put Biden's age at the center of his campaign. "Biden is not too old, he's too incompetent!" Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, days after the Hur report. Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign about the comment.

Biden and Trump's speaking styles and approach to campaigning accentuate their differences. Trump began running for president in earnest last year and favors big campaign rallies that often draw thousands of supporters.

Biden waited until the start of the election year to hold his first official campaign rally, following a playbook used by recent Democratic and Republican incumbent presidents seeking reelection. Biden has ramped up his 2024 schedule since then, including campaign appearances in South Carolina, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

Biden and Trump both secured enough delegates to clinch their party's nominations on March 12 after big victories on Super Tuesday the week before, but the former has held few large campaign rallies. Biden has opted instead for smaller events that allow him to connect with individuals but that lack the energy of a big campaign event.

The strategy lets him showcase his skills as a retail politician, said Seth Harris, Biden's former top labor adviser and a senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change. The more of those types of events Biden does, the better he'll be able to show Americans that he is up to the task of serving another four years, Harris said.

"He just needs to be seen in public more doing 'Biden' things," Harris said. "People need to see him interacting with other Americans."

Other Democrats agreed Biden needs to start campaigning more and address his age more directly in light of the special counsel report.

"There has to be a recognition," said Devine, "that the issue of the president's age is going to be front and center in the election."

Updated 03/19/2024 5:06 p.m. ET