By Democrats have begun coming to grips with the fact that they are likely stuck with Joe Biden, even if he is too old and too feeble to really be president for another term. In an effort to mitigate the obvious, Axios writes that “Biden’s team is taking extra steps to prevent him from stumbling in public — as he did in June, when he tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy.”
Democrats, including some of those working in the White House, told the outlet that they “are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall — with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election.”
Apparently, Life Alert is not available in Washington, D.C.
Biden’s team is trying to make sure he doesn’t trip in public again after the last few times he was caught unsteady on his feet. These incidents have a knack for sparking social media frenzies, and the White House is already under pressure over how many people think Biden is too old to be re-elected in 2024, writes Mediate.
“Democrats, including some in the administration, are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall — with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election,” the report states. “Some senior Democrats privately have been frustrated with Biden’s advance team for months, citing the [Air Force Academy] sandbag incident and noting that the president often appears not to know which direction to go after he speaks at a podium.”
Axios said Biden frequently wears tennis shoes now to prevent slipping, and he’s using the short stairs on Air Force One, entering the plane on a lower deck than before. The president’s team is reportedly banking on the idea that any mockery Biden gets for this will be worth it to avoid the optics of another public stumble.
Biden has been seeing a physical therapist for the past two years, according to Axios, to work on his balance and counteract what his doctor diagnosed as “a combination of significant spinal arthritis” and “mild post-fracture foot arthritis.
The workouts are clearly paying off. During a trip to Michigan today to break a century of precedence that the president should remain neutral in labor negotiations, Biden only nearly stumbled down the short steps off of Air Force One.
ANOTHER ANGLE: Biden nearly trips as he exits Air Force One using the short stairs — which his staffers make him use to avoid tripping pic.twitter.com/RBcactMYHN
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 26, 2023
Without those fancy shoes, the president of the United States probably would have gone full faceplant, like he did at the Air Force Academy.
Or when he was riding his bike.
Earlier in the week, National Review editor Charles Cooke noted that acknowledging that the mission of White House staffers preventing the president from looking like a doddering old man might just be part of the media coming to grips with something we all know already. Joe Biden is not a good president.
He wrote, “Unless my political antennae have been rendered permanently defective by the sweltering Florida sun, I seem finally to be detecting some grudging acceptance from America’s steadfastly obstinate press corps that, in spite of the herculean effort to prop him up in which its members have engaged, a supermajority of voters in these United States still thinks that President Joe Biden is a lemon. Perhaps this acknowledgment is the result of the sheer scale of the polling evidence that is now before everyone’s eyes. Maybe it is the product of the healing passage of time. Plausibly it has been driven by the fear that, if Biden continues unchecked, Donald Trump will return to the White House. Who knows? What matters more is that, at long last, the realization has arrived that Americans do not like their president and that there is little point in denying it.
Insofar as it goes, this development represents progress. But, until the media come to understand the obvious reasons that have caused Americans to dislike Joe Biden, it will remain lost at sea. Day in, day out, I read the coverage of this presidency, and day in, day out, I encounter a journalistic cadre that believes that voters are being monstrously unfair in their evaluations. Invariably, the question that underpins any critical discussion of this president is “why?” — a question that is usually asked with a disbelieving scoff. Why does he have persistently low approval ratings? Why don’t people like “Bidenomics”? Why is good ol’ Joe considered untrustworthy? Why does the electorate think he’s too old? Usually, these questions are answered with excuses: Actually, It’s the fault of the presidency itself, or of “both sides” journalism, or of the lies of Fox News and of the Republican Party! Actually, the economy is good! Actually, this White House has achieved a lot! Actually, there’s no evidence of wrongdoing — and have you seen how much Biden loves his son?
Well, I have a simpler explanation for President Biden’s predicament — and, if I may say so myself, it is one that dovetails nicely with his polling: Joe Biden is unpopular because Joe Biden is terrible at being president of the United States.
One can ask “what about Trump?” until one is blue in the face, and it will not change this fact one iota. On Election Day 2020 — and, potentially, again on Election Day next year — Americans were asked to consider whether they preferred Biden or Trump. Thereafter, Biden was on his own. “But Trump!” is a relevant answer to “why did you vote for Joe Biden?” It is not a relevant answer to “do you think Biden is a good president?” And, just to hit the nail one more time: Joe Biden is not a good president. Joe Biden is a senile blowhard, a partisan Dunning-Kruger case who has stupidly allowed himself to be convinced that he is destined for greatness, and who has ruined his reputation as a result.”
Today, Cooke claims that the Axios story about Biden’s physical liabilities is just more confirmation that Democrats are accepting that people dislike Joe Biden.
“Axios confirms that Democrats are worried about the issue. “Democrats,” it notes, ‘including some in the administration, are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall.’ ‘Some Democrats,” it adds, ‘worry about Biden having an accident like Republican Bob Dole did in September 1996, when he accidentally fell off a stage at a rally weeks before the election.’
Moreover:
Some senior Democrats privately have been frustrated with Biden’s advance team for months, citing the sandbag incident and noting that the president often appears not to know which direction to go after he speaks at a podium.
But then, because it can’t help itself, Axios relapses, proposing that:
Often without context, Republicans have used video clips of Biden looking confused about where to go after speeches to raise further questions about his age.
Pick one! Is Biden’s age a real concern? Or are the Republicans making it up? Clearly, the clips to which Axios refers are not “without context,” because Axios literally just provided the context — which is that, per the Democrats they contacted, “the president often appears not to know which direction to go after he speaks at a podium.” And Republicans obviously aren’t “using” video clips to “raise further questions” in some dastardly, underhanded way; those video clips are simply confirming what Americans — including Democrats, “some in the administration” — can see with their own eyes.”
A poll published earlier in the month by The Wall Street Journal revealed that 73 percent of registered voters, including two-thirds of Democrats, say they believe Joe Biden is too old to run again for the White House. 47 percent say the same about the 77-year-old Trump.
[Read More: Joe Listed On $250k Wire Transfer From China]
