Professor Richardson is not entirely pleased with the media:
… a study out today by Media Matters shows that cable news networks are “obsessed over Biden’s age while overwhelmingly ignoring Trump’s.” Biden is only three years older than Trump—80 and 77, respectively—and apparently in significantly better health, but in the week after Biden announced his reelection campaign, CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned his age 588 times, suggesting it is a negative attribute rather than a positive reflection on his experience, while mentioning Trump’s only 72 times.
Then again, most pundits are not always happy with the media. Erick Erickson regularly rails on and on about its tilt to the left.
No doubt everyone has a point. Also true: for zealots, there are no independent, neutral media. Either you’re for us or agin’ us!
It’s worth nuancing Richardson, though. Age is only guaranteed to bring wrinkles[1]. Good experience comes from working in an area for many years and then properly analyzing one’s failures and accomplishments. From this perspective, Trump is little more than a yahoo who managed to get elected to a single four year Presidential term, and, in that term, was ineffectual or worse by most measures, although conservatives will argue that is picks to SCOTUS were acceptable, an assertion disputed by non-conservatives.
Former Senator Joe Biden (1973–2009) and former Vice President Biden (2009-2017) benefited not only from being an influential Senator from age 31 to 67, but from being a VP, as he famously built a close working relationship with President Obama.
And he was a council member prior to his shock election to the Senate. That’s called working your way up, rather than buying position.
That’s a lot of experience, and, given his surprising list of accomplishments, from infrastructure to his response to Putin’s War, it’s clear he’s put that experience to good use.
Is it surprising the House GOP, already clearly a pack of third and fourth raters, has been repeatedly humiliated and defeated? Not really.
Yes, Biden’s age, just like Trump’s, should be concerning to the voter. It concerns me. But that’s why we have VPs. Right now we’re benefiting from his experience in two legs of the stool.
1 An observation I picked up from late SF writer Robert Heinlein, but I doubt it originates with him.
