2024-02-10 16:18:00
In the days after the bombshell Hur report, it is difficult to see how the president is going to get out of this mess and convince the electorate that he is at his full capacity.
Biden confuses the president of Egypt with that of Mexico while ensuring that his memory “is fine”
These types of errors will be exploited to the maximum by Republicans and amplified in right-wing media and networks, reinforcing a concern that 75% of registered voters have about the president’s capabilities, according to a recent NBC News national survey.
What is the problem for voters? That the most likely alternative candidate for the presidential election is not far away. The same survey indicates that 48% are concerned about the age and health of Donald Trump, who, at 77 years old, is the apparently safe candidate for the Republicans.
How did Trump and Biden end up controlling the nominations?
Biden and Trump face the increasingly firm possibility of going to a rematch for the White House in the 2024 elections. The age of both candidates, the 81-year-old Democrat and the 77-year-old Republican, has come to the center of the electoral discussion. .
Credit: AP / Getty Images / Composition Mariana Rambaldi | Univision News
An AP Poll for Public Affairs Research at the end of 2023 indicates that most voters would prefer other options to Biden and Trump, even if in the end they will vote for one of the two candidates.
“The majority of Americans do not want a rematch between Trump and Biden. The first party to remove their 80-year-old candidate will be the party that wins this election,” former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said after her loss in New Hampshire. , who is still competing for the Republican nomination.
Since she ran in the primaries last year, Haley proposed that every presidential candidate over 75 years of age take an exam to analyze their abilities.
At first, her initiative was more aimed at Biden, but since she became Trump’s only challenger in the Republican field, she has also included her former boss in the proposal.
However, she is not capitalizing on her relative youth (51 years old) and continues to lose in the primaries to Trump. Even in her state, South Carolina, opinion polls show her well below the former president.
Isn’t there a replacement generation?
Following his successful re-election in Florida in 2020, DeSantis was expected to be the young conservative figure to challenge Trump for the nomination. The governor started tied in the polls with the former president, but a year later, he withdrew from the race after his failure in the Iowa caucuses.
The idea of a “Trump without drama”, that is, the version of the former president with the same ideological line, but more ‘politically correct’ that DeSantis sold, was not attractive to many, who prefer the ‘original’.
Haley, on the other hand, has sought to differentiate herself from Trump. But she has not been able to make a dent in the former president’s leadership either.
Biden and the desire for re-election of every president
In the case of the Democrats, the unspoken rule that the current president will seek the nomination to remain in the White House for another four years explains Biden’s case, despite the issue of age.
When it became known at the end of 2022 that Biden would seek re-election, the Democratic representative of Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, 47, said she would support him because that is what political history dictates, but warned that a “new generation” and “blood” are needed. “new” in power.
That new blood, like the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, 56, or the representative of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 34, will have to wait until 2028, if they aspire to become president.
In 2024, only minor figures have challenged Biden: the representative for Minnesota, Dean Phillips, 55, or the author, Marianne Williamson, 71. The latter withdrew from the race and although Phillips continues, she has no chance to achieve the nomination.
In 2016 and 2020, when the Democrats chose figures from the party establishment to compete for the presidency (Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively), the main contender was a figure of ideological rupture, although not generationally: Bernie Sanders.
Progressive independent Senator Sanders was 74 years old when he challenged Clinton and generated a stir and interest, especially among the young liberal electorate, but he never really became a threat to her (or Biden).
The “oldest Congress in history”
The problem of the lack of generational renewal in American politics is clear in the makeup of Congress, which is “the oldest in history.”
The number of senators and representatives over 70 years of age went from 5% in the early 1980s to 23% in this legislature, according to a work by Business Insider.
It is paradoxical, if you remember, that in 1986 the same Congress voted unanimously to end the establishment of forced retirement based on age. Until then, companies could require their workers to retire when they reached the 70-year-old barrier. But the Constitution does not set a maximum age to remain in an elected position.
Two lapses by Biden in 48 hours: he confuses Macron with Mitterrand and Hamas as the opposition
1707594687
#Biden #years #Trump #years #age #president #dominates #elections