With friends like this…..

Liberal America’s assault on Joe Biden could put Donald Trump back in the White House

I sometimes think the fevered speculation about the contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will turn to dust well before November. Trump’s criminal mendacity will catch him up with him, and Biden will see an opportunity to stand aside. The next US president will be below the age of 60. A long shot? Probably. But worth a side bet.

Back in the world as it is now, what most puzzles me is why so many self-identifying progressives in Washington are determined that Trump should win. No, the liberal establishment has not become a cheerleader for Trump’s criminal mendacity. Rather, what’s striking is the apparent glee with which liberal editors and pundits in the so-called mainstream media greet any suggestion that the 81-year-Biden is too old.

The president now struggles to separate friends from enemies. Biden is senile, Trump declares. He has a point, the Democratic party-leaning commentariat echoes. As it happens, Biden is just 4 years older than his opponent, but Trump’s constant slurs are just as frequently legitimised and amplified by the president’s own side.

We have it most recently with the near-hysterical media reaction to the report of the special counsel Robert Hur into Biden’s retention of classified White House documents at his home, The damning phrase, we are told, came in Hur’s conclusion that it was pointless to pursue changes against the president because he would probably present himself to any court as an “elderly man with the poor memory” - a description that could be applied to just about everyone in their ninth decade.

The report, written incidentally by a Republican originally appointed by Trump, has filled the airwaves and front pages. It has provided the occasion for a never-ending stream of carefully-curated archive recordings of Biden’s past missteps and apparent confusions. Had he not mixed up Mitterrand with Macron and Egypt with Mexico? How frail he looks when mounting the steps of Air Force One.

As it happens, Biden has mixed up names and places for as long as he has been a politician. The “gaffes” reach back decades. Some people, whether aged 40 or 80, are clumsy in their instant recollection. I count myself among them, often forgetting for a moment the names of close colleagues and friends.

The science, of course, is clear that we do slow down as we get older. An 80-year-old will not have the cognitive sharpness of his youth. On the other hand. she or he will have accumulated a fair amount of experience and wisdom along the way - a habit of looking before you leap. That’s worth something when you are thinking about the leader of the world’s most powerful nation.

Some of the media carping may reflect a distorted sense of impartiality. If they are tough on Trump, liberals tell themselves,  they need to find fault with Biden. Never mind one is guilty of criminal conspiracy, while the other is indicted for occasional absent-mindedness. The liberal commentariat is bored by Trump’s manifest mental disorders. Beyond the lies and cheating, Trump’s delusional behaviour (the former president describes himself a “stable genius), displays all the symptoms of pathological narcissism. But that apparently is yesterday’s news.

An unkind thought is that it is all a question of face. Biden’s critics have never been reconciled to getting it wrong in the past. The loudest voices now are those who said he was too old in 2020 and predicted slaughter for the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. And Biden has not simply confounded the poll predictions. With the passage of the infrastructure and inflation reduction acts he has proved himself as consequential a Democratic president as any since LBJ.

The standard riposte is that the focus on the president’s age simply reflects the preoccupation of the electorate. The polls show most Americans think Biden is too old. But why? Because the media never stops talking about it. Self-fulfilling prophecies come to mind.

Elections are a choice, in this instance one between a president whose cognitive skills may have been somewhat blunted by age and a mentally unstable serial liar committed to bringing down the American Republic.

The evidence is that Trump cannot defeat Biden - deep as his support is among the MAGA crowd, the New Hampshire primary confrimed that he is not reaching the moderate Republicans and independents who will decide the election.  No, if the president is brought down it will be because an obsession with his age on his own side persuades Democratic voters to stay at home.