Behind Closed Doors, Congressional Democrats Echo Voters’ Concerns about Biden’s Age

By Audrey Fahlberg

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

 

Less than a year out from Election Day, Democrats in Washington are still coming to terms with the 2024 cards they have been dealt: an extremely unpopular, octogenarian incumbent who is now losing many head-to-head swing-state polling matchups against indicted former president Donald Trump.

 

Intra-party concerns about the president’s advanced age are not new. But grumblings have grown a bit louder in recent days as congressional Democrats who don’t regularly interact with the 81-year-old president have observed him up close during White House holiday celebrations.

 

Behind closed doors and in hushed tones, a small cohort of elected Democrats who are feeling the heat of recent polls have started privately questioning whether Biden can “make it” to Election Day.

 

“My concern is heightened,” one House Democrat tells National Review after seeing him interact with other lawmakers at a White House holiday party, adding the president’s habit of mumbling in public settings and reliance on a teleprompter have done little to dispel concerns from voters that he is fit to serve another term: “Half the time I don’t know what he’s saying.”

 

Publicly, congressional Democrats sing a different tune. Asked about voters’ well-documented misgivings about Biden’s age, they point to what they describe as the president’s long list of legislative wins — the bipartisan infrastructure bill, lowering prescription drug prices, and key investments in the semiconductor industry, to name a few. And they insist the president maintains a busy schedule, even though he rarely holds press conferences or sits for lengthy interviews with reporters.

 

“Everything I read is they’re trying to get him to cut back his hours because he’s got too much energy,” says senator Ron Wyden (D., Ore.).

 

“I’m not concerned at all, he’s gonna run very strong,” says Senator Gary Peters (D., Mich.), who runs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

 

Lawmakers running competitive reelection campaigns in 2024 choose their words a bit more carefully. “Voters make a determination about how they’re going to vote based upon a number of considerations,” says Senator Bob Casey (D., Penn.). “I’m not gonna tell voters what issues they should make to rest their decision upon, but I think the president’s got a very strong record delivering for the country. And I’m going to let others figure out the politics of it.”

 

Privately, Biden allies insist that glad-handing with hundreds of people in the White House for holiday parties is a grueling tradition for anyone — let alone a president who is in his eighties. And they’re quick to point out that the president’s likely rival, 77-year-old Trump, is no spring chicken either.

 

But even his biggest cheerleaders on and off Capitol Hill begrudgingly acknowledge that the president often appears tired at public events, and complain that his reliance on the teleprompter in public settings makes him look older. Some admit that it’s been surprisingly difficult to convince many voters that Biden will be the party’s nominee come November 2024.

 

Hence the near-universal understanding among Democrats that the president must adopt a demanding “grip-and-grin” campaign schedule in 2024 — one that requires close and constant interaction with voters — if he wants to reassure the country that he is fit to serve another term. Running what they call another “basement campaign” as he did during the pandemic in 2020, simply isn’t an option this time around, his allies insist.

 

Barring a black-swan event, lingering hopes from some Democratic lawmakers that a younger, fresher face will replace him on the ticket have largely dissipated, and members of the president’s party insist they are resolved he will be the nominee. “This is coming from people who said a year ago that maybe Biden shouldn’t run. But this is not a year ago,” says one former Democratic lawmaker, who adds: “If not Biden, then who?” (Vice President Kamala Harris’s average approval rating is even lower than the president’s, which currently registers below 40 percent.)

 

Private misgivings on Capitol Hill about Biden’s age — and his running mate — are paired with long-running concerns about Democrat-turned-independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a possible No Labels “unity ticket” in 2024. Not to mention Democrats’ visceral frustrations with Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman who is focusing his long-shot primary challenge to Biden in New Hampshire. (The Democratic National Committee replaced New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status in the primary calendar with South Carolina, the state that delivered Biden the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination thanks to an eleventh-hour endorsement from former House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn.)

 

Any mention of Phillips sends Democratic lawmakers into a tailspin. “If you’re a Democrat, you respect the process. He’s not respecting the process,” Clyburn told National Review in a brief interview last month.

 

Biden allies insist they aren’t concerned that Phillips can win New Hampshire. But they do worry privately that a strong or even closer-than-expected showing from Phillips in the Granite State’s January primary — where Biden will not appear on the ballot — could embarrass the president with negative media coverage ahead of the general election.

 

In the lead-up to that primary, Democrats are counting their lucky stars that the president’s name is easy to spell as a write-in option. And as the new year approaches, they’ll continue to hope that voters will begin to listen more intently to Biden when he says: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

 

The Biden coalition is working overtime to ensure that every Trump-related legal development, social media post, and controversial campaign rally comment reaches a wide audience. That strategy may soon revolve around a new 4–3 ruling from the Colorado supreme court released Tuesday evening, which argues that under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president and should therefore be barred from appearing on the state’s 2024 presidential ballot.

 

“The choice is going to really crystallize for voters over the next year,” says Kate deGruyter, senior director of communications at the left-leaning group Third Way. “Those polls in our opinion show people are kind of looking at this as a referendum on Biden, but we think that that’s really going to feel like a choice between Biden and Trump as they get much closer to the election.”

 

Spokesmen for Biden and Phillips declined to comment for this article.