Post Debate CNN Polls Challenge Media’s Mob Thinking That Biden Should Step Down

The drum beat about Biden’s age issues is nothing new. The GOP MAGA propaganda machine has been harping on this subject for months, often with doctored videos and conjectures about him having Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

Both claims have been proven false by Biden’s physical exams by Dr. Kevin O’Connor, which was made public in 2023 and 2024, including evaluations by a neurologist. His stiffness is due to severe spinal arthritis.

Bruce Plante Cartoon: Dr. Ronny Jackson V.A. Administrator?

Incidentally, Dr. Kevin O’Connor is no Ronny Jackson.

As per Wikipedia, “Dr. Kevin O’Connor served 22 years in the U.S. Army, including tours of duty with the 82nd Airborne Division, 75th Ranger Regiment, and US Army Special Operations Command, and over a decade at the White House. O’Connor has received the Combat Medic Badge. He is on faculty at George Washington University, where he served as the founding director of executive medicine. He worked for three years in the George W. Bush administration In 2013, he was inducted into the Order of Military Medical Merit. He began service as a physician in the White House in 2006 under the Bush administration. In 2009, O’Connor was named physician to the Vice President. In 2017, O’Connor retired from the US Army as Colonel. In January 2020, he was appointed medical director of St. Bonaventure University’s Franciscan Health Care Professions program. According to Biden’s memoir Promise Me, Dad, O’Connor worked closely with the Biden family during Beau Biden’s battle with brain cancer.”

Ronny Jackson (R-TX) Thinks His Cuomo-Like Scandal Is Revenge For Not ...

The drum beat as of 2022…

Did you know Mark Leibovich of the Atlantic penned a column in 2022, declaring Biden as being too old to be reelected as US president? In 2022, multiple mainstream media outlets were declaring that Democrats view him, as too old, and many worry, that he isn’t up for the job.

Guess what? In 2024 American voters cast their ballots in favor of Biden to be their presidential candidate during the primary elections despite many having concerns about his age.

Biden’s recent debate debacle in June 2024 against Trump opened the floodgates of these same naysayers regurgitating their previously reported doubts in 2022 about POTUS Biden’s ageism issues declaring him unfit to be the next US president.

READ: Biden-Trump debate transcript | CNN Politic

Daryl Cagle / politicalcartoons.com

As per the October 20, 2023 article by Media Matters, “since President Joe Biden announced his 2024 campaign, 5 major US papers have mentioned Biden’s age in 332 articles and Trump’s in just 158.”

Could it be that what these professional political pundits are really saying, is that POTUS Biden isn’t as good at performing when compared to the GOP MAGA TV reality star ex-president? And this is supposed to be the basis by which voters are expected to select the next US president.

What’s more important, is that with so much media attention regarding the president’s age, there might be more serious problems not being faced that could cost democrat POTUS Biden, the presidency, while subjugating all Americans to autocratic minority rule based on the recent Supreme Court’s (Trump v. United States) ruling that vastly expands US presidential powers and the Project 2025 900-page blueprint on how to govern as a dictatorship.

For me, the only strategy that’s essential is keeping the GOP MAGA ex-president from ever getting near the White House. It’s time for voters to appreciate the power of their votes by trouncing all MAGA GOP candidates at the polling booths. Voting for a less than perfect elderly man who wants to protect US democracy is far better than the alternative.

Absent this single-minded media spotlight on POTUS Biden’s ageism issues, what can these professional naysayers produce as solid evidence that he can’t possibly win? Spare me anything less.

Dictator Trump Fourth of July by Rick McKee, CagleCartoons.com

So, the media gurus have failed to equally focus on the unfitness of the felonious professional TV reality star ex-president who without being subject to any evidentiary checks, spewed out lies from start to finish during the debate. Anyone who has viewed the numerous un-doctored videos from rallies sees the MAGA ex-president’s ageism problems in spades which are much more pronounced and frequent than what we’ve noticed from POTUS Joe Biden.

As per a recent Washington Post commentary by Elisabeth Zoffmann, M.D. to the July 6th article, “As Biden digs in, another elected Democrat calls on him to exit race:”

“In the case of Mr. Trump, concerns about frontotemporal dementia have been raised. Observation specific to this case include: Disinhibited behavior (mimicking a disabled man, demeaning women, uttering profanities at his rivals); frequent errors of verbal production; inability to control outbursts (i.e. in Court or during debates), confusing people (Obama for Biden, Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi). Forgetting part of his family when thanking them for their help. Confusing a picture of E. Jean Carroll with his ex-wife; tangential thinking where he veers sharply from one context to the next with no reason or logic; inability to finish sentences; shrunken vocabulary with many phrases repeated in a repetitive manner. (i.e. -“crooked Hilary”, Joe, Democrats etc.) These outbursts may appear out of nowhere mid-sentence. Lack of self-awareness is evident in that he seems to be unaware how inappropriate his behavior is – like avowing he is a ‘genius’ because he performed a simple cognitive test, deriding the relatives of a Gold-star veteran who died in battle, making derisive comments about women he’d have no desire for. Somewhere along the way DJT seems to have developed a wide-based gait and swings his right leg when he walks. The etiology of this is unclear and could be injury-based and needs clarification. Finally, his father died with Alzheimer’s disease. This may be pertinent as FTD has not been well recognized in the past and there is the issue of heritability that can be resolved by genetic testing.”

The Coronation by Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News, NY

The following post-debate CNN poll results published by the Washington Post challenge the concept that just picking a younger replacement candidate for POTUS Biden because of his debate fubar and past occasional gaffes, as being the sole viable solution for ensuring a democrat party win for the White House in 2024. The below VOX report questions how it is that these naysayers have been more focused on performance instead of substance.

As per the 7/2/2024 Washington Post report by Philip Bump, A new poll counters some of the narrative after the Biden-Trump debate:”

Excerpts:

“We should be very cautious about reading too much into one poll. That’s always true, and certainly in a moment when things are so unsettled. But the CNN poll, conducted by SSRS, is worth considering seriously for a few reasons. First, it was conducted entirely after the debate. Second, it is a quality, well-regarded poll. And third, its findings are less useful in establishing certainty about how the party might move forward than they are in demonstrating that any such certainty is unwarranted.”

“CNN’s last national poll was in April, when Trump had a six-point lead in a head-to-head matchup against Biden. In the new poll, Trump has … a six-point lead. In fact, the top-line numbers are exactly the same as they were two months before.”

“What’s more, there aren’t significant shifts in the favorability of either candidate. Biden and Trump are each viewed more favorably by members of their parties than they were in April.”

Beacon of Democracy dims by Dave Whamond, Canada, PoliticalCartoons.com

“One shift CNN found in the new poll, though, was that Americans, including Democrats, are now more likely to say that someone else has a better chance of beating Trump than does Biden. But the last time CNN asked the question, in January, Democrats already said someone else would be a better bet.”

“So, who might that someone else be? CNN offered respondents a battery of options, including Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). The candidate who runs the best against Trump?”

“Harris, who trails by 2 points.”

“The other candidates trail by four to six points, in a poll with a margin of sampling error that is 3.7 points. No clear leader — but the idea that Harris runs worse than other candidates is simply not supported by the data.”

“In fact, across demographic groups (except for men), Harris outperforms Biden. Harris does noticeably better with women, independents and non-White voters. Those groups and younger voters are also more likely to view Harris favorably than they are to view Biden favorably (among respondents who had an opinion of the candidates).”

Fireworks Anxiety by Jeff Koterba, patreon.com/jeffreykoterba

“If you are planning to vote to block Trump’s election, that you view Biden more negatively or are more supportive of someone replacing him doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t going to vote for him anyway. Hence Biden doing as well against Trump now as he did two months ago.”

“It’s also true that measuring whether other candidates might do better against Trump is extremely tricky. Harris’s two-point gap is not significantly different from Whitmer’s five-point one. Perhaps Whitmer would be a better candidate than Harris and more easily surge past Trump. This poll can’t tell us that — but no poll really could. What this poll does suggest is, instead, that the idea Harris is disadvantaged relative to other candidates has little merit.”

“The final consideration is the one we began with: This is one poll. It’s a good one, in polling terms, but different pollsters talking to different people can yield different results. It may still be the case that Biden collapses; it’s still the case that he is walking a much narrower tightrope than he was. But this poll doesn’t reinforce the idea that he’s necessarily doomed.”

4th of July Election by Frank Hansen, PoliticalCartoons.com

As per March 8, 2024 Vox report by Andrew Prokop, “The media’s coverage of Biden’s age needs a rethink:”

Excerpts:

“Many of the attacks on Biden being “too old” are pure political opportunism, particularly when they’re coming from supporters of the barely younger Donald Trump.”

“But it’s also true that Biden speaks and walks less fluidly than he used to, and that in off-the-cuff speech, he not infrequently forgets things or mixes up names. (Trump also speaks less fluidly, forgets things, and mixes up names.)”

“Beyond that, 2 separate concerns are often conflated in the discourse.”

“The first concern is a worry that Biden’s age has impaired, or will impair, his decision-making or governance — that his basic mental functioning has declined in such a way that, well, he shouldn’t be president.”

“To be clear — there is no evidence for this. There are zero reports from the administration describing Biden being confused or unable to grapple with policy decisions. The caveat is that the (Biden) administration has carefully managed his public availability, so some have theorized his condition could be worse than we know behind the scenes. But again, there’s no evidence this is the case.”

“The second concern is that, in part due to his age, Biden is failing to appropriately “perform” the role of president or presidential candidate — that, whatever the truth, he hasn’t been good at seeming like he’s in command, like he’s energetic, can handle tough questioning, and is up to the job.”

“This criticism inevitably devolves into theater criticism because it’s fundamentally about performance. This concern is often voiced by people who want Democrats to defeat Trump — they fear Biden is no longer up to the rigors of the campaign trail, or that he seems old in a way that won’t appeal to voters.”

“All of that makes sense. But often, the way this stuff is covered day-to-day becomes vapid and ridiculous, from both ends. We swing from “Biden made a gaffe in a press conference, heightening age concerns” to “Biden read a fiery speech, quelling age concerns.” But neither event really tells us much.”

“The issue about Biden’s public performance as related to his age is a question about how swing voters will view Biden’s public performance. But media commentators hyper-saturated in politics news aren’t particularly good at guessing how low-engagement swing voters will think about things.”

“In particular, one big question here is how much Biden’s polling troubles are actually caused by his age, as compared to his record.”

2 comments

  1. Hi Ned,

    Thanks a million again for your support and for this reblog.

    It’s frustrating to watch the political professional punditry class trying in 2022 and in 2024 post-debate crisis, to influence who should be the democrat party’s presidential candidate when it’s the voters who’ve already decided during the 2024 primary elections. They chose Biden, despite knowing about his obvious age issues. They don’t get that while they have the power of influence, they don’t have the final say. The voters do.

    Hugs, Gronda

    Like

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