Jim notes:
This weekend, the CBS News poll offered another really grim statistic about the public’s perception of President Biden’s age and health: “Only a third of voters think that Mr. Biden would finish a second term.”
That’s an astonishing statistic. It’s also unprecedented in the modern era. To put it more bluntly than CBS does: In the opinion of a supermajority of the American public, the Democratic Party is on the verge of asking the country to vote for a president who will either die in office or be so infirm that he is obliged to resign. I honestly have no idea how voters will react to this. It represents uncharted territory. Clearly, Americans would not buy a car that they believed was likely to fail on them long before the end of its expected term of use. Will they buy a presidential candidate who they think is going to keel over?
We have had old candidates before. Bob Dole was old — especially when contrasted with Bill Clinton. So were John McCain and Ronald Reagan. But the public didn’t think that any of those men were “too old,” let alone that they were likely to die or be unable to finish their terms. Twenty percent of Americans said that McCain was “too old.” Twenty-seven percent thought the same of Dole. Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. By contrast, 77 percent think that Biden is too old (that’s 50 points higher than it was for Dole, who is usually trotted out as the example of a “too old” candidate), and 66 percent aren’t sure he’d finish his term. The last time that a president’s health was discussed in anything approaching these terms was 1944. But that was a different era, the United States was in the middle of a world war, and the public was unaware of the scale of FDR’s ailments. And, unlike Biden, FDR was popular.
It’s a hell of a risk.