As Jeff notes, Democrats and their partisans have lately been leaning into attacks on Donald Trump’s age. Trump would, of course, be the oldest man ever elected president — by a few months over Biden — and his age is a legitimate issue. In fact, it’s one of a number of reasons why he has no business running for this job again. Let me add three points to take away from the attacks on Trump’s age coming from Democrats and their partisans, why they are doing it, and why it is unlikely to make a difference.
Why make this a major Democratic argument, and why elevate it so much now? True, one might ascribe this to ancestral habit, given the youthful tilt of the Democratic voter base and the muscle memory of running younger candidates against stodgy older Republicans in 1952, 1956, 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012. Several of those campaigns played the age card promiscuously. But then, youth is relative: Kamala Harris just turned 60, and before Joe Biden in 2020, Democrats hadn’t won with a nonincumbent candidate age 60 or older since James Buchanan in 1856.
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