Joe Biden's gaffes are getting harder to ignore

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James Bickerton

By James Bickerton

News Reporter

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Recent gaffes by President Joe Biden have "made a significant impact" on the polls and are "reinforcing fears within Democratic ranks" that he's too old to serve a second White House term, according to one political scientist.

Last week Biden was criticized after appearing to confuse the Congressional Black Caucus with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at a gala dinner, and for walking off at the end of a press conference without shaking the hand of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving his counterpart looking visibly irritated. On September 11, he claimed to have visited Ground Zero in New York the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, despite there being no record of the then-Senator being in the city that day.

Republican critics have seized on Biden's blunders to argue the 80 year old, who has announced he is seeking re-election in November 2024, lacks the necessary cognitive faculties to perform his job properly. A number of recent polls indicate Biden has fallen behind former President Donald Trump should the pair have a second head-to-head battle, with one Washington Post-ABC News poll giving the Republican front-runner a lead of 10 percent, though the newspaper noted this is an outlier.

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Speaking to Newsweek Thomas Whalen, an expert in American political history who teaches at Boston University, argued Biden's gaffes partly explain his poor polling despite some improvement to the economic situation over the last few months.

President Joe Biden

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He said: "If the recent polls are any indications, these missteps have made a significant impact and reinforced fears within Democratic ranks that Biden is too old for another four years. Given the low unemployment rate and improved economy overall in recent months, Biden should be gaining in the polls, not dropping. I think the age issue is chiefly responsible.

"Perhaps this trend will embolden someone like Gavin Newsom of California to throw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for 2024. We'll see."

David A. Bateman, an associate professor at Cornell University's department of government, agreed that Biden's gaffes could be an issue if they "aggregate into a perception that he is too old to be an effective president," but argued they are largely priced in by the public.

Addressing Newsweek he commented: "Biden has always made gaffes. It's not anything new, and I think much of that is more or less baked into voters' understanding of him. For example, I don't expect his saying he was in NYC the day after 9/11 is going to make any difference. Not only is this sort of thing very Biden-like, but it's the kind of thing a lot of people can recognize themselves doing: we all misremember the days surrounding important historical events, shortening or lengthening timelines around them.

"The bigger issue is if these gaffes aggregate into a perception that he is too old to be an effective president. In that sense, Biden's opponents would be wise to paint the 9/11 story not as a falsehood or lie or indicative of his character—most voters either already 'know' his character—but to frame it as a symptom of a person in decline. That perception could weigh heavily against him."

Trump, 77, has also made a number of gaffes in recent months, and faced mockery on Friday after branding Biden "cognitively impaired" before saying the president could lead America into "World War II," and claiming wind turbines are causing whales to "die in numbers never seen before."

Bateman argued Trump's mistakes get less attention than Biden's because the media is focused on his legal troubles, stating: "Trump is also old, and makes equivalent 'gaffes.'

"This is not as big a part of how Trump might be perceived or is framed in the media at the moment, but that's largely because the media focuses less on his age and seeming confusion than on his facing multiple indictments and having tried to overturn democratic elections. That's not really an advantage for Trump. Better people debating whether a candidate is aging than whether they are a criminal with contempt for democratic institutions."

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