President Biden delivers remarks in White House on Feb. 8, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Biden addressed the particular counsel’s report on his dealing with of labeled materials and the standing of the struggle in Gaza.

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President Biden delivers remarks in White House on Feb. 8, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Biden addressed the particular counsel’s report on his dealing with of labeled materials and the standing of the struggle in Gaza.

Nathan Howard/Getty Images

When President Biden is the main focus and never Donald Trump, it is usually not factor for the president and his reelection prospects.

That’s as a result of, like Trump, Biden has obtrusive vulnerabilities. His greatest one was entrance and middle this week: issues about his age.

The particular counsel report about Biden’s handling of classified material did not cost him with against the law, however particular counsel Robert Hur, a Republican, appeared to exit of his solution to embody damning commentary about Biden’s supposedly defective reminiscence, like referencing that Biden, 81, “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

That was stinging.

“It clears him legally and kneecaps him politically,” Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, mentioned of the report.

Biden slips up whereas defending himself

The 388-page report set off a political firestorm — and an ensuing clumsy response from the White House and the president himself.

Biden angrily rejected Hur’s declare, saying Thursday evening in a press convention he felt questions on Beau weren’t “any of their damn business.”

The president received choked up whereas exhibiting a rosary he was carrying on his wrist in reminiscence of Beau, then thundered, “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”

If Biden had left it at that, that may be what folks remembered concerning the information convention.

Instead, Biden wound up strolling proper into the stereotype laid out by Hur when he mistakenly mentioned that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the “president of Mexico” whereas answering a query about present hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas.

How the report fed into an present narrative

It’s a mistake. Verbal slips occur. Everyone makes them — together with Trump, who is just 4 years youthful than Biden. Trump usually meanders, lately appeared to confuse his main opponent Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; on greater than half a dozen events up to now 12 months mistakenly referred to former President Barack Obama when he ought to have mentioned Biden; and whereas in Iowa, referred to as “Sioux City” “Sioux Falls,” which is 90 miles up the highway in South Dakota.

But as a result of more Americans are concerned with Biden’s age and health to do the job in a second time period than they’re about Trump’s age, each time Biden makes a flub it can have extra resonance politically.

“It’s certainly true that anything that feeds the master negative narrative is especially harmful,” Begala mentioned. “For [Bill] Clinton, it was cheating, for [George W.] Bush, it was ‘dumb,’ Obama ‘elitist,’ which is why when Obama said 57 states, it did not harm him. If it was Bush, it might have.”

“Obviously with Biden, it’s ‘old.’ So, this really really hurts him.”

At the White House Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden she sees out of public view, together with after the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel when Biden sat for hourslong depositions with Hur.

“I was in almost every meeting with the president in the hours and days that followed,” Harris mentioned, noting that Biden “was in front of it all, coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of America’s national security, not to mention our allies around the globe for days and up until now — months. So the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”

“Fair or not, this just amplified Biden’s greatest challenge,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser within the Obama White House, mentioned of the particular counsel report. “It screams through every poll and focus group.”

Axelrod went viral again in November for elevating whether or not it was “wise” for Biden to run for reelection after a collection of swing-state polls confirmed him shedding to Trump.

“Many people have made a judgment about his age and command and discount his accomplishments and attribute every problem to it,” Axelrod mentioned.

That rankles the White House. Democrats haven’t got a transparent thought about the right way to deal with the Biden age query or the right way to package deal the oldest president in historical past as a candidate. He’s not more likely to do a number of stay TV interviews or huge marketing campaign rallies. And his age raises the stakes for each public look, like his State of the Union deal with in lower than a month.

Where Biden has a gap in opposition to Trump

Certainly, the pandemic might have conditioned voters to not anticipate a candidate to do as many occasions and huge rallies as in previous elections. That might give the Biden staff a chance to assume creatively about taking part in to his strengths, in small teams, like when he went to a cookout in North Carolina and went viral.

Plus, the financial surroundings has gotten much less dire, Biden is a recognizable model, and, most significantly, he has an opponent who’s, in lots of surveys, extra disliked than Biden and dealing with way more critical authorized troubles.

Hur himself identified in his report that what Trump is alleged to have carried out together with his dealing with of labeled paperwork dwarfs something Biden did.

“Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden,” Hur wrote, “the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

The backside line is that Trump won’t have been charged both if he’d simply given the stuff again.

But as an alternative, the entire ordeal highlights why Trump can be so susceptible politically. He apparently felt the principles did not apply to him, that the bins upon bins of labeled paperwork discovered at his house in Florida ought to be his to maintain and allegedly hid them on objective and selected to not absolutely cooperate.

It’s emblematic of why so many see Trump as a menace to democracy. He lied to the nation to attempt to keep in energy and schemed to overturn an election he misplaced, convincing hundreds of thousands falsely that the election was stolen and is utilizing it as gas for one more run.

Not a revelation to voters, however a warning for the marketing campaign

So with 9 months to go till Election Day, it is uncertain that the Hur report and Biden’s Mexico-Egypt flub was a turning level within the marketing campaign.

“The president’s age is not a surprise to anyone,” mentioned Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Hillary Clinton. “It’s not a new data point. He was elected comfortably as a 77-year-old man four years ago. So, in many ways, it’s baked in. People are not coming to Joe Biden seeking youthful vigor — he’s been at an advanced age since he was elected vice president 16 years ago. The country turned to him in 2020 to lower the temperature and restore some normalcy, and that’s happened broadly speaking.”

Many Democrats would favor another person on the high of the ticket in 2024, and there is a deep Democratic bench of potentialities. But there is no signal that Biden is stepping apart as a result of, frankly, he would not appear to need to.

The Biden marketing campaign has stepped up assaults on Trump in current weeks, however exterior teams supporting him spent greater than $50 million in 2023, totally on adverts touting Biden’s accomplishments, like efforts to decrease insulin costs, move a baby care tax credit score and to push for renewable power.

And his approval ratings have solely gone down.

Biden was elected due to Trump (and his botched dealing with of the COVID pandemic). Begala mentioned he hopes this week makes Biden and his staff sharpen their focus and get absolutely into an anti-Trump marketing campaign mode, as a result of basically, the body of this election hasn’t modified.

The query stays, what issues extra: Biden’s age or a dislike of Trump?

“It’s got to be all about Trump,” Begala mentioned. “It’s the only way. The only way is a wholeheartedly negative campaign.”