The race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden should not be statistically tied, but it is. Voters worry about Joe Biden’s age despite the fact Trump faces four criminal cases and could lose his fortune due to alleged fraud currently under litigation in Manhattan.
In a normal situation, if Trump were a normal candidate he would have been forced out. The Real Clear Politics Average puts Trump up over Biden by a 45.2% to 44.2% margin.
“Equally troubling [for those opposed to Trump], 74 percent of all respondents said Biden, 80, is too old to serve another term. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the presidential election of 2024 promises to be one of the most consequential in American history,” Hill opinion contributor Richard Aquila writes. “Many Democrats and independents are frustrated, if not terrified, by the thought of a Biden/Harris ticket versus a Trump/mini-Trump ticket. Not surprisingly, the recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that 62 percent of all Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents want the Democrats to pick a different nominee.”
Aquila continues, “Biden’s hopes for reelection seem to be fading rapidly. But, he can turn things around if he makes some bold moves.”
He suggests that Biden should frame himself as a seasoned citizen who has decades of experience in the area of foreign policy due to his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“To win in November 2024, Biden has to turn his ‘old age’ negative into an ‘experienced and accomplished’ positive. He can pull this off by celebrating his age rather than hiding from it. President Biden’s age and experience are powerful reasons to vote for him, not against him,” Aquila writes. “Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972. In the decades since, he has racked up numerous accomplishments, as a senator, vice president and president. No candidate in either party can match Biden when it comes to political achievements, policy-making or understanding not just how government works but also how Americans think.”
Biden’s Foreign Policy Vulnerabilities
Biden’s foreign policy achievements as president will not win him accolades from most Americans and could prove to be liabilities. He will have to defend his decision to remove pressure on Vladimir Putin over his nuclear weapons program upon becoming president and remove sanctions on the Nordstream Pipeline. Biden’s failure to act proactively in deterring Russia from its invasion of Ukraine could be a vulnerability as will be his failure to craft a decisive strategy for victory after Putin’s invasion could be a vulnerability. Then his defenders have Joe Biden’s decision to cut off ammunition, logistical, and close-air support to Afghanistan’s army that led to the collapse of the Afghan government and the rise of the Taliban to contend with.
Aquila contends that Biden should run on his record on women’s rights even though his policies have resulted in the collapse of pro-women policies in Afghanistan where women are once again brutalized and deprived of educational opportunities.
Biden’s desire to undo everything Trump did as president in the Middle East reinvigorated Iran, which had been on the ropes during Trump’s tenure. One of Biden’s first acts was to remove Houthi terrorists in Yemen from the State Department’s terrorism list. His decision to poke Saudi Arabia in the eye over the Jamal Khashoggi affair led the Saudis and Emiratis to move closer to China. That in turn resulted in Saudi-Emirati-Iranian reconciliation. Hamas’s slaughter of over 1,000 Israeli civilians likely would not have happened had Iran remained crushed by sanctions and Trump’s policies remained in place.
Biden Should Focus on Social Justice
Aquila argues that Biden should focus on issues that his base cares about to win a second term.
“Yet, despite America’s impressive march toward liberty, justice and equality for all, there are still far too many people in this country who believe that senior citizens should not be granted equal opportunities in the workplace,” Aquila wrote. “Really? After all the steps America has taken over the past 70 years to expand equal opportunity to more and more citizens, does anyone actually want to make an argument that a presidential candidate should be judged by his or her age rather than ability to do the job?”
Biden’s competency as president will be on what’s on trial. Trump will be able to ask voters if they prefer how their lives were when he was president or how they are today. Voters vote with their pocketbooks, and that could help Trump.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
