There's a Lot of "Is Biden Too Old?" Coverage. Nate Silver Wants There to Be Even More.
Claims that the press is glossing over questions about Biden's age just don't hold up to scrutiny.
Update, 9/12/23:
Silver responded to this piece (specifically, he responded to the portion where I said that it seemed like he wanted DeSantis to win the GOP nomination and presidency, which I based on his past statements and his general pandemic-era punditry). You can read that here:
I wish he would have addressed some of the other points, but in any case, in the spirit of fairness, I wanted to put his response right here at the top. The original post is below.
Hello readers, and happy Monday.
Last week, Nate Silver made the argument that the press wasn’t devoting enough coverage to the question of whether or not Joe Biden is too old to be president for a second term. He wrote about this in a newsletter post titled, “Of course Biden’s age is a legitimate voter concern,” and backed it up with a bit of Twitter X-based rhetorical jousting.
I found his points to be lacking, to say the least, and I wanted to spend a bit of time breaking down my reaction to it.
The argument:
Silver’s argument is that, yes, age is a valid concern for voters to have. I don’t think this is a particularly controversial statement in itself. Yeah, Biden and Trump are very old, and will only get older. And as they get older, the likelihood of dying or experiencing physical or mental decline increases.
Silver’s argument is that people clearly do have concerns about Biden’s age (he cites a recent AP-NORC poll that showed 77% of Americans believe Biden is too old to be effective for a full additional term, and 51% of Americans believe the same about Trump). Biden and Trump are separated by three years, and Silver argues, that is a significant span of time. His point is, essentially, that once you get to the late 70s and early 80s, the difference in each passing year becomes more significant.
You may or may not agree with it, but you can read it here:
It ends with:
But for all that said — if the expert class doesn’t understand that Biden’s age is both a real concern for voters and a valid concern, they’d better be prepared for a getting second Trump term instead. This election is probably going to be close, and Trump might be only one Biden-has-a-McConnell-moment away from winning.
He’s absolutely right that the election is probably going to be close. And I think he’s probably right that there could be a single moment that ultimately dooms his campaign (just as a single moment can doom anyone’s campaign) that’s related to perceptions about age or fitness.
The problem with Silver’s story is that his piece calling out “a pretty dangerous tendency to shrug off Biden’s age” doesn’t actually show anyone “shrug[ging] off Biden’s age.”
As Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman wrote in response to Silver, “Nate doesn't cite a single person ‘shrugging off’ Biden's age as a concern. Sure it's a concern. I don't know why we have to pretend Democrats are all in denial about it. They aren't. They talk about it frequently.”
Silver responded by… accusing Waldman of “shrugging it off!” This is pretty ridiculous, but ultimately helpful in getting a sense of what Silver is lumping into the category of “shrugging it off.”
Silver continued:
And the post is critiquing the media, not normie Democrats. As my post notes, normie Dems are indeed quite concerned about Biden’s age. The D-aligned media tends to treat such concerns as a bit gauche, on the other hand, or as a narrative they'd rather not legitimate.
I don’t know what media outlets Silver is referring to here as “D-aligned media.” But if he’s using it as as stand-in for “mainstream media” (which… it seems like that’s what he means?), then that’s ridiculous.
Hop over to Google and do a search for site:cnn.com “biden’s age”. There are pages and pages of results. Hundreds of stories have used the term, and a good number of them have age as their primary focus. You can do the same thing for the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, MSNBC, NPR, and virtually any other media site on the planet. There is no shortage of media coverage centered around Biden’s age.
Over on Twitter X, Silver had been arguing this point with Tim Miller. Silver would say that the topic wasn’t getting enough coverage. Miller would respond with screenshots of coverage. Silver would say that whatever amount of information was included in the screenshots and videos, it still wasn’t enough coverage. On and on.
I’ll spare everyone the blow-by-blow. Let’s just look at one particular part of their exchange that caught my eye:
Let’s break this down:
Claim 1: “The NYT is writing about the story in a substantive way only 2-4 times a year’”
Unfortunately, Silver doesn’t define “substantive” here. Would Frank Bruni asking Stuart Stevens “if [Trump] loses to Biden despite Biden’s age and low approval ratings, or is this a jump ball if Trump gets the nomination,” count [8/23/23]? Maybe? But are multiple paragraphs in a story analyzing Biden’s strengths and weaknesses heading into the election substantial [8/1/23]? A June episode of NYT’s Ezra Klein Show podcast titled, “Why Do So Few Democrats Want Biden to Run in 2024?” deals with the “age” question quite extensively [6/16/23], as does the episode of The Run-Up just a day earlier (“The Democrat Saying What Others Won’t”) [6/15/23]. And just before that, the paper published “The Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President,” a lengthy, four-bylined, front-page story [6/4/23]. Five days before that, the Times published a focus group feature titled, “How 11 Skeptical Biden Voters Feel About His Re-Election Bid” [5/30/23], which was dominated by age discussion.
As Miller notes in a follow-up post, the screenshot he sent Silver included 16 stories and was just a quick sampling of the NYT’s total coverage.
Claim 2: “A fair percentage of that coverage is expressly dismissive of the premise that Biden’s aging is an important issue.”
I was able to find two pieces that fit this category even a little bit, both by opinion columnist Charles Blow. Even those are anything but “dismissive” beyond the headlines.
In “The Manufactured Panic Over Biden’s Age,” Blow acknowledges that age is an important issue, but also (correctly) notes that whether something is considered “important” in the eyes of the public is affected by media coverage:
Let me say up front that a candidate’s age and competency are always fair game in politics. It’s not ageist to acknowledge the scientific reality that our bodies and minds decline in capacity as we age. It’s not ageist for voters to factor that into their electoral decisions. And aging is individual: Some people appear vibrant at 80 and others worn at 50.
But there are also other truths that must be considered. Headlines and polls don’t just measure and reflect public sentiment; they also influence it. The persistence of a theme elevates and validates that theme.
The point of that piece, which Blow wrote in response “to the avalanche of headlines and polls about President Biden’s age,” is that Trump and Biden are both very old, and virtually any age-related charge you could make against one, you could make against the other. Framing this as an issue of “Biden’s age” rather than about the ages of both Trump and Biden is kind of absurd. And I agree.
Blow correctly points out that the origin of the “focus on Biden’s age” stuff isn’t related to anything in particular that Biden has said or done. He hasn’t had any McConnell-like glitches, McCain-style blips, or even a Trump “Tim Apple”-type moment. The focus is mostly that Republicans point out that Biden is old, say something about how maybe he wouldn’t make it through the second term of his presidency, and then sit back and let the press make the case for them.
Here’s another somewhat lengthy excerpt because this is a point that I’ve made over and over, and I’m just glad to see others making it, too:
Which brings us back to the web of influence: Campaigns elevate an issue, pollsters and journalists ask whether the issue is having an effect on a race, stories are written about that effect, and as a result of the coverage, the effect is often intensified. That is the chain of custody for a political attack, but far too often, that connection and context aren’t made clear. It’s often presented as if these types of concerns just spring forth in voters’ minds and aren’t influenced by campaigns and news coverage.
This happens all the time in politics.
Before the 2018 midterm elections, Trump decided once again to whip up Americans’ xenophobia by harping on a caravan of migrants, an “invasion” he called it, heading for our southern border.
Less than a month before those midterms, The Times reported, “For the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have operated largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to push alarmist, conspiratorial warnings about the migrant caravan more than 2,000 miles from the border.” The Times concluded that they had largely succeeded in animating Republican voters “around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country’s security, stability and identity.”
This caravan drew headlines and consumed airtime. And there was at least one poll taken about the threats people thought the caravans posed. According to Politico, Trump “seized” on the caravan issue after his team reviewed polling from congressional districts that were competitive in the 2016 election and found that border issues resonated with voters in those districts.
But when the midterms were over, Trump backburnered the caravan issue and so did the media, as Quartz reported. And as the publication pointed out, “Attention from Trump and other Republicans helped drive the media coverage of the caravan, and cable news and newspapers either repeated the calls of alarm, or sought to ease concerns.”
If the caravans had been entirely of organic interest to the public, more robust coverage probably would have continued. Instead, in that case, we saw how a political party weaponized a topic and the media helped deploy the weapon.
The other piece, written weeks earlier, was titled, “Biden’s Highest Hurdle Isn’t Age. It’s Passion.” That wasn’t exactly dismissive of Biden’s age, either, as the second paragraph begins with Blow writing, “The age question is a major concern for Biden, according to political advisers I’ve spoken to recently — and according to the chatter on cable news and online.”
The argument Blow made in that column was simple: if Biden wants to get reelected, he needs to get his voters (especially younger voters) enthusiastic about his vision for the country. It, like the other piece, was a well-rounded column that made fair points in highlighting potential weaknesses for Biden.
I was unable to find that “a fair percentage of that coverage is expressly dismissive of the premise that Biden’s aging is an important issue.” In fact, I couldn’t find a single piece that fits the “expressly dismissive” categorization that Silver used.
Silver should just be honest.
There’s a really annoying habit that a lot of political writers have where they start with their preferred outcome and reverse-engineer what they think needs to happen to achieve said outcome. For instance, you’ll often hear people say things like, “If Democrats want to win, they should…” before filling in their own personal policy beliefs (that they won’t actually admit to holding). That’s the basis of a lot of the, “What if Democrats moved right on abortion/LGBTQ issues/climate/etc.?” kind of suggestions.
I wrote about this over at Media Matters in 2018. After Democrats won big during the midterms, Republicans and “Never Trump” commentators ignored the results and shifted to saying that Democrats would have done even better had they adopted more center-right views. What was the proof of this? Nothing, really. It was just vibes along with a strong helping of please don’t look at how the Democrats who ran as Republican Lite during the midterms actually did (spoiler: the “moderate” Democrats who ran the exact type of campaigns these pundits urged mainstream Dems to adopt got their asses handed to them by Republicans; as it turns out, when given the choice between Republican and Republican Lite Democrats, Republicans will vote for Republicans and a good number of Democrats will sit things out entirely).
As Silver has drifted more openly into the world of punditry over the past few years, he’s tried to cling to his I’m just the data guy! routine while abandoning data in favor of vibes and what he wants to be true. In doing so, he’s given himself quite a few very obvious blind spots.
For instance, in May, Silver wrote, “Remains pretty amazing to me how disdainfully the NeverTrump crew treats Republican candidates other than Trump.”
Is it, though? This seems to be an argument built on a belief that Trump’s issues are all aesthetic-related. I’m sure that for a fair number of Republicans, that’s true. I’m sure there are people out there who seriously loved everything Trump did, but simply wish that he would knock off the “mean tweets.” That’s a line that Trump supporters love to trot out there: Heh heh, what would you rather have? Inflation or mean tweets?
But is it really “pretty amazing” that there might be people out there who would have ordinarily voted Republican but aren’t particularly interested in candidates who have all lined up to kiss Trump’s ass, promise to continue his exact policies, adopt the same level of “meanness” that Trump wields, and promise to pardon him for any crimes he’s convicted of? I don’t find that amazing at all. Even the “normal” candidates like Chris Christie or Nikki Haley have been Trump lackeys (and if it’s politically expedient for them, they will go right back to talking about how awesome Trump is).
In 2012, Silver described his politics as “somewhere between a libertarian and a liberal,” and said that if he were to vote (he said he wasn’t going to vote that year), it would be “kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision.” Johnson was the Libertarian Party candidate in 2012, and Romney, of course, was the Republican nominee. For those keeping track at home, that would have made Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, his third choice (at best).
Silver spent 2022 and the early part of this year hyping up DeSantis. Only after months of watching DeSantis flounder did Silver offer what he called a “semi-mea culpa” for his insistence that DeSantis was a true contender. Listen to how irritated he sounds here:
And despite this somewhat ridiculous New York Times attempt to spin things to the contrary — for some reason, the article compares Florida’s vaccination rate to that of much wealthier New England, which is sort of like comparing my basketball skills to those of someone who’s 6’11” — Florida initially did quite well in vaccinating seniors. (DeSantis would eventually turn to more of an antivax stance, which in addition to being objectionable on its own terms, also really undersold one of his accomplishments.) It’s overall death rate from COVID was about average (per the NYT) to somewhat worse than average (per Worldometers). But that’s with a substantial elderly population, which one probably ought to adjust for given the extremely steep increase in the IFR for COVID for people in their 70s and older. Average-ish age-adjusted mortality in exchange for open schools, more personal choice and a robust economy. This is not the place to get into a philosophical discussion about trade-offs inherent in COVID policy, but if we’re at least acknowledging there were trade-offs, a lot of places did worse.
The vaccines were free, and states were given funds to get them into people’s arms. Miss me with this nonsense about it being unfair to compare the vaccination rate of Florida to “that of much wealthier New England.” Across the country, seniors had a much higher vaccination rate than the general population, meaning that Florida’s concentration of elderly people should have resulted in it having higher than average vaccination rates, if anything.
It certainly seems like Silver wants DeSantis to win the GOP nomination (and the presidency), but instead of just saying as much, he sort of bounces around and tries to data his way out of it.
And that’s what I think is happening with his insistence that “D-aligned media” aren’t covering Biden’s age as an issue when every media outlet on the planet seems to have run a bunch of, “Oh wow, is Biden too old to be president?” stories for the past five years (while ignoring that Trump is right up there in age, as well). It’s also a fundamental misunderstanding of what journalism is supposed to be. If there is an event that merits a story specifically about Biden’s age, news outlets should run it. Silver seems to mostly just be mad that news outlets aren’t taking a story without a relevant peg and running headlines saying, “Biden! You’re too old! Drop out!” over and over until Biden not dropping out becomes a story and a scandal in itself.
It’s the “Hillary’s emails!” and “Hunter’s laptop!” strategy all over again. Clinton’s emails were considered important by the public because that’s what people would see whenever they turn on the news, whether there were new revelations or not. In 2020, Republicans fumed that the “Emails” strategy didn’t work when they tried to trot out “Hunter’s laptop” as an October Surprise without actually providing journalists with access to the “laptop.”
The good news for Silver is that his whining seems to have been effective at working the refs.
Since his September 5 standoff with Miller about whether or not the press discusses Biden’s age enough, the New York Times has published five stories (in just six days) that use the words “Biden’s age.”
Just this morning, the Times ran a story with the headline, “‘It Is Evening, Isn’t It?’ An 80-Year-Old President’s Whirlwind Trip,” taking the words from a joke Biden made to reporters about his busy schedule and making it sound as though he was simply a confused old man who didn’t know what time it was.
Here’s how the story opens:
On the 13th hour of the third day of a two-country trip, President Biden stepped onstage at a news conference in Vietnam and bid reporters there a good evening.
At least, he thought so.
“It is evening, isn’t it?” the president said, drawing laughs from the jet-lagged masses. “This around-the-world-in-five-days is interesting, isn’t it?”
He was joking, but only sort of.
The trip, which began in New Delhi with the Group of 20 summit, was a whirlwind for Mr. Biden. He went abroad with a list of diplomatic to-dos, most of which were aimed at signaling to China that the United States was working to line up allies who are fed up with Beijing’s aggression in the region. In Hanoi, he celebrated the elevation of the U.S.-Vietnamese partnership to the highest level in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy, and said it was part of his administration’s strategy to bolster the American presence in the Indo-Pacific.
But Mr. Biden took another objective overseas, too, as he enters an election season facing questions about his age and stamina: showing that he is still up to the challenges of globe-trotting statesmanship.
So, to be clear, this is a story about Biden taking on a somewhat extreme travel schedule and handling it as well as anyone could have hoped… that turned into a story about “an election season facing questions about his age and stamina.”
As I’ve pointed out, the Times has given, “Is Biden too old?” (a question that can’t be addressed through policy or action on Biden’s behalf, as this article demonstrates that even when Biden does something to prove he’s still up for the job, it’ll get packaged into even more “Is Biden too old?” content) plenty of coverage. “Is Trump too old?” isn’t a question that comes up even though Trump has dramatically cut back on the number of campaign stops he’s making compared to 2015–2016 and 2019–2020. It just doesn’t come up for Mr. “Woman Person Man Camera TV.” Age is treated as a “Biden” problem, alone. Frank Bruni mentioned his column today, but even that was filled with the usual caveats of framing this around “our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term.”
The truth is that mainstream outlets are terrified of being perceived as being biased in favor of Democrats. Nate Silver throws a little temper tantrum and others on the right pick it up and start banging their fists on the table and boom, suddenly there’s a new glut of “Biden’s too old!” content out there. This doesn’t happen when the Times gets criticized from the left. It simply doesn’t. When the Times gets criticized from the left, there’s a lot of tut-tutting about objectivity and them saying how they stand by their (extraordinarily flawed and clearly biased) reporting. I think it’s important for people to see this all for what it is. I’m sure that this still won’t be “enough” coverage for Silver’s liking, as conservative crowing about “liberal media” is never actually about eliminating a pro-Democratic bias but introducing and reinforcing a pro-Republican bias.
Trump is currently running away with the Republican nomination, and Biden isn’t facing any serious primary challengers (not to mention that in Biden Democrats might be able to hope for the advantage of incumbency). The truth is that 2024 looks to be a 2020 rematch, whether we want it or not, and pretending that it’s only one of the two candidates who should face the “age” question is dishonest.
That’s it for me today. As always, thanks for reading.
Parker
Oh Nate, please just...go away. Just leave. I only ever tolerated listening to him or reading him because I liked how Clare Malone and Micah Cohen wrote. Once they were gone, I stopped paying attention to him.
Since a potential government shutdown is in the news and that hinges on Republicans abiding by the agreement on the debt limit that Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden hammered out months ago, it's worth asking, "How did bumbling, senile old Joe Biden do in his negotiations with a much younger Kevin McCarthy?" Oh, now I remember, he cleaned McCarthy's clock. McCarthy walked out of those negotiations lucky to still be wearing his pants. Ah, but that was WAAAAY back in May, when Biden was MUCH younger.