I was pondering this afternoon over the question of just how much ordinary people really care about Joe Biden's age. I know there are polls out there showing high rates of concern, but that doesn't tell us much about salience. Is it strong concern or just one of many concerns? What if people aren't specially prompted about it?
So out of curiosity I turned to Google Trends. Here's the long-term result for several related search terms:
Interest is basically low and flat ever since the inauguration, with a small uptick over the past month or so. Let's zoom in on that:
There was a surge of interest when the Hur report was released, but it's already subsided back to almost nothing.
Take this for what it's worth. However, one thing it means for sure is that very few people are paying attention to this stuff yet. Interest in Biden's age, whatever it is, is a small fraction of what it was during the later stages of the 2020 campaign. So who knows? Maybe it was all for the best to have this blow up now so that it will be tired news by the time the campaign really starts cooking.
Maybe it was all for the best to have this blow up now so that it will be tired news by the time the campaign really starts cooking.
Lol first it already IS tired news. It's not just tired; it's dead. It's beating a dead horse. And then making leather out of the dead horse and putting it on a new horse and riding it until IT's dead. It is an ex-issue. It has joined the Editorial Invisible!
Except it's not, because (to beat a dead horse) it's ALL THEY'VE GOT. And okay, they've got noun-verb-BORDERRRR, but they kinda shot themselves in both feet (and other places) on that one, so it's reduced to the underlying racism -- which make no mistake is THE motivating force of the Republican Party today -- but that's baked into their supporters and their politicians and their rhetoric and their policies so thoroughly that there's nothing further to be gained from it.
Biden old. It ... will ... not ... stop. It's what they DO. It's ALL they DO!!!
Particularly since the "impeachment" angle seems even deader now. "Old!!" and "Border!!!!" -- that's all they've got. Until some other trivial nonsense pops up. Maybe Joe eats a Girl Scout cookie. The WRONG WAY. Or wears the wrong color shoes.
It matters to Biden because he's been leaking this whole time it does then disclaiming it when the story comes out through staff interviews.
He knows he's infirm... He knows he might be a one term president. We know too. Google doesn't have to tell us. "It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Why can’t you commenters who are so sure of Biden’s cognitive decline write grammatical sentences? ‘he's been leaking this whole time it does then disclaiming it’?
Can you draw us a clock?
My post answered Drums question about Biden but upset your dorky middle class cult politics so you're gatekeeping my grammar.
Google isn't the only thing that knows Biden is old. We also know without googling he's old and infirm.
Wow
What *I* wanna know is, where do the trolls come up with these names? Like, they're verylongnamesthatsoundlikephrases, and they seem to try to have this aw-shucks-just-a-heartland-american vibe, but ... they just scream "troll."
Maybe I shouldn't be breaking this to them, but I can't imagine they're actually as dumb as the things they post. (And of course if they are, then it doesn't matter.)
I'm from the Midwest you huge dork
Yeah yeah, sure y'are. Please try to work "old and infirm" into your reply. спасибо.
Bubeleh, you're an immature nerd pretending to know who I am on a Tuesday. Get a life, racist.
BB:
What is really happening is your human mind is letting your Internet trauma precede your ability to be aware.
Good night, this too shall pass. Jesus hell.
Did you and Smirnov meet with the same Russian intelligence operative or did you have separate handlers?
My post directly answers why Bidens age matters. Biden partly acknowledges it as an issue, but says one thing in private and one thing to the public.
Karen Schulz, Somehow you're under the impression you have more of a right to comment. I'll leave you to that gatekeeping cult fantasy now.
Good doggie! You get an extra ruble.
I'm not sure Kevin is drawing the right conclusion. Compare two issues: Biden's age and Trump's hostility to NATO. There is not really much to learn about Biden's age: he's 81. Everyone has some understanding of what it means to them, so why keep following links? Trump/NATO, on the other hand, is something many people might not know much about. What is NATO? What countries are in it? What are their obligations? What was it trump said about NATO? What do military experts say about it?
There's a lot to research there, even for people who have an above-average understanding of NATO. But on Biden's age, what is there to research?
Exactly! It might have been different if nobody knew anyone aged 80+ but everyone does.
Run the exact same terms with Trump replacing Biden and the trends are a copy of each other, yet according to the idiot pundits, only Biden has an age problem with the people.
Largely, but not completely: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=Biden%20old,Trump%20old&hl=en
Taking it out to the maximum time-range is interesting: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Biden%20old,Trump%20old&hl=en
Twitter isn't real life. Neither is the N.Y. Times.
Oooo nooooo! My online world, it is shattering before me!
Never bothered with Twitter, even before it became X. (And omg, Elon, Trump, when are we going to be rid of these man-babies?) BUT it's interesting the degree to which the NYT is alienating what used to be a major -- even THE major -- part of its readership, on top of being excommunicated by the MAGA cult. And yeah I know there's still a substantial readership among the Comfortable, just as there is for the WSJ, and the NYT still does some aspects of journalism far better than the WSJ, but ... aren't they boxing themselves in rather severely? Like, is there really a market for TWO WSJs distinguished mostly by their editorial pages?
Beginning to think we need a chart of Kevin Drum's Mentions of Biden's Age.
It isn't even a slow news day - the Smirnov story is pulling up some deep roots, all the way back to Mother Russia, in the Hunter Biden fabrication. If you really want to talk about propaganda, that one seems quite a bit juicier...
Mr. Smirnov seems to have sung like a bird once the FBI cracked his story. He’d better turn down any invitations to tea with his old pals.
Also interesting — Tony Bobulinski seems to have given rather different statements to the FBI and the House committee. If I read the news article correctly, it seemed that his lawyer was contending that the FBI transcript misstated what his client said. Good luck with that claim.
FWIW, there's been recent -- as in this year -- interest in the age of Biden and Trump. But there's one big discrepancy in related searches -- memory. See:
https://bityl.co/OHRf
(Google Trends using "biden age", "trump age", biden memory", trump memory".)
For kicks, Google Trends using "trump indictment", "trump arrest", "trump trial", "biden impeachment": https://bityl.co/OHRr
Sorry, I can't open the links, and I want to see the graphs.
I did the Google trend for your second graph. Mostly people seem to have reacted to the Trump indictments.
Drum: "Maybe it was all for the best to have this blow up now so that it will be tired news by the time the campaign really starts cooking."
This isn't possible since Biden will refuse to debate Trump in the fall and that will be a big news story just a few weeks before the election.
Ten days ago, and ABC poll showed 73% of *Democrats* thought Biden was too old to be President.
I’ve wondered about the debate strategy for both of them : will they both refuse? Only offer to debate if you know the other guy will refuse?
Which would appear worse in a debate? Trump with his word salad answers, hopped up on adderall, or Biden with the stone face, bradykinesia, and possible verbal mistakes.
I think Biden will come off worse visually, word content doesn’t matter as much to people, so Biden will probably refuse to debate.
But can he afford to refuse?
But The NARRATIVE !
I’ve been wondering if the obviously overblown coverage and intensely mean-spirited and insensitive coverage of Biden’s age might produce a backlash. And proof of that kind of thing is hard to come by, but at least there’s this from the WaPo:
“Across all its committees, the campaign said it has $130 million in cash on hand. Biden aides said January was its strongest grass-roots fundraising month since the president launched his reelection campaign in April.”
Speaking for myself, I donated specifically out of frustration at the hyperbolic insanity of the Biden-is-old narrative, and maybe I wasn’t the only one.
Can you guess what Biden's cognitive ability will be like as he campaigns for Democrats in the summer of 2026?
@roboto: I assume his cognitive ability at that point will be great. Why wouldn’t it be? His job performance to date shows tremendously good judgement and discernment.
Over the last so many years, I’ve seen Willie Nelson, William Shatner, and Rita Moreno perform or conduct in-person Q and A sessions. All were in stunningly good mental shape in their late 80s or early 90s. A few years back, I worked with an 80 year old professor who held down numerous jobs and other commitments. My own mother continued working in some form well into her 80s.
The idea that age in and of itself is synonymous with incompetence may very well lie at the heart of ageism.
Four and a half years ago, half of both Democrats AND Republicans thought that a President over 70 was a concern. The issue is unlikely to go away. If, once again, the vote hinges on a handful of voters, the choice of Vice President might decide the race.
https://static.reuters.com/resources/media/editorial/20190612/StonewallFinalResults.pdf
There's a reason for the lack of concern
"WE" are getting older as a nation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/census-median-age.html
Joe Biden was born in 1942, about 4 years prior to the start of our population boom. It just makes him an older boomer so the baby boomers who are still around will NOT be concerned about his age - because they sill feel like they still have all their faculties. (ask any boomer)
I thought it made him a member of the "Silent Generation" - those born between 1925 (some put it at 1928) and 1945.
Silent, Boomer........its a curious thing
We are certainly aging, as a country.
But my point remains, people Joe's age (or even close to it) will NOT condemn him for his age.
Or, people already know he’s super old and don’t have to Google it.
Joe Biden can ride a bicycle and talk about policy in great detail at length.
Trump can't walk 100 yards and can't maintain a thought, wildly rambles incoherently and has a vocabulary of less than 500 words.
They are for all intents the same age.
People Google things when they don't know exactly what they are or what is going on with them. The media, both right-wing and "liberal", talk about Biden's age so much that Googling is unnecessary. Does anybody not know now that Biden is old?
Here's a challenge for Kevin.
Create a Venn diagram. Label the circle representing a POTUS' influence 'P'. Label the circle representing President Biden's circle of concern 'B'. Label the circle representing former President Donald's circle of concern 'D'. Label the P-B overlap 'Biden's wisdom' and the P-D overlap 'Donald's wisdom'. Lastly, label the nonoverlapping areas 'Biden's ignorance' and 'Donald's ignorance'.
I'm assuming you'll need the 'zoom in' function for displaying Donald's wisdom.
Read here about Alexander Smirnov's extensive connections to Russian intelligence,
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064.15.0.pdf
With what appears to be a clipped y-axis on the first chart.
Also, the interest is relative to the peak within the set of terms over the period:
So it shows "interest" relative to the peak, not absolute interest.
And, since the site offers going back to 2004, one can get a more long-term look with the likes of: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=biden%20age,biden%20old,biden%20mental&hl=en
There would also seem to be case-sensitivity: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=US&q=biden%20old,Biden%20old,Biden%20Old&hl=en
The party vanguard is very, very interested. Correctly-oriented party cadres care, a lot.
Does anything else matter?
voters?
Everybody checked in 2020/2021 and found out he's old. Now he's older.
People don't need to check again we already know.
The charts are extremely confusing in that it's not at all clear what the Y-axis represents. 50 is "half as popular as peak popularity" but what does that mean? What does 100 represent here in terms of actual numbers of anything?