Here's an interesting tidbit. Since the start of the year there have been precisely two short periods when people were interested in Joe Biden's age:
The first spike came when special counsel Robert Hur made gratuitous remarks about Biden's age in his classified documents report and spurred a mountain of press coverage. The second spike came when Biden's State of the Union address made it clear that his age wasn't a big deal after all. And since then there's been nothing.
There is nothing “absolute” about that chart. It is strictly relative. So what it is saying is that those two spikes in that interval were six and ten times higher than the baseline. (Strictly speaking, whichever, unspecified, term Kevin plunged into Trends). It tells us nothing about the magnitude of the baseline.
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(Strictly speaking, whichever, unspecified, term Kevin plunged into Trends)
And on that note, if I use "Joe Biden's Age" in trends, and set the the start to January 1, ending May 11 (2024) I see something very different than Kevin's chart above: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2024-01-01%202024-05-11&geo=US&q=Joe%20Biden%27s%20Age&hl=en
So, just what _did_ Kevin plug into Google Trends? Add "Joe Biden Old" and one gets: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2024-01-01%202024-05-11&geo=US&q=Joe%20Biden%27s%20Age,Joe%20Biden%20Old&hl=en which has a line that looks closer anyway, but which dwarfs (again, in relative terms) "Joe Biden's Age"
Finally, add-in "Taylor Swift" https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2024-01-01%202024-05-11&geo=US&q=Joe%20Biden%27s%20Age,Joe%20Biden%20Old,Taylor%20Swift&hl=en ...
I think the terms he used was 'Biden age'. You can see that 'Biden age' and 'Biden old' get more than double the attention that 'Biden economy', 'Biden Ukraine' and 'Biden border' get. So by Professor Drum's interesting reasoning Biden's age is twice as big a deal than those other topics.
I'm trying to think of any two word search term with his last name in it that is searched more than is his 'age' and 'old'.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2024-01-01%202024-05-13&geo=US&q=biden%20age,biden%20economy,biden%20ukraine,biden%20border,biden%20wife&hl=en
Also the spike can't be attributed strictly to the Hur report. On the same day he gave a press conference the New York Times called a "political disaster" and Axios called "a vivid display of an elderly, irritable man struggling on a public stage.".
I don't think the number of google searches is a meaningful reflection of people's feelings about biden's age, which are pretty deeply baked in at this point. Those spikes simply represent news coverage, and probably is mostly just people checking exactly how old he is or anti-biden people searching for articles to hate read about him. But I doubt it has any significant impact on voting preferences at all. He is old, people know it, and whatever influence that has on how they're going to vote isn't going to change.
But I doubt it has any significant impact on voting preferences at all. He is old, people know it, and whatever influence that has on how they're going to vote isn't going to change.
I disagree. And that's because our electorate is extremely closely divided. IIRC, the three closest states from 2020 were all Biden flips: Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. Joe won them collectively by, what, 40,000 votes? If Trump wins those three back—theoretically he could conceivably do so by inducing a very modest shift in his favor—he wins the election.
We don't know 2024 will be so close, but the polling overwhelmingly suggests it will indeed be another nail-biter. In other words our presidential elections are won/lost these days at the margins.
So, the effects of fading recency may not impact very large numbers of voters, but those effects could nonetheless be decisive.
At this point I'll take every last straw of hope I can clutch.
Should add: it is very clear that the vast majority of people who will vote in this November's election have already made up their mind as to candidate preference. But I find it deeply intuitive to posit that, of those voters whose opinions about Biden's brain health are not yet fully calcified, they're heavily overrepresented among the ranks of persuadable voters. This cohort is likely not more than 15% or so of the electorate—quite possibly less. But if my logic is right, the effects of changes in opinion on key issues should be magnified, because most of that changing opinion is taking place among the modest number of voters who are open to voting for either Trump or Biden.
yeah, that's the part of my comment i'm least confident about, because of the extremely thin 2020 margins. but i have a completely subjective and unjustified feeling that it won't be that close this time around, and despite current polling biden will win and his win will be more decisive.
Before the State of the Union, I heard a lot from a particular friend about how Biden was so demented that he was unable to string a sentence together (much of it originating from mischaracterizing stuttering related word choice difficulties as dementia). Since the SOTU I haven't heard a peep about that. The SOTU is one of very few events with unedited reach to the very right wing bubbles and expectations had been set so low that they were thoroughly debunked by his performance.
fair enough, but do you think that simply shit your friend up or did it also change their voting decision?
shut your friend up.
That isn’t the issue here. The point is the voters no longer seem to see Biden’s age as a big issue which makes sense given that Trump has been struggling when speaking and that is getting more attention. So basically the issue cancels out for most swing voters. Also even some of my Democratic friends have said they are less worried about Biden’s age after seeing the SOTU and more recent speeches.
That only measures non-journalist's interest. What's important is how much coverage there is in the media.
It's great that people are ignoring Biden's age. It would be great times ten if people would stop ignoring his competence.
Voting for a POTUS is like choosing a medical doctor. If you want to feel good in the long term, choose a real doctor knowing that a real doctor, much like Biden, might tell you things you don't want to hear in the short term. If you want to feel good now, visit a drug dealer, or a liquor store, or listen to someone like Biden's predecessor, or like RFK junior, who will tell you someone else, and not you, is to blame for what ails you.
+1
"... knowing that a real doctor, much like Biden, might tell you things you don't want to hear in the short term. "
"My housing plan would help Americans achieve homeownership by giving households $400 a month for two years when they buy their first home." - President Biden
unlike Trump's housing plan, which was to house as many secret service personnel as possible at mar-a-lago and westminster to the tune of millions of dollars of self-enrichment.
+1
Don't test your conclusion with exclusively confirming evidence. Test it with inclusive evidence.
"Don't compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative." - President Biden
I guess the NYT and other mainstreamers introduced the "too old!" story too soon? It seems to have peaked and died, much like that alleged worm...
I note in passing that it's pretty rich that a 78yo guy who acts and talks as if he's demented is criticizing Biden's mental acuity, as is a 70yo dude with a worm-eaten brain and mercury poisoning, who also brags about his "youth" and (shades of JFK!) "vigor."
Gosh, made a very similar comment to yours without seeing it, honest!
Great minds? (heh)
This doesn't really surprise me, and along these lines I've been wondering about the issue recency, and how it affects politics. That's not to say that voters forget about issues once those issues pass some arbitrary time limit. But my sense is that issues tend to have a weaker impact on the outcome of races with the passage of time. Inflation would be a good example. The spike in 2021-2022 isn't going to help Biden, obviously, but I believe its impact has lessened with time: the issue is simply less fresh in people's mind now than it was a year ago. Same for Israel/Hamas, I'd imagine: the impact of this situation would probably be more harmful to Biden if Hamas had attacked this month. But by November that war (if it's still ongoing) will be more than a year old.
So yeah, a GOP operative with a fancy law degree tried to ratfuck the President of the United States in a report, by insinuating Joe Biden suffers from dementia. And he had some success. But the effects of the age issue have faded, and will likely continue to do so. I sense even the border issue is following a similar trajectory.
I guess there is really nothing here folks, let's move on. Seems t-Rump does get the media coverage, and not just his trial. Boo hiss.
If one were inclined to do so; and I’m not, there are plenty of perfectly reasonable things about which to criticize genocide Joe apart from his age. But given the alternative, I’m ready to do a deal to support genocide Joe. If trump wins, I have to join the antifa resistance.
People are often cynical about the news. You can debate about whether that's appropriate, or not. But when it comes to what is covered as news, people are not nearly cynical enough.
One way to think about the news:
a) Biden showed grave age-related symptoms during Hur investigation interviews
b) Hur dutifully reported those facts in his report
c) Media dutifully reported those facts to the public
d) Alarmed public searches Google to find out more about this concerning development
A better way to think about the news:
a) Biden shows normal amount of forgetfulness in interviews about events and details from years before (a more accurate assessment, based on transcripts released later)
b) Hur finds no evidence for criminal indictment and could have concluded investigation with the single-page statement saying that, as it had for the similar Mike Pence investigation earlier, but instead issues a report hundreds of pages long with unwarranted and disparaging remarks about Biden's age ("an elderly man with a poor memory"), which was a departure from DOJ practice and ethics
c) News media amplifies Republican hit job and at same time nearly buries the lead ("Biden exonerated"), with 80+ articles in NYT, WaPo, WSJ on Biden's age during next 4 days (not to mention, the Ezra Klein campaign for Dems to sabotage their sitting president)
d) Biden's age is all anyone in media is talking about, and some in the public search Google to find out what all the fuss is about
e) "Biden is too old" becomes settled narrative, until SOTU, when "OK, Biden is old but not 'too old'" becomes new narrative
Things we learned after the fact:
1) Hur (who should not have written his lengthy report in the first place) misrepresented Biden in his descriptions of his age and memory
2) A.G. Sulzberger, in the pettiest of pet peeves, told Times staff to go hard on Biden's age because he was feuding with the Biden team about their refusal to have Biden sit down for an interview
What should have happened:
The "Joe Biden is exonerated in documents investigation" story should have been covered with the same hoopla that the "Mike Pence is exonerated in documents investigation" story received. In other words, none. Does anyone even remember the end of the Pence investigation?
But the hoopla that the Biden story did receive was entirely manufactured by a Republican operative and media that for it own reasons loves nothing more than dirt manufactured by a Republican operative that can almost pass as legitimate news.
If the media's "going overboard" (in former Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan's words) on the Biden age angle helps inoculate Biden later in the campaign, there's some justice in that.
This too: The turn-up in Biden's poll numbers aligns very closely with the date in early February when the Hur report and the media lapdogs created all the noise to begin with. Maybe all those Google searches turned up some info people liked.
Like! Thank you.
You raise a number of important points however implying there are only these two ways to understand the situation creates a false dichotomy. In reality, there are many possible perspectives.
The first scenario (People are not cynical enough) simplifies how people might normally interpret the news, making it easier to argue against. This is a classic straw man fallacy, where an opponent’s position is misrepresented to be more easily attacked.
The second scenario presents a narrative that aligns with the your apparent bias against the media and the DOJ’s handling of the Biden investigation. It selectively includes information that supports this viewpoint while ignoring or downplaying information that might contradict it. (Eg. Biden's press conference the day the report was released was described as a "political" disaster.)
Trump fans take to crapping themselves to show solidarity with Maximum Adult Diaper style setter,
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-cult-wearing-diapers/
Sounds like something Democrats could run on, but will they?
Donald Trump's whole deal is to be singularly crapulent --make the brag about it!