Why Don’t Republicans Investigate Biden’s Age?
As Asinine as That Sounds, a New CNN Poll Suggests They’d be Wise to Do So
There are a couple new maxims that are apparent in today’s America that need to simply be declared:
Ageism is not okay, except when practiced by voting age citizens during election cycles
Investigations work
Both are unfortunate truths that need to be considered when thinking about our current political climate.
In a newly released CNN poll, 49% of Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents responded to the question “What is your biggest concern, if any, about Joe Biden as a candidate for president in 2024” with “His age//Too old/Need someone younger”.
So Democrats have a concern with Biden’s age, by a huge margin over everything else. I suppose one way to look at it is that if you had to pick something to be worried about, and nothing else in particular sticks out, you’d probably be inclined to choose “age” from the list, since it’s an obvious fact that he’s pretty old. The poll did give respondents non-answer choices such as “Other” and “No Opinion” and notably these two items came in 2nd (13%) and 3rd (11%), respectively.
It’s hard to deny the reality of ageism among the electorate. The fact that this answer was even on the poll suggests that it inherently is something to potentially be concerned about (would the same item be on a poll regarding Ron DeSantis?). And the fact that it accounted for essentially half of the answers from a list of over 30 is pretty telling of how the Democratic electorate feels about it.
Even though this question was only sampled from Democrats, I think we can safely extrapolate that Republicans would answer the same way in a similarly large proportion and therefore the overall population would have this as their #1 concerning issue.
In addition, this poll suggests that investigations do work, at least if the goal is to dirty someone up politically and create negative impressions among the electorate toward that person.
This is evident from the fact that 61% of respondents answered that Joe Biden “did have some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China”, and 69% answered that these “actions related to [Hunter’s] business dealings…” were “Illegal”.
Why else would these be the results, other than the fact that the House Oversight Committee, run by the Republican majority, are actively and openly investigating Hunter Biden’s “business” dealings in Ukraine and China and constantly suggesting that his dad, the president, might be involved. Every week, there is at least one new report or official House letter or request being publicized to this effect.
So far, there hasn’t been any actual hard evidence. There are some things like a phone call or an email that Joe Biden was included in when he was VP that presents circumstantial evidence which could raise the question. But the more the investigation goes on, the more striking it is that there’s really nothing more than that. Any new “bombshell” report is another suggestion that something nefarious might be going on, but there’s never any actual direct evidence.
For example, if Joe had responded to an email of Hunter’s and said “Thanks Hunter, please deposit the funds into my VP checking account”, that would be pretty damning evidence and we would have definitely seen it by now. But there is nothing like that at this point, and the whole endeavor seems to be a non-criminal “nothing burger” as they say.
However, if the goal is just to muddy the waters and create negative impressions in the electorate, from these poll results it appears they’ve done that rather effectively.
So why not “investigate” Biden’s age? If they press this topic on a weekly basis it stands to reason, considering this is already a concerning issue, that the electorate might actually get to a point where they pass a constitutional amendment for an age limit of 80 for those running for president before the 2024 election.
What is there to investigate, you say? Well, Republicans have been pretty creative with the Hunter stuff, I’m sure they can figure something out. Why not start a new “birther” movement and question his birth certificate? I bet if we squint close enough, there may be a place where the ink on his birth date is smudged or cracked, so that his year of birth looks later than it actually is.
Why not subpoena his doctor for medical records and such? I’m sure they won’t get anywhere on actually retrieving any medical records, but they can issue threatening letters and requests, release them to the news networks and on social media and complain when they get stonewalled. And then they can suggest that people ask the question “what are they hiding?”.
I hope you’ve noticed that the tone of the last few paragraphs is sarcasm, and this is not a serious suggestion. However, at this point in our country’s history this does not seem like a too far-fetched notion. It would and would not shock me at the same time, as performative art is apparently becoming the most effective means of persuasion of the electorate today.