OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Joy Behar, cohost of the ABC Daytime talk show “The View” had some harsh words for the man who was former President Obama’s campaign manager in both of his presidential election victories.
The hosts were talking about whether President Joe Biden should campaign again for president in 2024 when guest cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin who quoted David Axelrod who said that President Biden would be 82 on Inauguration Day if he won.454
Cohost Whoopi Goldberg said that she wondered who would win the nomination for the Republicans and cohost Sunny Hostin said she did not want it to be Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who she referred to be a derogatory nickname.
“I hope it’s not Death-Santis. I think he handled COVID miserably,” she said.
“I think he’s a fascist and a bigot. I think that people saying he’s [Biden] is too old, I mean, the former twice-impeached disgraced president, he’s such a young spring chicken. He’s gonna be 78 when Joe Biden is 81 and so I don’t like this ageism argument.”
The Daily Caller reported.
Hostin said many Democrats have “verve and energy,” including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Behar, disputing the age argument, said Biden lives a healthy lifestyle by working out everyday.
Griffin said there are “sane” Republicans, namely former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who have a shot at winning the nomination. Goldberg told her she was being “ageist” toward the president and pointed to former President Ronald Reagan having Alzheimers when he was younger than Biden or Trump, so therefore age should not play a factor in one’s ability to govern effectively.
“You know, David Axelrod should keep his mouth shut,” Behar said. “And Ronald Reagan’s rule was ‘thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican’ and I say unto you, David Axelrod, do not speak ill of a fellow Democrat.”
Republicans are expected to have massive victories in the 2022 midterms and just about all of the 50 Democrats interviewed, including Axelrod, do not believe that President Biden can help the Party keep the White House in 2024, The New York Times reported.
“The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” David Axelrod, former President Obama’s chief strategist for both of his campaigns, said.
“Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves for steering the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing historic legislation, pulling the NATO alliance together against Russian aggression and restoring decency and decorum to the White House,” he said. “And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative. He looks his age and isn’t as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn’t rooted in reality.”
Democratic National Committee (DNC) member Steve Simeonidis, said that President Biden should step aside and allow someone else to take the reigns in the 2024 election.
“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” he said to The Times. “[Biden] should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”
“Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race,” Shelia Huggins, a DNC member from North Carolina said. “That can’t be Biden.”
Most top elected Democrats were reluctant to speak on the record about Mr. Biden’s future, and no one interviewed expressed any ill will toward Mr. Biden, to whom they are universally grateful for ousting Mr. Trump from office.
But the repeated failures of his administration to pass big-ticket legislation on signature Democratic issues, as well as his halting efforts to use the bully pulpit of the White House to move public opinion, have left the president with sagging approval ratings and a party that, as much as anything, seems to feel sorry for him.
That has left Democratic leaders struggling to explain away a series of calamities for the party that all seem beyond Mr. Biden’s control: inflation rates unseen in four decades, surging gas prices, a lingering pandemic, a spate of mass shootings, a Supreme Court poised to end the federal right to an abortion, and key congressional Democrats’ refusal to muscle through the president’s Build Back Better agenda or an expansion of voting rights.
