The issue should be behind us with President Joe Biden’s departure after that disastrous debate performance.
But that now leaves 78-year-old Donald Trump squarely in the crosshairs of those focusing on ageism and cognition. This, of course, is about much more than awkward octogenarian optics.
Let’s not forget such seemingly routine Trumpisms as windmills causing cancer, Clorox helping Covid relief or mistracking Hurricane Dorian with his signature Sharpie. Or how about foiling hurricanes by bombing them with nuclear weapons? Or trading Puerto Rico for Greenland? Or trying to extort Ukraine? Or those autocratic bromances, climate-change indifference or NATO insults? And let’s not forget a certain, Mexico-underwritten wall. Or trickle-down tax cuts. Or still targeting the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights. And what other presidential candidate has been referenced as an “American Hitler” by his VP nominee?
And let’s not forget the sober warning we got shortly after the 2016 election. That’s when 27 psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health practitioners released their findings about Trump’s mental state. “There are those who still hold out hope that this president can be prevailed upon to listen to reason and curb his erratic behavior. Our professional experience would suggest otherwise…We warn that anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency.”
Trump doubled down on himself by picking JD Vance as VP. Meanwhile, Harris has become a money-raising bonanza with a base even more energized than 2008—because John McCain wasn’t an existential threat and history could now be made by a woman of color.
Biden-Harris is the passing of the democratic torch. Trump would pass along the dictatorial truncheon of retribution—and assure that ageism and cognition remain a worrisome issue.