e; I wrote a better headline than the ABC editors decided to and excerpted a bit more
According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.
Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president. There is a large difference in how partisans view their respective nominees – 73% of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve but only 35% of Republicans think Trump is too old to serve. Ninety-one percent of independents think Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.
Concerns about both candidates’ ages have increased since September when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 74% of Americans thought Biden – the oldest commander in chief in U.S. history – was too old to serve another term as president, and 49% said the same about Trump.
Part that drew my eye,
The poll also comes days after the Senate failed to advance a bipartisan foreign aid bill with major new border provisions.
Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress’ failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border – with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.
More Americans trust that Trump would do a better job of handling immigration and the situation at the border than Biden – 44%-26% – according to the poll.
So that bipartisan border bill stunt was terrible policy, and it doesn’t seem to have done anything for the Democratic party politically
Can we please stop trying to compromise with fascists now?
It is age discrimination but it’s legal because it’s built-in to the Constitution. Not joking, the “founders” decided that there was a such thing as too young but not too old.
I think the founders made a lot of decisions based on the assumption that voters would vote in their own interests. This would preclude, for example, voting for insurrectionists, criminals, or corrupt power brokers.
People back then had an average lifespan of 39-56. A 70 year-old in 1780 would be exceptional.
Not really. The lifespan includes GIGANTIC numbers of babies dying at birth–that brings down the average in a big way. Poor people also had it harder. If you were a rich person? 80 wasn’t a big deal.
Those lifespan ranges account for the infant mortality and are based of someone who lived past 15. 39 for men and 56 for women.
Doubt. In 1890*, if you made it to 20, it was a 50/50 chance of making it to 65 and about a 1 in 3 chance of making it to 75. 1 in 3 is hardly exceptional. Just slightly better than average. You need to go to 85 to the top 10% and mid-90s to get top 1%, which is what I’d start to think of as exceptional. Most of the difference between 1780 and 1890 was liking decrease in mortality in the 0-25 yo range, so I wouldn’t expect there to be much difference for 1780 data starting with 20yos.
*https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/lifetables/life1890-1910.pdf using the table on page 127