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I’m just as galled as I imagine many of you are to see mainstream news outlets rediscover their awesome power to set the national agenda, only to subject us to a rehash of the biggest story of 2024—Joe Biden is very old—in order to help their colleagues sell books. It isn’t just exasperating, it serves as a heat shield for the actual sitting president as he dismantles the republic.
But I want to engage with this renewed discourse anyhow, for a couple different reasons:
First, to remind Democrats that, through concerted effort and repetition, they too can affect what’s “in the news.” Republicans do it all the time, Beltway journalists are doing it right now, Democrats can do it, too. The story just needs to have an element of intrigue, which is why the reporters and Republicans who want the Biden-age thing in the news are referring to a very clumsy, public, failed effort to make Biden seem less old as a “coverup.”
Second, I want Democrats to be less afraid of engaging with whatever the discourse happens to be, even if they find it frustrating. To not run away from it, or call it a distraction from kitchen-table issues, or respond with pre-fab talking points crafted with an eye to public-opinion polling, but to develop real opinions about what’s happening in the news, and articulate them.
With that in mind, and to set an example, here are some things I think about Joe Biden:...
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