Much of the first half-hour of Tuesday's Morning Joe was devoted to the panel venting its collective kvetch over President Biden being tied with former President Trump in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, despite Biden's supposedly successful record as president.
Journalist Katty Kay spoke of the White House being "frustrated" by the poll. But the frustration of the panel itself was glaringly evident.
Poor Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson embodied the panel's mood, saying that the poll "stupefies me." Stamping his figurative foot, Robinson insisted that this "should not be a close election." Translation: darn those darn voters!
Again and again, the panel pointed to Biden's age as underlying the poor polling underperformance. Joe Scarborough twice claimed to see a "disconnect" between Biden's polling and his supposedly successful performance on the economy and a number of other issues.
The panel blamed it all on Biden's age.
The show began with a clip of Biden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania taking on the age matter directly, bragging that "the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom." It was mentioned that his campaign intends to have him do more of this.
A very risky strategy. Biden can brag that his age has brought only wisdom, but one bad gaffe while doing that could blow up disastrously in his face.
The one thing the panel didn't do was to deny that Biden is showing his age.
In July, we caught the show making the absurd claim that not only was Biden "sharp," but "sharp as a tack." Perhaps Morning Joe realized how ridiculous it looked, and didn't want to further damage its credibility—such as it is!
Morning Joe moaning that, because of his age, voters aren't giving Biden the credit he supposedly deserves on the economy and other issues was sponsored in part by GlaxoSmithKline, 4imprint, and Chewy.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC's Morning Joe
9/5/23
6:00 am EDTJOE BIDEN: Someone said, you know, that Biden, he getting old, man. I'll tell you what. Well, guess what? Guess what? The only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom. I've been doing this longer than anybody, and guess what, I'm going to continue to do it with your help.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: [laughs] President Joe Biden yesterday, in Philadelphia, brushing off those concerns about his age.
We'll talk more about this, we do have more polling from the Wall Street Journal that has President Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a dead heat in a 2024 general election matchup. In the survey, 46% say they would vote for Biden, while 46% say they would vote for Trump. 8% say they are undecided.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: 46% of Americans are voting for the guy who said he would terminate the Constitution to get back into power.
EUGENE ROBINSON: Yeah, those numbers are unbelievable, but yet, there they are. . . . There have been a lot of polls that indicate that this, if it's a Trump-Biden rematch, this is going to be a close election.
And again, that stupefies me. It should not be a close election. There is no way that any substantial portion of the electorate should support Donald Trump, after we saw during, what we saw during the four years of Donald Trump's presidency. After what we have seen in the, the years since Donald Trump's presidency.
After all the felony criminal charges filed against him in four cases, with what is basically open-and-shut evidence. You know, the man is, is an accused felon, what, 91 times, or something like that, the total number of counts against him? Yet, for potentially, 46% of Americans are willing to return him to the White House.
. . .
There's a real risk, and I, I can't believe I'm saying this, there's a risk that Donald Trump could return to the White House.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, there is such a disconnect, Katty Kay, between the polling numbers and the reality. And a lot of Democrats are trying to figure out exactly why that is.
You look inside the poll, a large number of Democrats just say Joe Biden's too old. He's too old.
The numbers don't add up, though. Like, for instance, you, you, you look at the economic numbers, for instance. You go down the list. Going into Labor Day weekend, Wall Street Journal headline,"Resilient U.S. Economy Defies Expectations." That's Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.
. . .
We could go down the entire list, the numbers don't add up, Katty. And a lot of Democrats are saying, it's because he's too old. That's what's underlying this entire poll is, Joe Biden's numbers are low because, right now, Americans think he's too old to do the job!
. . .
KATTY KAY: I think you're right, there is the age factor that's playing into this. And I know how frustrated the White House is on both of those counts . . . But the age factor, Joe Biden can try and joke about it, but it's still, it's still a looming factor.. . .
SCARBOROUGH: I mean, the White House doesn't want to talk about age. I understand. But it colors everything. It colors everything. If you look at what he's done on foreign policy, you look at how the economy's going right now, these are numbers that should be giving any president a huge lift. And it's just not happening here.
