Failed one-term, twice-impeached, and multiply-indicted former president Donald Trump loves to mock and ridicule President Joe Biden for being too old to lead the United States.
But new polling shows those attacks on the 81-year-old incumbent are backfiring badly on Trump and could wind up costing him millions of votes.
That poll, from Quinnipiac University, reveals that Biden leads 60 percent to 39 percent among voters over 65, and that, according to an MSNBC panel, could prove decisive when the votes are counted later this year.
“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough noted, “I want us to talk about this part of it, because everybody is focusing on the younger voters who right now are not moving towards him as much as they thought. They’re going to come home. they just will. You look at this number though: voters 65 and older, Joe Biden, 60 percent, Donald Trump — Sam, nobody expected this, but we have seen this. Older voters have been moving toward Joe Biden steadily for quite some time, and of course, as we know, older voters? They vote.”
Contributor Sam Stein concurred.
“Yeah, I was picking up on this a couple of years ago. The New York Times did a story about who was actually concerned about Trump’s legal troubles and if they thought they were serious, and we saw an age breakdown; 65 and older, way more concerned about it than the younger generations that kind of piqued my interest.”
“Maybe they lived through Watergate and they understand the severity of it,” Stein added. “You’ve seen it in poll after poll after poll, where more conservatives, traditional Republicans are backing Joe Biden. There’s a number of theories around it. Maybe the age attacks on Biden are actually offending this cohort.”
“It’s that chaos factor that Nikki Haley is starting to play out in New Hampshire,” MSNBC regular Katty Kay remarked. “We keep hearing people talk about, you don’t want the chaos of Donald Trump. If you are getting older — chaos is scary for everybody — but I think it’s particularly for older people when you’re feeling more frail and fragile about the world anyway.”
