July 24, 2024 | Reading Time: 3 minutes
The Narrative is dead, long live The Narrative
The press and pundit corps have been talking about the president’s age for so long that public concern about the age of candidates is baked in.
As you know, I believed Joe Biden was the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump and prevent the authoritarian takeover of the United States government. But now that he’s dropped out of the running, and now that he’s orchestrated near-total unification around the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, I can’t help thinking about a major upside.
The death of The Narrative.
The Narrative was the greatest obstacle facing Biden. It didn’t matter how much he accomplished – he led the country out of a pandemic, avoided an economic recession, tamed inflation, revived domestic manufacturing, invested in infrastructure, sent the stock market to record-breaking heights – because the Washington press and pundit corps decided his advanced age was more important. A consequence of that choice was the near-constant presence of his age in the news.
In this time and place, a context informed by The Narrative, accusing Donald Trump of being “focused on the past” takes on new meaning. He’s not only the candidate of yesterday. He’s yesterday’s candidate.
The president knew The Narrative was the greatest obstacle facing him. That’s why he gambled on a debate in June. (Debates are usually a fall thing). The hope was setting aside concerns, or at least easing them, among voters, especially Democratic voters. Obviously, the gamble backfired, but let’s be clear. The Narrative began years ago. The disaster debate was its climax. Everything since has been the unwinding of the old story. Dropping out was its dramatic finale. The Narrative is over.
Well, partly.
While it no longer applies to the Democrat, it still applies to the Republican, who was, lest we forget, also present at the disaster debate. Trump, aged 78, may have sounded stronger, more aggressive and more confident than Biden, but he was, nevertheless, still a bottomless bowl of word salad in addition to being a firehose of lies and falsehoods. If the main character in The Narrative (Biden) had not been standing next to him, the takeaway that night might have been Trump’s habitual incoherence, and questions raised might have centered on his age.
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The press and pundit corps are incentivized to move on, as Harris, aged 59, makes The Narrative seem irreverent. Normal people, however, don’t move that fast. Indeed, it’s thanks to the enduring power of The Narrative – remember, we’re talking about years of headlines about Biden’s age, about polls showing Democratic voters preferring someone else as their nominee, about “double haters” – that normal people have been conditioned to think about the age of candidates. That’s not going away now that Biden has dropped out. The age question is baked in.
This is so obvious that some congressional Democrats and Democratic operatives began turning The Narrative around practically the moment Biden dropped out. Trump, they said, is now the oldest person to ever run for president. He could not “keep a straight thought” during a meeting with America’s top CEOs. The “double-haters” who loathed having to choose between two old men no longer have to choose. And while others are explicitly bringing attention to Trump’s stamina and acuity, Harris is hinting at the same thing but with notable restraint.
Instead of raising questions about his age at her debut rally, Harris accused him of wanting to “take our country backwards” and of being “focused on the past.” In another time and place, this would be nothing more than Democratic boilerplate, a reference to revanchist politics, that is, a desire to strip away the rights of women as well as racial and sexual minorities. But in this time and place, a context informed by The Narrative, “focused on the past” takes on a whole new meaning. Trump is not only the candidate of yesterday. He’s yesterday’s candidate.
With enough oomph from the Harris campaign, it might become clearer to more Americans just how stuck Trump is. Indeed, the very way he talks about the country reinforces the accusation. To hear him tell it, America is virtually unchanged since 1984, back when inflation was high, crime was high, when social conditions were generally bad. In fact, all social indicators are pointing in the right direction, and they are, thanks to the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration.
Don’t get me wrong. I have little faith in the Washington press and pundit corps. Though they crusaded against Biden’s age, I don’t trust them to crusade against Trump’s out of some sense of fairness. A quick Google search for “Trump’s age” turned out a smattering of stories, most by the partisan media, one by the Post but none by the Times, which has been the leading evangelist in the religion of age trolling.
But that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t vulnerable. The Narrative is still baked in. Normal people are still conditioned to think about age.
If you need proof, here’s a post by Trump. Evidently, his first thought in reaction to news about Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee was about his own age. Consider also the reaction by Republicans to The Narrative being turned around. The Democrats are hypocrites, they said. They dare bring it up after years of deflection. What they leave out, of course, is that even if the Democrats did deflect, they pushed out their old man. The Republicans will never do that, because being too old was never Trump’s problem, only Biden’s.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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