Trump’s 2024 VP nominee

Age, race, gender and the diversity trap

“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” Mark Twain

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With the two oldest presidential candidates in US history likely to be on the ballot in November, the issue of age is more salient in 2024 than in any other presidential election since the nation’s founding.

Were he to win the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump would be 78 years old when he takes office in January 2025, and 82 at the end of his term. As the almost certain Republican nominee, and with 81 year old Biden’s probable dementia already center stage, Trump’s age is also an issue.

However, as a sitting president and Commander in Chief at a time when the US is entangled in dangerous proxy wars against Russia, China and Iran, and given his complex medical history, Biden must, by default, be more visible.

As a candidate for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, then Senator Biden was forced to drop out of the race in September, 1987 after being caught lying about his academic record at university, inventing stories about his activism in the US civil rights movement and plagiarizing speeches by British politician Neil Kinnock, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy.

Less than five months later, in February 1988, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms, one on each side of his brain. One of these aneurysms hemorrhaged, requiring the use of a titanium clip to stop the bleeding. The clip is still in his brain.

Public domain images courtesy of Wikipedia and Mayo Clinic

The Brain Aneurysm Foundation lists the following possible “cognitive deficits” if a patient returns to “a more demanding lifestyle” after an aneurysm.

• Physical and mental fatigue

• Concentration headaches

• Cognitive problems such as short-term memory difficulties, decreased  concentration, perception problems

• Articulation and speech-delivery problems

• Behavioral changes

• Loss of balance and coordination

• Arm or leg weakness

Given this background, the so called “veepstakes” are no longer a sideshow.

OF CARNIVALS & ELECTION SPECTACLES

Although there is a time honored consensus that the VP candidate is a nearly useless appendage politically, one need look no further than John McCain’s disastrous 2008 selection of Sarah Palin as his VP candidate for a recent election-altering example of why the old rules no longer apply.

Today, most voters believe that VP Kamala Harris is too deeply flawed to serve as president. Only 32% view her positively. She has record low approval ratings that are nearly 20 points underwater, and there is a lingering sense that she embodies an exercise in “box-checking at the expense of political or administrative competence.”