The Dangling Conversation...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | It remains as the one conversation Democrats are not having, at least not in public or in the press. President Joe Biden is 80 years old, an Oldie in our hurry-up, throwaway society. And, as we now know, he's a candidate in next year's presidential election.

If he wins, feisty Biden would be 84 upon completion of that second term in office.

Is he too-old now?

In a word, yes.

Biden has been in Washington, D.C. for almost six decades, most of them - almost four - as U.S. Senator from Delaware and included in that are eight years as vice-president under Barack Obama from 2008 to 2016. Political experience, he has. Loads of it. Much more than many of today's obstinate Republican youngsters in Congress. Dark-brain, intellectual lightweights such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and one Matt Gaetz. Joe Biden knows more about D.C., the country and how our government works than this insipid trio combined.

But he is getting up there age-wise. Way up there. No beating around the bush there. Eighty is damned old, no matter what the 70-is-the-new-50 crowd says. Is his brain in it? Much more than most people think, as the conventional wisdom has it that the mind stays free & clear into the 90s. It is Biden's diminishing physical ability that is grist for conversation. Republicans, as we know, are hellbent on making it a prominent issue ahead of the election, even as their apparent man in the fight (Donald J. Trump) turned a ripe 77 years of age himself (see photo below).

Graying, balding hair and hunchback shoulders - the Number 1 sight for tourists in the nation's capital.

Biden's advanced age is relevant. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from of California, is 89 years old...and she is literally being run out of town by critics (even within her party) who say she has grown senile and is unable to fulfill her duties for constituents back home and for the country at large. Yes, she is too old to be in that job. Comes a time, as rocker Neil Young might say here.

Vim & vigor is the catchphrase Democrats want assigned to Joe Biden, but that's a reach. The president is not as beaten and weathered as Sen. Feinstein, yet he already suffers that sure sign of a body breakdown - the unexpected fall (see photo atop this posting of Biden falling at a recent military function). He's also stumbled climbing up and stepping down the stairs on Air Force One. He's looking real old, and that's obvious. Human life knows time and the ceaseless workings of a clock. President Biden has lived, I'd say, more than 90 percent of his given life. It is for that sole reason that his age (he was born in November of 1942) is a serious consideration voters will take into the voting booth next year.

Nothing in this should lead readers to believe that we favor his announced opponent - Trump. That guy has age and a tsunami of other major problems, most of which the country wants no part of - some Republicans included.

Biden is an announced candidate for reelection, as we noted above. And who knows what it would take to see him change his mind. Perhaps a major illness, a heart attack, say. Or maybe his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, might intervene and put a stop to his insistent wish for continuing the dream. Short of that, well, there's nothing to keep Biden off the ballot. Harping about age is all one-note Republicans have these days. Heard them talk about the economy or the price of gasoline lately?

Have the age conversation, I'd say to Democrats. Be the Open Book your constantly noisy annoying Republicans won't ever have about Trump's racist, bigoted, ballooning anti-America mess.

Say it, Joe: "I'm old, but I'm still here."

Unlike the mollusk Trump, there is no prison threat hanging over Joe Biden's head...

-30-