During MSNBC’s debate coverage on Thursday, MSNBC Political Analyst and 2008 Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe stated that President Joe Biden made concerns about his age worse with his debate performance and that Biden and 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump “are three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight.”
Plouffe began by saying that, ultimately, it depends how voters react, and we won’t know that for sure for a few days, and he thinks Trump did terribly with swing voters, “as well.”
He added, “I think Joe Biden, the biggest thing is in this election is voters’ concerns — and it’s both swing voters and base voters — with his age, and those were compounded tonight. So, what the campaign’s going to do is try and run ads, Biden will go out tomorrow and the next day being aggressive. It wasn’t just his craziness and his lies…Donald Trump wouldn’t even answer questions about child care or the opioid crisis, talk about someone who’s consumed with himself, which is the message the Biden campaign wanted to land.”
Plouffe further stated, “Biden is behind narrowly right now. He’s the one that has to change the equation here. And the biggest barrier that’s keeping his ceiling too low [are] concerns about age. And I think that’s the tragedy, because I think Trump had so many openings that you could have just scissorred him up on tonight. And Biden did have a couple of good moments, but I think, at the end of the day, the overwhelming reaction — again, it doesn’t matter, quite frankly, what people like us say, it’s what voters say, and if they were already concerned about is he up for it — and the way I think about it, is sadly, it really pains me to say this, they are three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight. And I think that’s going to be the thing that voters really wrestle with coming out of this.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
