"In the first presidential race in which the combined age of the two leading candidates exceeds 150 years..."

"... mental acuity and physical health have become a central theme as the 77-year-old Biden and the 74-year-old Trump compete for votes. While previous presidential contests have included whisper campaigns and rumors about candidates’ health, the open charges of senility flying between the two camps sets the 2020 contest apart.... As the video of Trump on the ramp trended online Saturday, the president took to Twitter to explain his cautious stroll. 'The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery...'...  'I honestly don’t think he knows what office he’s running for,' Trump said.... 'They’re going to put him in a home and other people are going to be running the country and they’re going to be super left radical crazies.'... A Washington Post-ABC News poll released May 31... found that only 46 percent of voters thought Trump had the 'mental sharpness' necessary to serve effectively as president. For Biden, the number was 51 percent.... Some Biden supporters have pushed him to take Trump on more directly and more aggressively on the issue of mental and physical fitness. Some have highlighted how Trump effectively raised doubts about Hillary Clinton’s health in 2016. Philippe Reines, a former top Clinton adviser... publicly pleaded... 'PLEASE force the TRUTH about donald trump’s physical & cognitive health into the open... BEFORE his LIES about YOUR health harden any further.'"

From "As Trump casts Biden as ‘sleepy Joe,’ his critics raise questions about his own fitness" (WaPo).

I'm worried about both of them, so I'm creating a tag — "candidate infirmity" — to keep track of them. That's my absurd little way to help — make a tag about it. I dislike both candidates. Maybe you've noticed. Ever since Trump's West Point ramp descent down that ramp...



... I've visualized him taking the off ramp from the presidency and letting Pence go forward into the election. I can't believe we're left with the choice of Trump or Biden.

ADDED: Presidential visits are carefully set up, with the safety of the President meticulously attended to. How could they have provided him with a long, steep, slippery ramp?! That makes no sense.

Trump retweets Michael Moore.

Michael Moore: I‘m ‘Begging‘ Dems -- Don‘t Underestimate White Male Trump Supporter‘s ‘Rage,‘ ‘Emotion‘ https://t.co/IktLtIZNgZ via @BreitbartNews Well, he got it right in 2016?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020

"Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is planning to resume his prepandemic routine, arguing it will send a positive message that the country’s problems are under control."

"For the first time since before the coronavirus gripped the United States and protesters took to the streets, Trump is lining up in-person fundraisers, trips to his luxury resort in New Jersey and campaign rallies. It’s a sign of the president’s approach to a series of historic crises that lack easy solutions and the longstanding comfort he draws from being bathed in adoration by rally-goers, donors and the rest of his base.... During the weekend, Trump will deliver a commencement address in New York. Next week, he will headline a campaign rally next week in Tulsa, Okla. And the next month he will view fireworks in South Dakota. He also expects to hold rallies in Florida, Arizona and North Carolina in the coming weeks. Plans are also being made for larger fundraisers in the Hamptons, as well as in Tampa the first week of July and in Mississippi the last week of August.... [T]hree people familiar with the situation said Trump expects to be criticized whether he remains inside the White House — he’s already been accused of 'hiding' inside while protests take place just outside the gates — or travels out of Washington, so he doesn’t see a reason not to go. And he contends that the protests, many of which lack social distancing, will make it more difficult for Democrats to criticize him...."

Politico reports.

If you're criticized for anything you do, you can see it as liberating. That's Trump style, empowered by the unrelenting hate. There are so many Trump haters in the media, and they will take whatever raw material he gives them any given day and whip it up into a steaming pile of ORANGE MAN BAD, so he doesn't have to worry about trying to give them raw material that might result in a tastier daily special. It's never going to happen. The man is free...

Biden promised to pick a woman VP, but because they are women, the possible choices are all under special pressure over the Tara Reade allegation against Biden.

This is the old backwards in high heels problem all over again!

Or is it?

This is the trouble with affirmative action. You get advanced to the front, but it comes with a catch. Biden wants a woman partner to help him out with woman things. Where's the feminism in that?

I'm reading "Here’s What Biden’s VP Shortlist Said About The Kavanaugh Allegations/Whichever woman Joe Biden picks to be his running mate will have a lot of explaining to do on past positions about sexual assault" (in The Federalist).

I've only read the headline so far, and I am irked. Female candidates should have the same status as male candidates, not special woman's work. We missed our chance to get a female presidential candidate, and a female presidential candidate is, clearly, required to take on all the work of the presidency. The equality of the sexes is locked in. But with a VP candidate, we have some mixed up ideas about what this person is for — not so much the backup President, but someone to help get through the election. Biden wants the show of having a woman, and now he particularly needs a woman to vouch for him as he's accused of sexual assault.

It's woman's work!

What a disgusting predicament. Now, let me try to read the article. Ah, this does not tell us what the various women are saying now about the Tara Reade allegations as they offer themselves to Joe Biden for his purposes. It simply collects what they said about Kavanaugh. So this sets them up to look hypocritical and ludicrous when they clamor for the big man's attention.

Biden should do his own work here. So far he's been silent. I want to say he's hiding, but I read this in the New York Times: "Joe Biden Is Not Hiding. He’s Lurking." That's a column by Michelle Cottle. Her idea is that Trump is destroying himself, so the best strategy is to let him. And:

[Biden] has to pick his moments, especially with personal appearances, to avoid seeming to undermine the president during a national meltdown. Criticisms must be targeted and measured... [W]ithout a frontal assault, he will have a tough time getting attention. The media respond to heat more than light. But that is Mr. Trump’s turf, and those who try to play on it tend to get burned.

Mr. Trump's turf is heat, and if you play on it — I picture a flaming golf course — you get burned.

None of that excuses Biden for doing nothing about the Tara Reade allegations when the women who are in the running for the VP nomination are all getting pressure to address the "woman's" issue.

I'm seeing this at BuzzFeed News: "Democrats Will Have To Answer Questions About Tara Reade. The Biden Campaign Is Advising Them To Say Her Story 'Did Not Happen.'/Joe Biden has yet to personally address Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation, but his campaign has circulated talking points." Biden is silent but his campaign sent out talking points "earlier this month":

“Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” the talking points read, according to a copy sent to two Democratic operatives. “In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.”

“Here’s the bottom line,” they read. “Vice President Joe Biden has spent over 40 years in public life: 36 years in the Senate; 7 Senate campaigns, 2 previous presidential runs, two vice presidential campaigns, and 8 years in the White House. There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him — ever.”...

Biden’s campaign’s talking points say the [New York] Times story served as proof that Reade’s allegation “did not happen” — but the story did not conclude this, nor did it conclude that an assault definitively did happen...

The Biden campaign also pointed to the former vice president’s lead role in crafting the Violence Against Women Act....

"I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said in an MSNBC interview earlier this month, pointing to the New York Times article a few days after its publication.... “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that. And I think that, again, the viewers should read the article. It was very thorough.”...

Sen. Kamala Harris said in a recent podcast interview that Reade “has a right to tell her story” and that she could “only speak to the Joe Biden I know. He’s been a lifelong fighter, in terms of stopping violence against women.”

Straight out of the talking points!

AND: I'm seeing this, in Politico this morning: "Tara Reade allegations stir Democratic unrest/Democrats are reassessing the potential damage to Joe Biden after new details surface." Maybe some delurking is in the offing.

"If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?"

That was the last question at yesterday's Task Force press briefing. Transcript. The reporter was Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine.

Here's the response it provoked from Trump:

So yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people, but if you look at what original projections were, 2.2 million, we’re probably heading to 60 thousand, 70 thousand. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban, people coming in from China. Obviously other than American citizens which had to come in. Can’t say you can’t come back to your country. I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job. I think that everybody working on the ventilators, you see what we’ve done there, have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them and that’s okay. But the reason they don’t want to talk… That was a subject that nobody would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them. We’re in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing and the world is coming to us. As I said, they’re coming to us saying, “What are you doing? How do you do it?” We’re helping them. So, no, I think we’ve done a great job and one person, I will say this, one person is too many. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

That was a good, moderate answer, never mentioning the election, only taking the cue to discuss the basis for thinking that he is deserving. Importantly, he resisted the temptation to speculate about whether his opponent would have done better. Who knows what Joe Biden would have done in the same circumstances?

But that's the comparison. That's what I think about when I hear the question, and I'm going to assume that President Biden also would have lost more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War. If losses to a sudden contagious disease are the test of whether a candidate deserves our vote, then we'd just be voting based on which person happened actually to be President at the time the disease hit.

I suppose many people like to think a different President would have done better. Theoretically, things could have been done better. Our dream President would have done better. But would Joe Biden have done better? Anyone who answers yes is, I suspect, someone who was already going to vote for Biden for some other reason.

Anyway, Trump got the question he got, and he didn't get bogged down in the kind of speculation that I'm blogging about here. He just made the pitch that he's done a good enough job — which is, in Trumpspeak, "a fantastic job."

Trump endorses Tommy Tuberville — Tommy Tuberville, the opponent to Jeff Sessions in the Alabama Senate race.

Tommy Tuberville (@TTuberville) is running for the U.S. Senate from the Great State of Alabama. Tommy was a terrific head football coach at Auburn University. He is a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down! Tommy will protect your Second Amendment....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2020

IN THE COMMENTS: Larry J says: "I know some who say Tuberville's home address is in Florida, not Alabama. That wouldn't be a problem in New York where they have a history of electing people from out of state (Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton) but it could be an issue here."

Interesting! I found this:

Who is the first candidate that @TTuberville has EVER supported? You guessed it - himself, TOURIST TOMMY TUBERVILLE! pic.twitter.com/XAl0pJqUE0

— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) March 9, 2020