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In what should be a crowning economic achievement bolstering his re-election bid, President Biden finds himself increasingly overshadowed by concerns about age and infirmity undermining electability. As inflation cools to manageable levels and robust job creation presses on, traditional economic yardsticks auguring incumbent success now take a backseat to Biden's obvious physical fragilities overwhelming the national discourse.
It's the Goldilocks scenario millions of American families dreamed about over the past couple of punishing "Everything Shortage" years - a so-called "soft landing" where scorching price increases decelerate without crashing into recession. Consumer prices rose just 2.9% over the latest 12 months through June, down from 9.1% a year ago amidst that harrowing peak inflation panic. Meanwhile, employer payrolls expanded by 1.1 million over the first half of 2024 with unemployment still parked at a microscopic 3.7%.
In any typical re-election year, such benevolent economic crosscurrents would be campaign rallying cries shouted from every Presidential rooftop in America. But 2024's cycle is crystallizing around a different, more personal referendum altogether - whether frail 81-year-old Biden's awkward stumbles, verbal missteps, and visible enfeeblement render him capable of serving until age 86. It's an unsparing audition playing out in real-time as the sitting President's cognitive lapses become as memorable as any substantive policy rhetoric.
In just the past week, Biden accidentally referred to Ukrainian leader Zelensky as "President Putin" while also calling his own Vice President "Vice President Trump" without correcting himself. Those cringe-inducing mix-ups multiplied exponentially the sting from Biden's sputtering, forced responses during last month's lopsided Miami debate drubbing opposite Republican rival Donald Trump. Where once Trump was the bully constantly disrupting decorum with boorish jabs impugning Biden's mental acuity, now the visibly spent incumbent seems to validate those insensitivities through self-inflicted wounds.
The irony is Biden's domestic agenda sought restoring economic dynamism, opportunity, and middle-class sustenance trampled by decades of stagnation. He staked revival on an FDR-style New Deal for the 21st Century emphasizing recharged manufacturing, infrastructure modernization, and broadly shared prosperity. But instead of extolling implementation milestones and asserting his change-maker credentials, Biden spends most waking hours struggling against inexorably compounding perceptions of debilitating decrepitude.
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No amount of judicious staff handling by aides aiming to protect the President's dwindling equanimity obscures the ultimate reality. Each exhausting public appearance showcasing vacant stares and disjointed non-sequiturs further entrenches the unshakable assumption Biden looks worn out, overwhelmed in slow motion by the world's cruelest job. Surely voters intuiting his gradual deficits crave more stability than sundowning twilights in the Winter years of a second term.
The unfolding drama pits Democrats defending Biden's infinite wisdom, experience and unquestioned love for country versus undeniable decline into infirmities once banishing his most respected elders from public life. Accusations of ageist insensitivity ricochet against counterclaims demanding moral acknowledgments of actuarial mathematics binding existential finitudes. When does chronological decrepitude sever the body from fulfilling constitutional duties? At what point do voters justifiably prioritize self-preservation instincts ahead of blind deference to respected longevity gravitas?
Mainstream punditry openly questions whether Biden can physically sustain the modern presidency's boundless rigors - a role exponentially more demanding than decades past when octogenarians could contemplate second terms without sci-fi life extension fantasies. The unfortunate reality is human biology hasn't kept pace with career ambitions clinging to forever replenishment despite polls showing strong majorities opposing candidates of an advanced vintage.
Within Biden's own party, initially circumspect calls urging graceful exit ramps morph toward blunter declarations of tough love. With the President unwilling to voluntarily relent after pouring heart and soul into recapturing the office that cemented his immortality, some advisors weigh orchestrating interventions to remove a leader refusing self-awareness. The political costs, however, could prove catastrophic for alienating Biden's avid minority base whose very turnout stoked upset 2020 triumph.
Meanwhile, the foreboding Republican attack ad pipeline is primed with reels of Biden's most humiliating physical and mental stumbles. Countering such blitzes with rosy but abstract economic data seems increasingly futile against searing images challenging basic sentient competency. Biden and cohorts may protest no fair person would mock the infirmities fastly enveloping grandfatherly elders - but opposition partisans unremittingly deploying the vulnerabilities as disqualifying optics feel few such compunctions when angling for total conquest.
The result thus far is an enervating cycle where Biden gets trapped rebutting allegations questioning his baseline fitness - consuming airtime that could otherwise promote peace, prosperity and renewal platforms ostensibly foundational to resurrection. With little flexibility remaining to shift conversation trajectories, Biden's fading campaign seems destined to spend remaining months relitigating capacities for clearing bare minimum reliability thresholds.
Yet for all the age- and vitality-obsession enveloping 2024's plotlines, it's impossible ignoring root enablers permitting the White House geriatric drama in the first place. Both parties remain hostage to dueling gerontocracies where generational blockage suppresses leadership replenishment. The GOP persists elevating septuagenarians as de facto standard-bearers while Democrats struggle abandoning familiar Boomers in favor of unproven Millennials yearning for their chance.
So as voters ponder either reconfirming infirmities or taking accessibility gambles on upstarts, the economic Goldilocks oasis beckons wistfully. Just not too hot, not too cold, and not too overpowered by age-based frailty reducing existential implications to tabloid sport. For many, choosing the fiscally responsible path forward over partisan soap opera diversions shouldn't need to manifest such painful deliberations.
