(CNSNews.com) - In an interview on leftist CNN Thursday night -- an interview remarkable for its candor -- host Erin Burnett and former Obama adviser David Axelrod addressed "continuing concerns" about President Joe Biden's age and mental acuity.
Biden, now 80 years old and often appearing confused, would be 86 if he wins a second term and completes it.
Burnett noted that we don't know if Biden received a cognitive exam as part of his physical on Thursday. "So what are you hearing from all the Democratic operatives, insiders about him?" she asked Axelrod, who responded:
"Well, look, before we ever get to the Democratic insiders and politicians and White House aides and so on, you know, we've got polling -- and let me just preface this by saying, Erin, if Joe Biden were 20 years younger and had the record he has, there wouldn't be a whimper about whether he should run for re-election, and there'd be a great deal of confidence about his ability to win."
Axelrod credited Biden with leading the country through a COVID crisis, and producing an economy "that has done very, very well," despite inflation.
"But, you know, the rest of it has been very positive, lots of historic legislative achievements. He's got a lot to crow about, the problem is he's an old crow and everybody recognizes that," Axelrod said.
"And you see it in polling, you know, he has 80 percent approval rating among Democrats, yet 58 percent say they don't -- they prefer another candidate for president in 2024, and that's not record-based, that's really about age, and it shows up in other ways -- polling very strongly in focus groups. People know that, politicians know that.
"Now Joe Biden has made a decision that he's going to run, and so I think people are going to fall in behind him, but it is a continuing concern because as healthy and vigorous as he is today, it's -- he's going to be asking the American people to believe that he will remain so until he's 86, in the hardest job on the planet, and that creates problems."
Burnett, pointing to CNN reporting, noted that focus groups in 2022 used some "pretty awful" words in connection with Joe Biden.
"These are words in the focus groups," she said: "Dementia. Brain dead, mush -- literally comes up all the time. I mean, those are, you know, unpleasant things to repeat, but that's what's coming out of the focus groups, we understand."
Burnett asked Axelrod how big of a problem that is?
"Yeah, I mean, there's no magic answer to this question," Axelrod said:
"I think you, you know, you want to appear vigorous, you want people to see you doing your job. He constantly says, just watch me. I think that's the best they can do. But the fact of it, you know, nobody gets younger, everybody gets older.
"And so, you know, I think people are going to be watching closely in the next couple of years to see how he performs and to see if there's any slippage and that's just something he's going to have to live with.
"The other thing this does, Erin, it puts pressure on the vice president, because, you know, I remember when we were doing the campaign in 2008 for Barrack Obama, and we were running against John McCain.
“After he picked Sarah Palin, there were a lot of questions about Palin, and in the focus groups, people would bring up that McCain was 73 and had melanoma, there was no guarantee he'd live out his term, and they had concerns about Palin, and therefore, they weren't going to vote for McCain.
"Now, Kamala Harris is not Sarah Palin, and I don't want to make that comparison at all. But she isn't polling particularly well. She hasn't gotten great reviews, and that's going to create an issue for him in this campaign, because she'll be like a co-candidate for president."