Joe Biden made age an election issue ... 51 years ago

BLITZER: “CNN’s KFILE is also digging into President Biden’s campaign history. While Biden is now the oldest president in U.S. history, he was once vying to be one of the youngest senators ever. And he took an interesting position on age back then. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is uncovering the story for us. Andrew, tell us about how Biden campaigned that time around.”

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KACZYNSKI: “Right. So, 51 years ago, Joe Biden was a 29-year-old Delaware city councilman. He was so young that, when he was elected, he was not even the age that he could be sworn in. He didn’t turn 30 until after that election. And he was attacking his opponent, Republican senator Cale Boggs, over his age. Boggs was 63 at the time. Now, we should note that’s 17 years younger than Biden is today. That’s more than 20 years younger than Biden would be in his second term if he was re-elected, if he runs for re-election. And what’s interesting about this is Biden in that campaign, he had some quotes where he said Boggs had ‘lost that old twinkle in his eye,’ was one of his quotes. This approach was so explicit that the local press dubbed it the ‘dear old dad’ approach to campaigning. Take a look at some of these newspaper ads that the Biden campaign ran during that campaign. You can see that he cited things like the 1948 Poll Tax. He had ads where he talked about Joseph Stalin and jazz musicians doing heroin. And he hammered home this line to contrast with Boggs, who was a two-term senator and a two-term governor. He used this line, he ‘understands what’s happening today.’ Take a listen to one of the radio ads that his campaign ran hammering that home.”

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[Clip starts]

NARRATOR: “In Cale Boggs’ day when Stalin ruled, Americans had visions of Russian soldiers in our streets. In Joe Biden’s day, Americans have visions of American criminals in our streets. Joe Biden, he understands what’s happening today.”

[Clip ends]

KACZYNSKI: “So that was then. This is now. And it’s going to be interesting to see how Biden handles those age-related questions if he does announce for re-election.”

BLITZER: “As we expect he will. Andrew Kaczynski, thank you very much.”

(CNN link here)

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