U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he hosts a bilateral meeting with Britain's new Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on the sidelines of NATO's 75th anniversary summit, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on July 10.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Hannah Wittenborn choked back sobs as she watched her president seated in a chair, answering questions. Joe Biden’s ABC News interview last week was intended to prove his vitality to a country worried the octogenarian was badly slipping.
But what Ms. Wittenborn saw was someone who reminded her of her own husband shortly before he died – a military man who had served in the Second World War, but who, in the final chapter of his life, at the age of 92, had lost his strength.
“That’s what Biden looked like and talked like. He was just a very, very, frail man,” she said. “I almost started crying because I felt so sorry for him.”
Ms. Wittenborn, 80, is a member of the same generation as Mr. Biden and Donald Trump, who at 81 and 78 are the oldest men in U.S. history to seek the presidency.
Her perspective on them carries weight in part because older Americans tend to form the country’s largest group of voters – and in part because they are pivotal to Mr. Biden’s electoral prospects, as Mr. Trump woos younger votes.
But Ms. Wittenborn also lives in a unique part of the country: Clallam County, Wash., is the only remaining bellwether county in the United States.
The county extends in a lengthy strip along the northern rim of the Olympic Peninsula, from Jimmycomelately Creek to the crashing waves of the Pacific, where it reaches the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States.
Populated by Salish people and settled by foresters and fishers, it is now popular with cyclists and urbanites escaping Seattle for its brew pubs and wild vistas.
Its diversity has, for decades, allowed it to shift with the prevailing political winds. In every presidential election since 1980, people here have cast their ballots for the man who won the White House.
“We’re a pretty common-sense group of people. Very pragmatic,” said retiree Don Zanon, who remains active in the county as a Red Cross volunteer.
Mr. Zanon is 86, which puts him in good company. Nearly a third of the county is 65 or older, double the state average. Many are worried by what they see in their presidential candidates.
“I’m very much aware of their age, because they’re my age, and I know my own limitations,” Mr. Zanon said.
He is no fan of Mr. Trump, whom he called a liar, but he would like to see a more youthful candidate better able to advance issues relevant to the world his children and grandchildren will inhabit. Mr. Biden’s “role should be to transition the presidency to a younger generation,” he said.
That possibility appears to be diminishing. After Mr. Biden’s faltering debate performance late last month, some of his supporters advocated for him to step aside. But he has been forceful in declaring his intention to stay in the presidential race, and top Democrats have publicly stayed at his side.
In Clallam County, too, some supporters of Mr. Biden remain steadfast. The debate was “tough to see,” admitted Candice Bullard, 71. But she spent years in management at seniors’ centres and has seen plenty of people whose minds remained sharp even as their tongues dulled.
“Maybe that’s why I’m not as alarmed by it,” she said. Mr. Biden, who has largely overcome a stutter, may occasionally struggle to articulate himself.
“I don’t think it affects the way he would make a decision about something important,” Ms. Bullard said.
But others are reconsidering, underscoring a much bigger risk for Mr. Biden and Democrats in continuing to support a candidate whose age is exacting an increasingly obvious toll. Some voters have seen more than they can stomach, including those Mr. Biden’s age.
Ms. Wittenborn recalled a photo of a demonstrably more youthful Mr. Biden eight years ago. “I would have voted for that man,” she said. Now, though, “Biden is not only too old. He’s not coherent,” she said. She is thinking about voting for a third-party candidate.
Margo Idris, 79, voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. This year, she’s not certain what she will do. “I don’t know if I’m going to vote,” she said.
Her doubts are rooted directly in her assessment of his fitness. A former health care worker who spent many years with the elderly, she has been struck by Mr. Biden’s frequent slack-jawed countenance, a blank look with his mouth slightly agape.
“Dementia people have that,” Ms. Idris said. “Your mind is blank inside and you don’t know what the word is you can say.”
The White House has given no indication that Mr. Biden has any diagnosed medical condition. In the ABC interview, he refused to agree to a neurological evaluation that would be released publicly, saying instead that his work as president demonstrates his cognitive ability each day.
The White House has since said he had a neurological exam in January as part of a physical, the results of which were later reported publicly.
But those experiencing advanced age have caught glimpses of their own struggles reflected in Mr. Biden. For Republican voters, it has confirmed dim opinions of the sitting president. “He’s pretty much demonstrated that he’s not president material,” said Don Smith, 78, a retired Lutheran pastor in Clallam County who plans to vote for Mr. Trump.
“I feel bad for the man. I’m losing my memory due to old age and whatever else. I try to fake it,” he said. But that doesn’t work particularly well with his own wife – and it’s not something he wants to see in a president. The problem, he said, is “the first thing that goes is for the person himself to realize he’s not up to it.”
Others in the area say they wish the focus on Mr. Biden’s age had not come to dominate the election. Marcella Babineaux is frustrated that it has eclipsed other issues, “like electing a felon for president. That blows my mind,” she said.
Yet her own life has made clear that Mr. Biden is in a state where things are not what they were.
“I can’t do at 79 what I could do at 70,” she said. “Now does that mean I’m incoherent? No. It just means that I’m aging. And with age comes limitations. And we see that.”