Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to raise $25 million with Biden amid concerns about his age
Bill Clinton was 22 years younger than George H.W.
Bill Clinton was 22 years younger than George H.W. Bush when he unseated him in 1992. He had just turned 50 when he won a second term by defeating the 73-year-old Bob Dole four years later. In 2008, Barack Obama was just 47 when he won the White House by defeating John McCain, a Senate colleague who was a quarter-century his senior.
On Thursday, both former presidents — now 77 and 62 years old, respectively — will suspend their active retirements to try to provide a political jolt to the campaign of their successor Joe Biden, 81, with a rare joint appearance for a campaign fundraiser in New York.
The rare and highly anticipated gathering of three Democratic presidents will raise over $25 million, according to a release by the Biden campaign, which is characterizing it as the most successful political fundraiser in American history.
But it also may serve to highlight Biden’s main vulnerability this year, one that his campaign has increasingly taken steps to overcome.
Unlike Obama and Clinton before him, Biden is running against a candidate only a few years his junior. Still, Biden has already been adopting some of the tactics and even language that Dole and McCain used when they ran against much younger men.
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