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But there’s reason to believe that voters have come to these conclusions on their own—or at least not at the mainstream media’s behest. Although coverage of Biden’s verbal miscues has been widespread both online and in conservative media, it has only recently begun to regularly appear in mainstream outlets like the Times and CNN. Voters think that it’s important, and these outlets have, belatedly, begun to treat it as newsworthy. One could quibble about the fairness of these concerns given the relatively insignificant age difference between Biden and Trump, but there is no doubting that the concerns are widespread. Even Democrats on Capitol Hill have voiced them.

Part of the delight in Trump falling asleep comes from the fact that it’s seen as a kind of market correction: Now the media will have to cover Trump’s age the way it has covered Biden’s. At the same time, it also feels like a gift in kind: It muddies the waters, allowing the president’s defenders to argue that the other guy is also really old. (They’ve already been doing that for a while, to be fair.)

Still, there are a number of reasons to believe that this is not a particularly wise course of action for Democrats. For one, voters overwhelmingly think that Biden is older than Trump (because he quite literally is), and raising the salience of the age issue would likely backfire even more than it already has. Experience was once a winning issue for Biden; in 2020, many voters looked to him as a steady hand who could help steer the country out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, it’s a clear loser: He is seen as lacking the fitness and stamina for the job. Telling voters that the other guy also doesn’t have fitness and stamina may not be a winning issue. At the very least, it could push voters toward comparably chipper third-party candidates like Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who are both 70.