The Discourse Around Biden’s Health Has Been Odious
We should be able to talk about the president’s condition without sinking into harmful speculation or pernicious stereotypes.
Joe Biden at the Ukraine Compact during the final day of the NATO Summit in Washington, DC.
(Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images)The authors of the Denver Principles, the 1983 statement widely seen as one of the AIDS movement’s founding documents, refused to reduce what was called by some back then gay-related immunodeficiency syndrome, or the “gay plague,” into a subject of shame and derision. They also refused to allow people living with AIDS to be turned into victims. While these early AIDS activists may or may not have known it, they were following in the footsteps of advocates for people with disabilities who demanded their rights to have agency over their lives rather than be treated as second-class citizens.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen why these fights have mattered so much: because the stigmatization of disease and disability is never far from the surface of our national discourse.
It’s been remarkable to see how the focus on President Biden’s age has slid into old stereotypes. No matter what you think of the President’s debate performance, his cognitive state, or his fitness to continue his campaign, it should be possible to discuss these issues respectfully, and without descending into wild speculation. There are serious questions to be asked about how this is all being portrayed, and real concerns about how it has set back our quest for equal rights for people living with disease and disability in the United States.
Two moments have stood out to me: the press-driven frenzy over whether Biden has Parkinson’s disease, and the decision by one of the world’s most august weekly periodicals, The Economist, to put a walker on the cover of its July 6 issue along with the caption “No Way to Run a Country.”
The Parkinson’s disease rumor, which first appeared in The New York Times, stemmed from visits to the White House by a Parkinson’s expert. People started wondering whether these visits might be linked to a presidential diagnosis of the condition. From there, the rumor got wall-to-wall coverage, with neurologists drafted in to diagnose Biden from afar, even though they had no firsthand knowledge of his health. Of course, within a few days, the White House came back with a statement that made these multiple visits far more ordinary—the doctor in question was providing care and neurological consultations to many on the White House grounds and the president was not living with Parkinson’s.
But the damage was done. The rumor of Parkinson’s was to function as a kind of scarlet letter—this time to suggest that the president was no longer fully there, with a potential diagnosis that put him in the bucket of “victims of disease.” It was a reminder of all the old ways that those of us living with lifelong conditions were made to feel subhuman, as people meant to be pitied or derided—not citizens of equal standing in our democracy and certainly not fit for positions of leadership. People living with Parkinson’s are leading full, meaningful lives, and contributing greatly to their communities and the nation. The fact that I have to say this in 2024 shows us how far we have to go until diseases like Parkinson’s (or HIV) don’t get thrown around as put-downs.
One could consider the Parkinson’s disease incident as a sad exception to how disease and disability are being deployed at the moment, but The Economist’s cover was a shocker. A walker? Of course, the editors thought it was a good shorthand for signaling Biden’s infirmity, but it simply made them look out of touch, cruel, and ignorant. As the National Disability Rights Network said:
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps our greatest president, experienced depression. Franklin Roosevelt used a wheelchair. Dwight Eisenhower had dyslexia. John F. Kennedy wore a back brace. In more recent times, Texas Governor Greg Abbott uses a wheelchair. Former New York Governor David Paterson is blind. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor has diabetes. Are these people limited in their professions by their disabilities?
The answer is no, but for The Economist, a walker was simply another scarlet letter moment, meant to disdain and deride.
The fact is that people living with chronic disease, with disability, who are simply over 65, number in the millions and they are a vital part of our nation’s fabric. I can hear some saying, why are you getting so worked up over this, it’s just a side issue to the larger topic at hand? Well, how we treat each other is central to our lives and central to our politics. Donald Trump’s grotesque mockery of people living with disabilities was a flash point in the 2016 election and GOP policies are meant to gut programs that support people living with chronic diseases and disability.
And lest we forget, during our response to Covid, both parties dropped the ball on protections that would minimize risk to people living with chronic disease and disability, at the same time creating the conditions that have led to many people suffering from long Covid.
The way the press and the public see people living with disabilities—or those simply growing old—matters if we don’t want to sink back into 19th-century Social Darwinism. It matters if we want to avoid the brutishness of American conservatism. The idea that “diversity is our strength” is not just a slogan. There are millions now living with chronic diseases and disabilities, or living and thriving in old age. Most of us will pass through one or more of these categories during our short time on this planet.
How we talk about Biden matters because his specific issues are used as a stand-in for a wider national conversation about aging, disability, and illness. The more we turn toward analyzing his ability to serve based on pernicious speculation and stereotypes, rather than facts, the worse things will get.
All that many of us can think of at this moment is getting rid of Trump in November. But the bigger question is, what kind of world do we want to build together in his wake? The spectacle of the past two weeks should give us pause. The near-mockery of those living with disease and disability as a wedge for political purposes has been odious. If you don’t think President Biden can do his job, say that as many times and in as many ways as you’d like, but using any possible disease or disability as a casual pejorative is not fair game—it’s just prejudice and ignorance.
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![“We have members who are on Section 8,” said one local union representative. “The majority of our members can’t afford to live here in Ithaca, close to their job.” A crowd of Cornell workers sing and chant as they march around the university’s campus on Friday, August 16, days before the union called a strike. Ithaca, NY—“When I woke up this morning, I thought I was the mayor of a union town,” said Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo at a rally on Friday, August 16. “And do we settle in a union town?” The question was received with cheers during a rally on Cornell’s campus in the upstate New York town, where union leaders, workers, residents, students, and faculty built energy, by the hundreds, for a strike that was just days away. In a vote concluding the day before the rally, UAW’s members in Cornell’s service and maintenance unit authorized a strike with an overwhelming majority of 94% in favor of a strike. By Sunday night at 10 pm, just before student move-in day, the union called a strike. Many members of of the union, which represents over 1,200 workers, including dining hall and custodial staff, are now on strike until they can reach an agreement with Cornell. In a public statement regarding the strike, university officials Christine Lovely, vice president and chief human resources officer, and interim provost John Siliciano said, “The University remains committed to bargaining in good faith. We expect that some service and maintenance workers will strike and not report for work, as is their legal right. We also expect that other members of the UAW will continue to work during the strike, as is also their right.” Since April, the university and the union had been at the bargaining table, attempting to work out the details of a new contract. The previous contract had expired on July 1, and in subsequent weeks, the union began holding rallies, drawing attention to what the union says is Cornell’s lack of seriousness during bargaining sessions. “The university is still not taking us seriously,” said UAW’s Daniel Vicente at a rally on August 2. Vicente is the director of UAW Region 9, which includes New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. “Frankly, the counterproposals that they are putting out to us are insulting,” said Vicente. “They believe that this is just going to be a regular round of negotiations.” The difference between university and union proposals dealt with safety concerns, training pay, parking costs, and a host of issues. But a significant disagreement came down to the fact that pay increases have not kept up with rising costs for many years. “We have members who are on Section 8. We have members who can’t pay for ADA updates,” said Lonnie Everett, international servicing representative with UAW Region 9. Everett explained that while the percentage increase the union was demanding may seem large, it would simply catch worker pay up to the current cost of living. “The majority of our members can’t afford to live here in Ithaca, close to their job.” UAW bargained its previous contract with Cornell without getting anywhere near a strike, but things have changed in the union since the democratic election of the new president, Shawn Fain, in March 2023. Union representatives made it clear that increased accountability to membership and increased transparency during bargaining were top priorities. “There used to be an extremely heavy emphasis on top-down mentality in the union,” explained Vicente, when asked about how the leadership change shifted UAW’s internal decision-making, which appears to be resulting in more strikes on a national level. “We have been given a completely different mandate from Shawn Fain. It is from the bottom up. If the locals…are making demands, and they are saying, ‘No, our membership demands this, we’re putting our foot down,’ our job is just to support them in that initiative.” “We’re taking the same approach that we took with the Stand Up Strike with the Big Three auto plants,” said Wence Valentin III, political director for UAW Region 9, referring to the huge gains the union secured for auto workers last fall. “We’re trying to take that to every location that we have in the UAW. So Cornell is not unique.” Mayor Cantelmo was not the only elected official to voice support for a strong union contract. New York State Assemblywoman Anna Kelles was also present at the August 16 rally, and said in an interview, “There are several, I think, fundamental issues that they’re talking about. One of them is the conversation about a cost of living adjustment.” Kelles was speaking about one of the main sticking points between the union and the university. In addition to general wage raises, UAW Local 2300 has been pushing to secure a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) clause in its contract with Cornell, just as it won with the Big Three auto plants. As reported by Bailey Schulz in USA Today, in the 1970s, COLA clauses were more common in contracts because the country was experiencing years of high inflation, similar to what is happening in today’s economy. When you’re at the bottom wage [for] regular workers at Cornell, a cost-of-living adjustment means a lot,” said UAW Local 2300 president Christine Johnson, When asked about if the university seemed willing to budge on that issue, Johnson said no, adding that “they are saying that they don’t know how they would budget for it, and all kinds of excuses.” However, by the final night of bargaining before the strike, the university did offer a COLA clause, but without other counteroffers that would compel the union not to strike. The effects of inflation and the need for a COLA clause came up often, when speaking with UAW Local 2300 members. “Over the years, you know, it seems as if our paycheck does not go as far,” said Louise Braron, a Cornell custodial worker at a previous rally. “We can tell just going grocery shopping that we don’t buy the foods we once used to buy because we can’t afford them any longer.” Although it is a relatively small city, Ithaca often finds itself as a forerunner in nationwide labor fights. In 2018, workers at Ithaca’s Gimme! Coffee unionized, forming the first barista’s union in the US, years before hundreds of Starbucks stores unionized. Yet, a few years later, Ithaca would become ground zero for union-busting activities by Starbucks. By the spring of 2023, after workers in all Ithaca Starbucks locations voted to unionize, the corporation shut down every one of its stores in the city, violating federal labor law in at least one case. In turn, Cornell students organized to hold the corporation accountable, and successfully pressured the university not to renew its contract with Starbucks. This was the beginning of the Starbucks Off Our Campus movement, which spread to a couple dozen campuses, a direct response to the company’s anti-labor practices. Ithaca’s oversize pace of labor fights for its small size could be partially attributed to the fact that Cornell is home to the renowned Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) school, which creates an international draw for students who want to learn about labor law. In recent years, students have demonstrated a desire to take their organizing knowledge from the classroom to the streets. So when Ithaca’s mayor contended that Ithaca was a union town that refused to settle in labor fights, he had a strong basis for doing so.This time around, when it was Cornell workers who entered into a hardball labor negotiation, students and locals—including elected officials—who had grown practiced in these fights readily joined in support. The presence of Cornell’s ILR school also makes it all the more notable that as an institution, Cornell has been attempting to strong-arm organized labor, sometimes running afoul of unions, as the strike at the start of this semester demonstrates. In November of last year, graduate students at Cornell voted to unionize with a large majority. Yet contract bargaining between the Cornell Grad Student Union (CGSU) which began in March of 2023, has hit similar roadblocks. In an e-mailed response, the CGSU bargaining committee characterized talks with Cornell with this statement: “Our sessions have been productive and we have reached several [tentative agreements] on important issues, but a major hurdle stems from Cornell’s desire to maintain unilateral power by inserting University policies and academic loopholes into our contract.” CGSU was the second recent attempt to organize graduate students; in 2017, Cornell graduate students unsuccessfully attempted to unionize. However, the following year, an arbitrator found that Cornell violated federal labor law with an e-mail sent the day before the graduate student unionization vote that implied that pro-union graduate workers would be voting against their self-interest, since a union could result in a reduction of university jobs for them, if it increased costs for the university. The CGSU bargaining committee voiced support for the UAW effort. “We are in full solidarity with our fellow workers holding Cornell accountable. This institution has its world class status because of its workers, and Cornell has no excuse for not giving their workers a fair contract.” “For years, we’ve been deprived of what’s a just compensation for our contribution in this community, in this university,” said Mitja Bontempo, who has worked at the Cornell Botanic Gardens for over a decade. “This institution has, at its core, this humanistic mission and vision. And it’s failing.” But when asked at the rally, a couple days before the strike how he felt about community support, Bontempo’s eyes lit up. “It’s emotional,” he said. “To see a couple of blocks on campus just full red, with people coming together, marching down the street to demonstrate unity and solidarity and demanding better living conditions, better wages… it’s just incredible.” The 2023–24 academic year ended with a pro-Palestinian encampment and divestment demand of the university from its students, and this new year will kick off with a very visible, and likely messy labor fight. So as they begin their fall semester at Cornell, students are headed onto a campus where the ivory tower keeps pushing up against the grass roots. As Everett and other union reps stated, and as the students will see, there are multiple ways to address an issue: “We can fix this at the table, or we can fix it in the streets.”](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/biden-speech-dnc-getty.jpg)
