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RENO, Nev. — Jill Biden rested her elbow on the lectern and cradled her head in her hand. She flashed a knowing smile, then leaned toward the microphone.
"One morning, you just wake up," the 73-year-old first lady said, her voice dropping for effect, "you look in the mirror, and you say, 'Where did these lines in my face come from?'"
The room chuckled. "Maybe you felt the same way coming here to launch Seniors for Biden," she added. More laughs followed.
As campaign audiences go, the Seniors for Biden-Harris event was the right kind of venue for the wife of America's oldest-ever president to gin up excitement for a potential second term for her husband. The roughly 200 attendees, in various stages of graying, listened attentively in rows of chairs - or, occasionally, wheelchairs and scooters. Jane Fonda, the 86-year-old actor and activist who's practically synonymous with graceful aging, had introduced the first lady.
"We need to get out and organize, knock on doors, work the phones, send telegrams - well, not telegrams," Fonda, looking radiant in a gray pantsuit and fuchsia button-down, had said to laughs. "See, I'm old!"
Biden's line about her wrinkles was really about the surprise of growing old. How the milestones and indignities of aging somehow arrive without warning. She'd been caught off guard, she told the room a few moments earlier, when she became a grandmother at 42. "I kept thinking of my own grandparents, and I couldn't just sort of picture myself in their shoes," she said. But if that rite of passage arrived early, she now seemed to firmly feel her age. Republicans' attacks on the president's age are an effort to "devalue our wisdom and dismiss our experience," she said. Trump's flirtations with cutting seniors' entitlement programs threaten "the Social Security we've earned." (Trump drew scrutiny in March when he said there was "a lot you can do … in terms of cutting" entitlements during a CNBC appearance; his campaign later tried to clarify that he was referring to "cutting waste.")
Many of Biden's recent public appearances had been a function of her private role: a matriarch sitting in the gallery of a courtroom in Wilmington, Del., to support her son Hunter Biden as he faced trial on federal gun charges. She traveled almost daily to the federal courthouse, commuting from Washington and even flying back from a state visit in France to be at the courthouse when Hunter was pronounced guilty.
Now, Jill Biden was back on the campaign trail, supporting a different Biden in a different kind of trial: a campaign in which her husband is battling not only a political opponent, but also the intractable effects of his 81 years on how he looks, how he seems.
"This election is most certainly not about age," the first lady told the seniors in Nevada. "Joe and that other guy are about the same age, so let's not be fooled."
Over five stops in four states - Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada and Arizona - Biden preached that "age is a gift." That her husband "is a healthy, wise 81-year-old, ready and willing to get to work every day to make our future better." That "Joe isn't just one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it!"
In Green Bay, Wis., at the first of her five events, she described the value of achievement at an advanced age. "I got my doctorate at age 55, I learned how to be on the national stage in my 60s, and I became first lady of the United States the year I turned 70," she added. The room erupted in applause; the first lady beamed. "I love that you're clapping for that!" she said. That line did not get a reprise at the remaining stops, but she included this one: "We cannot be defined by a number, and when people underestimate us, they do it at their own risk."
Biden is an energetic senior, nearly a decade younger than her husband with a physical vibrancy he lacks. Where her husband mumbles, she enunciates, her singsongy voice honed from decades of teaching. Where her husband is stiff, she is loose, stretching her arms wide as she says the words "wonderful" and "grateful," like a conductor demanding a crescendo. Where the president shuffles, the first lady strides, her sinewy calves often bare between her pencil skirt and stilettos. During the Democrats' virtual nominating convention in 2020, the future first lady introduced herself to voters as a runner, with a video of her pounding the pavement in trendy On Cloud running shoes. For a cover story in Women's Health last summer, she permitted the magazine's editor in chief to join her for a SoulCycle class and described a "nonnegotiable" early-morning workout regimen that includes cycling, running or barre classes.
The Biden campaign conceived of Seniors for Biden-Harris as a chance to capitalize on a shifting electorate that, for the first time in a long time, sees older Americans leaning toward the Democratic presidential ticket. It's an opportunity to highlight the Biden administration's defense of Social Security and Medicare while also reframing the conversation about the president's octogenarian status with a sympathetic constituency.
Concerns about the president's age and cognitive fitness have been a constant companion to his reelection bid, and June has been a particularly tough month for turning that narrative around. The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that concluded that Biden "shows signs of slipping," recounting instances of mumbled speech, long pauses and memory lapses in closed-door meetings with lawmakers and aides. Allies of Trump posted video clips from Biden's recent trip to Normandy that seemed to show the president looking feeble and absent-minded - although a Washington Post analysis found that those supposed senior moments were not as odd or inexplicable as they were made to appear.
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign marked Trump's 78th birthday on Friday with a reel of Trump's own gaffes. Aides also issued news releases that mocked his light schedule and highlighted reporting that described a "rambling" Trump during his visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday.
If Hunter Biden's trial was still on the first lady's mind, she didn't reveal it. She didn't mention his legal problems at her campaign events but told NBC News that her son had inspired her to get back on the trail. "After the decision in the court, Hunter was strong, and so I have to take his example and just get out there and start fighting again," she said. (Through her spokesperson, the first lady declined The Post's request for an interview.)
Supporters in the crowd nevertheless seemed to know what Jill Biden had endured, and they empathized with her.
"It was impressive," said Jana O'Brien, 60, at Biden's event in Duluth, Minn. "Why wouldn't you be there for your kid? That had to have been really hard for her."
"To see her be a pillar of her family is inspiring," said Becky Kosti, 46, at the Green Bay event. "We all have things in our lives we wish we could take back."
"Hunter, obviously, suffered from a very tragic drug addiction," said Steve Strecker, 78, at a stop in Phoenix. "I have some empathy for that. There are people in my family who have struggled with that, as well."
As for her husband's struggle to overcome voters' hesitance about an octogenarian in the Oval Office for four more years - in rooms full of elderly Democrats, there was a lot of understanding of that, too.
"I forget things every once in a while. I go into a room and forget why I went there," Strecker said. "Yes, he'll have some failings, but it's obvious he has the ability to do the job."
The 78-year-old sees things the way the first lady does: Age and its attendant experience are gifts. "There's something to be said for wising up," he said.
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