Media Obsesses Over Sanders’ Health, Gives Biden A Pass

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has been hard to watch. 

In September, the former vice president’s eye filled up with blood in the middle of a CNN town hall. It was gruesome.

Biden told a South Carolina crowd last month that he’s a “Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.” He repeatedly claimed that he had been arrested trying to meet former South African President Nelson Mandela -- something that did not happen. In Los Angeles last week, Biden mistakenly introduced his wife as his sister. 

Drawing attention to Biden’s health has been completely taboo this election cycle. TV journalists roasted Julian Castro for asking Biden if he was “forgetting what you said two minutes ago,” even though Castro was right. To the extent the press has covered Biden’s chronic misstatements at all, journalists have treated them as gaffes and memory lapses, or explained them away as the result of a stutter. Major outlets have characterized Biden as “healthy” and “durable” in headlines.

While the press has refused to discuss or investigate Biden’s mental capacity to hold the most powerful job in the world, journalists have focused on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ health with intensity. 

It’s not surprising that Sanders’ October heart attack, in the midst of the presidential campaign, would draw heavy news coverage. But the level of coverage has been staggering. A LexisNexis news search on Friday turned up more than 1,500 news articles that mentioned Sanders and “heart attack.” Roughly four dozen news stories have referenced Biden’s history of aneurysms since he entered the race, and many of those articles were primarily about Sanders.

Over the past two months, journalists have ratcheted up their demands for Sanders’ full medical records. The Washington Post has published at least eight articles about Sanders’ health since the start of February. One headline said: “Bernie Sanders shows some Trumpian tendencies as he refuses to release promised medical records.” Another read: “Bernie Sanders assures voters ‘he’s fine.’ But he still won’t release his complete medical history.” 

“It’s time for Bernie Sanders -- and the rest of the candidates -- to release their medical records,” the Washington Post editorial board declared in a column. “Physician summary letters are insufficient,” they added. The column failed to mention Biden by name, even though he hasn’t released his full medical records, either.

NBC News reported that Sanders could provide the public with "one simple indicator of his heart health" -- the left ventricular ejection fraction, which details the blood volume the heart pushes out with each heartbeat.

When Biden’s campaign released a medical letter from his doctor in December, Stuart Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor, told the Washington Post: “The only test that hasn’t been done is the cognitive functioning test.” 

This potentially relevant information can be found in the 12th paragraph of a story with this glowing headline: “Joe Biden is a ‘healthy, vigorous’ 77-year-old, his doctor declares.” Olshansky told the Post that skipping a cognitive functioning evaluation probably wasn’t a big deal because Biden is ”on the campaign trail and meeting a rigorous travel and meeting schedule.” 

Over the course of the campaign, Biden has done significantly fewer events than any of the other candidates. Biden allies publicly recommended last summer that the campaign hold fewer public events. 

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has regularly peppered his columns with digs at Sanders’ health and age. Last month, he described Sanders as “a 78-year-old curmudgeon who recently suffered a heart attack. A few weeks later, he characterized Sanders as “a 78-year-old socialist who recently suffered a heart attack.”

Last week, Milbank decried an email sent out by the Young Turks about Biden’s “cognitive decline,” calling it “a sign of the ugly politics to come.” Of course.

Milbank is right, though. If Biden is the Democratic nominee, President Donald Trump will make his mental state a huge news story. The media won’t be able to stop it. 

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