If the youth are the future, President Biden, by the latest numbers, might not have much of one.
The Harvard Institute of Politics released the 43rd edition of the Harvard Youth Poll on Monday. The national survey of political sentiment among 18- to 29-year-olds comes at an opportune moment — right on the heels of two other polls this month that displayed a stomach-turning drop in the commander in chief’s approval rating among young voters. The lurch left a lot of commentators asking why. Now, there’s somewhere to search for answers.
What does the data show? Biden hasn’t ceased to inspire a rising generation. Instead, he may never have really inspired that generation much at all.
Whether millennials and Gen Z like the country’s leader matters. They helped put him in the Oval Office in the first place by turning out at record rates to vote overwhelmingly blue. But what appeared to be zeal might actually have been a mirage, according to polls from Quinnipiac University and Gallup. Boomers rate Biden about seven points lower today than they did at the beginning of 2020; among zoomers, he’s lost about 21 points.
Maybe, observers have speculated, the problem is broken promises. People expected action on the climate, on policing, on voting rights. So far, they haven’t gotten it, and the planet creeps ever closer to burning up. Young folks are society’s most capable at dreaming big — but they’re less proficient in anticipating that these dreams might not come true.
Yet the groups most likely to show declines in their approval of a president, pollsters say, are the groups paying the least attention. Those whose inboxes teem with newsletters on Capitol Hill happenings usually are committed enough to a team that they won’t change their minds. And as it turns out, young people feel decreasingly loyal to political parties.
So maybe young people feel bad about the president because they just feel bad. Back during the thick of the pandemic, stimulus checks padded early professionals’ wallets, and prices stayed steady while wages rose. This spring, inflation has started to soar, free money is no more and, somehow, covid still hasn’t totally split town. Plus, there’s word students might soon have to start paying off their debt again.
Both these explanations probably have something to them. But more compelling are revelations from the Harvard Youth Poll’s findings that suggest today’s dissatisfaction is less an evolution than a return to the inevitable.
Survey chief John Della Volpe homed in on the differences between those who voted for the president and approve of him today and those voted for him but disapprove of him today. The disapprovers, it turns out, consume less political information — though they spend more time in the cultural war zone that is Twitter. They view the current system as ineffectual, and they think the movers and shakers in Washington look out for elites instead of the little guy, or gal.
Young people in general, the poll discovered, are disenchanted with D.C. and unconvinced that, under the status quo, government can meet modern-day challenges. The catch, though, is that they believe more than those before them that government is valuable: that it should provide more things to more of the vulnerable, from health insurance to food and shelter.
This type of young person doesn’t have to be particularly partisan to identify with a philosophy, and they don’t have to listen to podcasts or follow every legislative tussle to feel that today’s president, and today’s Democratic Party, don’t stand for what they believe in — or at least, don’t stand up for it. They just have to look at a country around them that is, for the most part, unsatisfyingly the same as it ever was; a few minutes’ doom-scrolling Twitter would do the trick, too. They also didn’t have to pay much attention to realize that Donald Trump basically embodied everything they’re against.
That explains why Biden had so far to fall in young people’s eyes. Their abhorrence of a corrupted Republican Party sometimes manifested and sometimes masqueraded as enthusiasm for him. He was many voters’ only hope of avoiding something, or someone, a whole lot worse — and his victory was enough of a relief that it inspired an era of good feelings unlikely to last. Now, with at least Trump’s threat less immediate, Biden seems old again. And when young, idealistic and casual observers of politics get asked how they feel about him, they’re sending back just that message.
The president couldn’t pull off the society-wide transformation many young people yearn for even if he tried. Maybe that kind of revolution would yield some durable devotion, but so long as possibility stays constrained by political reality, what he does and doesn’t do on the margins may not matter nearly as much as how scary the alternative is.
Democrats still shouldn’t despair. The Harvard Youth Poll finds that, despite everything, expected turnout remains on track to match the last midterms. The menace of the GOP may remain clear and present enough to push young people out the door — even if Biden doesn’t.
"Opinion" - Google News
April 25, 2022 at 05:02PM
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Opinion | Biden hasn't lost young voters' love. He never really had it. - The Washington Post
"Opinion" - Google News
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