Young voters played a significant role in helping elect President Joe Biden to the White House. Some progressive groups, however, are sounding the alarm that the president needs to do more to regain the favour of these people on issues like gun control, student loan debt, climate change, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
As the president’s efforts to sign more bills into law are likely to be stalled in a divided Congress, Dakota Hall, executive director of the Alliance for Youth Action, a national network of local organisations aiming to mobilise young voters, told AWN that Biden is running out of time to demonstrate to these voters, who were key to Biden’s coalition in 2020, that he will fulfil his 2020 campaign promises.
Hall was encouraged that Biden was keeping his word to keep listening to young voters when, last year, the White House invited his progressive group to participate in a youth conference. Hall, however, claims that his optimism is waning today, after over a year has passed.
In order to get them (elected) in 2020, young people are working tirelessly. Hall told AWN that employees often feel unappreciated and undervalued since their opinions are not considered.
Hall and other groups have warned that if Biden does not respond to their demand by the summer, he risks alienating a large portion of his support.
Many of Biden’s campaign pledges from 2020 have been realised since he became office. For instance, Biden enacted legislation to curb carbon emissions last year by signing the Inflation Reduction Act. After withdrawing from it on the grounds that it would hurt the economy, Trump has recommitted the United States to the Paris climate pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
On gun reform, Biden also signed the first major piece of bipartisan gun safety legislation in decades and formed the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention that would address gun violence in the country.
Campaign spokeswoman Kevin Munoz for Biden said that the upcoming election is “deeply consequential for young people” and that Biden will continue delivering “on the issues that matter to young people.”
As Munoz put it, “President Biden and Vice President Harris are fighting for the future that America’s young people deserve.” “We are working hard to highlight how an extreme MAGA agenda would devastate the financial security, safety, and freedom of young people.”
However, due to legal challenges and the difficulty of moving progressive pieces of legislation through the GOP-controlled House chamber, Biden has been unable to accomplish major improvements on the immigration system and student loan relief.
But the “lack of movement” on several of Biden’s 2020 campaign promises, such as cancelling some student loan debt, has left Black voters unimpressed, according to Black Voters Matter Fund co-founder Cliff Albright.
Albright told AWN that The New York Times and Siena College polls represent the truth of how many Black people feel about Biden right now.
“We were never excited about Joe Biden,” he remarked. We’re a fairly practical bunch, and we saw that there was no one with the best chance to defeat Trump.
Listening sessions on topics including gun reform, student debt, and climate change have been hosted routinely by the White House Office of Public Engagement since Biden took office. Some progressive groups say that these listening sessions have allowed these organisations to push the administration to do more on issues that young voters care about and have served as another vehicle to let these groups be a part of conversations with officials who play a role in creating federal policies that they otherwise would have been excluded from.
The creation of the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention was a major victory, according to Trevon Bosley, board chair of March For Our Lives, an organisation dedicated to ending gun violence.
He went on to say that the White House’s decision to host these roundtable discussions helps bridge the “disconnect there has been between people who are actually dealing with gun violence and those in office.”
“Now that we have a place at the table, we can tell the true needs that are needed, based not just on data but on actual real-world experiences,” Bosley said in an interview.
According to Hall, Biden will need to convince young voters of his foreign policy accomplishments. Young voters are paying close attention to the president’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
When it comes to human rights, “young people are looking for him to be a lot louder for them,” Hall said, but that isn’t what young people are witnessing on a day-to-day basis.
Biden’s presidential campaign is reportedly working to implement several strategies the DNC has used in the past 2022 midterm election cycle to engage with more young voters, such as creating training programmes for youth organisers and conducting outreach on college campuses, according to a spokesperson for the Democratic Party who spoke to AWN.
If more is not done to address these domestic challenges, however, several progressive groups warn that voting turnout among young voters and voters of colour could suffer. Veteran Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has claimed that there is a generational chasm between the president and young voters.
Rosenberg stated that it is still too early to determine if young people would continue backing Biden given the presidential race is a year away.
Biden has a cold shoulder towards today’s youth. To recruit the type of young people Biden needs, he will have to put in a lot of time and effort. But, is it even possible? However, effort will be necessary. That is not a given.
