Opinion: If the alternative is Trump, why are young voters deserting Biden?
LA TimesPresident Biden poses with Students Demand Action in Connecticut in June. Had there been no President Trump, there would be no ultraconservative majority on the Supreme Court, no Dobbs decision overturning nearly half a century of reproductive rights, no outright abortion bans in 13 states and no suffering by people like Kate Cox of Texas, who was forced to seek abortion care in another state after the Texas Supreme Court said she could not abort her severely compromised fetus, who suffered a condition that was incompatible with life. Listen to what younger voters told NBC News they’re upset about: the country’s slow pace on reversing climate change, Biden’s failure to fully cancel student loan debt, his inability to federally codify the right to abortion and, perhaps most starkly, his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In an interview with Univision in November, he said that Israel needed to “do a better job of public relations, frankly, because the other side is beating them at the public relations front.” He has also pledged to “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.” Does that sound like an appealing counter-message for the 70% of voters under 35 who told NBC News pollsters they disapprove of the way Biden has handled the war? A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released on New Year’s Day showed that Trump is out-polling Biden among groups the pollsters described as “stalwarts of the Democratic base,” that is, Hispanics and younger voters.