news Joe Biden's Gen-Z TikTok army warns him: "It's a hard sell"

[Communion]

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More than three years later, though, the relationship between the White House and young organizers is at a crossroads. The president and congressional Democrats have delivered on many notable promises but fallen short on others – a frustrating reality that has contributed to Biden’s plunging approval ratings with 18- to 29-year-olds.

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The administration’s recent decision to approve a controversial Alaskan drilling project outraged young climate activists whose work on the last campaign was vital in establishing trust – and even excitement – about a Biden presidency. The White House pushed back, arguing that its legal options were constrained because the project had already been greenlit by the Trump administration. But the controversy has contributed to a resurfacing of old suspicions across aligned youth voter groups. Their leaders expressed concerns that Biden and senior aides appear increasingly determined to own the political center, even at the cost of alienating this increasingly powerful voting bloc. Young voters have turned out in record numbers in recent elections and proven their mettle as organizers by establishing a vast web of interconnected groups, with focuses on climate, immigration, gun violence, student debt, health care, LGBTQ rights and more.

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“We don’t need help being convinced that the Republicans are the bad guys, and we need to fight against them,” said Michele Weindling, electoral director for the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group. “We need to be told not just why we’re voting against the right, but what we’re voting for.”

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Young immigrants’ rights activists are particularly sour on Biden’s tenure. That troubled relationship came to the fore during the 2020 primary and remains in flux. The administration’s actions on asylum restrictions and the treatment of migrants at the border has stoked further distrust.

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“I don’t think immigration has been his strong suit, to put it very nicely,” Ming said. “He has definitely not been as bold as we would like him to be on immigration. That’s not just a him problem, it’s a problem with the Democrats as a whole.”

 

Like so many other organizers, Ming said the prospect of any potential Republican nominee being elected would ultimately be reason enough to vote for the president. But convincing others, she added, is getting increasingly difficult.

 

[Helios]

Well had they voted for Hillary then I’m sure roe v wade wouldn’t have been overturned but I guess reproductive rights wasn’t enough.

[Vermillion]

Maybe it's the quotes from all the orgs trying to or succeeding in reaching out to him or my cynicism from working on the Hill but this piece reads to me as too...inside baseball.

 

What I mean is that I don't think this piece is as effective of truly reflecting millennial and Gen Z anger and malaise with Biden as, say, the New York Times piece was in 2020 interviewing Sanders supporters and why they were frustrated with the prevailing narratives that they were obligated to vote for Biden in the general in the first place: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/us/politics/bernie-sanders-voters-biden.html

 

They need a 2024 equivalent with progressives in general but my worry is that because there's no candidate focal point with Bernie out of the picture narrative building is harder and many campaign reporters won't bother. 

[OreGuy]

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concerned the administration could squander years of momentum

what momentum? the one he created?

[Dula Peep]

The alternative is Dump so they better go out and vote. 
 

young people need to learn that change takes hard work over many years, doesn’t happen overnight unfortunately 

[Vermillion]

20 minutes ago, Helios said:

Well had they voted for Hillary then I’m sure roe v wade wouldn’t have been overturned but I guess reproductive rights wasn’t enough.

There's about 14 reasons Hillary lost, some which got too much attention and blame and others not enough.

 

That Hillary was a horrible candidate that never visited the Upper Midwest is too easy of a dismissive narrative and black-and-white framing as was neoliberal obsession with Russia (but none of the Steele dossier has ever been definitively disproven).

 

Seeing as no progress seems to have been made in lessons learned within the left from 2016, this dead horse of hindsight needs to stop being beaten. Progressives have much more existential problems here and now, starting with building a viable bench and finding Pramila Jayapal a spine. 

[rihannafan]

7 minutes ago, Helios said:

Well had they voted for Hillary then I’m sure roe v wade wouldn’t have been overturned but I guess reproductive rights wasn’t enough.

Most of Gen Z was not eligible to vote at the time. 

[ClashAndBurn]

The entire point of the Biden 2020 Candidacy (and, extremely miraculously, his Presidency) was to lull liberals back into a false sense of security and complacency in order to quash the insurgent progressive movement that was rising from the ashes of Hillary's failed campaign. Every success of the Democrats since 2018 has been one happy accident after another, and they've almost squandered it every time. The "Blue Wave" of 2018 saw Democrats lose more Senate seats than they did after 9/11, which was only offset by gains in Nevada and Arizona.  2020 was almost lost completely after Joe Biden pledged that he would veto universal healthcare in the middle of a pandemic where people were getting kicked off of employer-based insurance. 2022 was spared from being a Blue Bloodbath by the Supreme Court's heavy-handed reversal of Roe, and would have ended very differently if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn't kicked the bucket and surrendered her seat to an extremist after selfishly refusing to retire in 2013.

 

Even now, Biden's pitch to future generations is... not climate mitigation. But he's committed to the acceleration of climate deterioration through drilling expansions like the Willow Project.

 

The way I see things, Leftist advancement in the United States is dead. Hope for the future is dead as well. All thanks to Joe Biden. It's not hard to see why younger generations are unenthusiastic about his bid for re-election when he's been so absolutely destructive.

[GraceRandolph]

15 minutes ago, Helios said:

Well had they voted for Hillary then I’m sure roe v wade wouldn’t have been overturned but I guess reproductive rights wasn’t enough.

Gen Z couldn’t vote in 2016.  

[Helios]

7 minutes ago, rihannafan said:

Most of Gen Z was not eligible to vote at the time. 

Looking at the age range I see that they barely missed the 2016 election but im sure they felt the consequence of a Trump presidency thats for sure. They have every right to sit this one out but it only stacks the supreme court even more if 1 or 2 justices retire. Imagine a court with only 1 or 2 liberal judges? At this point i think there are only 3 and its a disaster.  

[Vermillion]

1 minute ago, rihannafan said:

Most of Gen Z was not eligible to vote at the time. 

Well millennials were, and many black ones, specifically in places like Detroit, either left the top line blank or didn't show up. 

 

Whether Bernie would've pushed those numbers over the Electoral College we'll never know. Again, the hindsight hypothetical is a waste of time because he's not running for higher office again. 

 

But side-bar, I'm going to leave this here

 

[ClashAndBurn]

13 minutes ago, Helios said:

Well had they voted for Hillary then I’m sure roe v wade wouldn’t have been overturned but I guess reproductive rights wasn’t enough.

You're actually trolling. Right? Gen-Z's oldest voters had JUST turned 18 that year, with the vast majority unable to vote. Those that were would have been in their first year of college/university, which is notorious for making it difficult for young people's ability to vote due to state laws and regulations (even in blue states) on where students can even be registered for polling locations being uniquely and purposefully convoluted.

 

Reproductive rights weren't compelling for almost 70% (men + conservative women) of the population anyway. People broadly took the issue for granted until Roe was overturned.

[rihannafan]

3 minutes ago, Espresso said:

Well millennials were, and many black ones, specifically in places like Detroit, either left the top line blank or didn't show up. 

 

Whether Bernie would've pushed those numbers over the Electoral College we'll never know. Again, the hindsight hypothetical is a waste of time because he's not running for higher office again. 

 

But side-bar, I'm going to leave this here

 

Im sure hillary being so bloodthirsty as SOS didn't help her either

[Vermillion]

Just now, rihannafan said:

Im sure hillary being so bloodthirsty as SOS didn't help her either

With the younger demographics, sure.

[rihannafan]

38 minutes ago, Espresso said:

With the younger demographics, sure.

Eh, there are hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Michigan

[Vermillion]

7 minutes ago, rihannafan said:

Eh, there are hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Michigan

Including younger ones, fair point.

 

Young black voters in the cities in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin got the majority of the analysis attention. 

[Bosque]

Those same climate activists protesting the Alaska drilling also complain about high gas prices and don’t want him to build out relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Of course it’s hard to please a voter group that holds two diametrically opposed viewpoints. 
 

Being more open on asylum and immigration  is an absolute non starter among broad swaths of both Democrats and Republicans. So obviously Biden isn’t going to do that just to win the votes of 3 activists who live in blue states anyway.
 

Sounds like his Gen Z army needs to be more realistic and focus on things that are actually politically achievable (eg student loan forgiveness, health care expansion/reproductive rights), have at least some level of popular support (ie, not stopping oil projects) and won’t immediately be canned by this Supreme Court (ie, gun restrictions) 

[ClashAndBurn]

15 minutes ago, Dephira said:

Sounds like his Gen Z army needs to be more realistic and focus on things that are actually politically achievable (eg student loan forgiveness, health care expansion/reproductive rights)

Biden has specifically spent his career opposing every single one of these. He made student loans impossible to declare bankruptcy. He refuses to go beyond Obamacare because he views it as his legacy as much as Obama's even though it's utter dogshit. He had to be bullied into backing off support for the Hyde Amendment.

 

15 minutes ago, Dephira said:

Those same climate activists protesting the Alaska drilling also complain about high gas prices and don’t want him to build out relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Of course it’s hard to please a voter group that holds two diametrically opposed viewpoints. 

You mean those Middle Eastern cutthroat dictators that killed an American resident in cold blood and faced zero repercussions for it? That he himself said he would hold accountable to sound tough as a contrast to Donald Trump, only to back down immediately and grace MBS with a fist bump in order to beg him to lower gas prices, only to get laughed at in his own face?

 

15 minutes ago, Dephira said:

Being more open on asylum and immigration  is an absolute non starter among broad swaths of both Democrats and Republicans. So obviously Biden isn’t going to do that just to win the votes of 3 activists who live in blue states anyway.

You could have simply watered this down to "Biden and the Democrats hate brown foreigners" and spared yourself the word count.

Edited May 5, 2023 by ClashAndBurn

[Bosque]

1 hour ago, ClashAndBurn said:

You mean those Middle Eastern cutthroat dictators that killed an American resident in cold blood and faced zero repercussions for it? That he himself said he would hold accountable to sound tough as a contrast to Donald Trump, only to back down immediately and grace MBS with a fist bump in order to beg him to lower gas prices, only to get laughed at in his own face?

 

...Yes, exactly those countries. So, how exactly do you propose he ensures enough oil supply without working with those countries that are so anathema to you, and also without increasing domestic production? Biden did in fact break from KSA quite significantly compared to past presidents (which of course also led to immediate criticisms by you, such as evidenced in this quote) and counteracted that by increasing domestic production - which is why oil prices already decreased significantly from recent highs, putting the USA in a comfortable strategic position while the Middle East is forced to cut production all the while prices are decreasing, putting OPEC in the uncomfortable position of not being able to balance their budgets

 

Basically you are criticizing him for visiting KSA, for not being tough enough on "cutthroat dictator" MBS, for supposedly begging MBS for favors, for being too tough on MBS and thus causing higher gas prices, for expanding domestic production, and also for not doing enough to keep gas prices low - all at the same time, and all the while gas prices are in fact decreasing very quickly. So please do tell what strategy Biden actually should have pursued on this topic to please voters like you who criticize him from 5 different opposing angles all at the same time? 

 

  

1 hour ago, ClashAndBurn said:

 

You could have simply watered this down to "Biden and the Democrats hate brown foreigners" and spared yourself the word count.

This is literally a thread about what Biden should do to please the electorate, not an ethics discussion. Do you want Biden to a) Do the thing that's unpopular in the population and will lead to political defeat, but aligns with your personal moral stance, or b) Do the thing that aligns with popular opinion but goes against your ethics? ?

I have a feeling you will go for c) Criticize him for both things at the same time.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Dephira

[ClashAndBurn]

23 minutes ago, Dephira said:

...Yes, exactly those countries. So, how exactly do you propose he ensures enough oil supply without working with those countries that are so anathema to you, and also without increasing domestic production? Biden did in fact break from KSA quite significantly compared to past presidents (which of course also led to immediate criticisms by you, such as evidenced in this quote) and counteracted that by increasing domestic production - which is why oil prices already decreased significantly from recent highs, putting the USA in a comfortable strategic position while the Middle East is forced to cut production all the while prices are decreasing, putting OPEC in the uncomfortable position of not being able to balance their budgets

 

Basically you are criticizing him for visiting KSA, for not being tough enough on "cutthroat dictator" MBS, for supposedly begging MBS for favors, for being too tough on MBS and thus causing higher gas prices, for expanding domestic production, and also for not doing enough to keep gas prices low - all at the same time, and all the while gas prices are in fact decreasing very quickly. So please do tell what strategy Biden actually should have pursued on this topic to please voters like you who criticize him from 5 different opposing angles all at the same time? 

 

  

This is literally a thread about what Biden should do to please the electorate, not an ethics discussion. Do you want Biden to a) Do the thing that's unpopular in the population and will lead to political defeat, but aligns with your personal moral stance, or b) Do the thing that aligns with popular opinion but goes against your ethics? ?

I have a feeling you will go for c) Criticize him for both things at the same time.

Biden dropped his "tough on MBS" stance immediately when he realized he needed to beg him to increase oil production thanks to his sanctions on Russia. That's not intelligence. That's political cowardice. Democrats are just that: cowards.

 

Again. His begging didn't work. And the oil prices only came down after the midterms when they didn't yield the blowout for pro-KSA Republicans that MBS was hoping for. Not because of Biden reopening relations.

 

Anyway, Joe Biden is bringing back Trump's evil, racist immigration policies, such as kids in cages (a souvenir from Obama actually!) and family separation. After years of screaming at the immorality of it all, suddenly liberals are silent. Wonder why! Guess that he should be doing that since it's popular with anti-immigrant masses though!

 

Won't be long before he brings back Trump's forced sterilization of migrants, I reckon.

[Zoomer]

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We don’t need help being convinced that the Republicans are the bad guys, and we need to fight against them

How embarrassing is this statement   The fact they're the director of the group makes it worse. What are you, 9 years old?