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young voters
Can Biden Learn From 1968 Before It’s Too Late?
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, the Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
Jun 09, 2024
The year 1968 may be repeating itself. The United States is again experiencing an incumbent Democratic administration supporting an unpopular war, disruptive protests on college campuses, police repression against nonviolent demonstrators, a Republican challenger promising to restore law and order and, to top it off, a Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
It is axiomatic in politics not to alienate your base in an election year. Yet, this is what U.S. President Joe Biden and congressional Democratic leaders are doing. While polls show that 83% of Democrats support a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership continue to oppose it. Only a minority of Democratic voters agree with Biden’s continuous unconditional military assistance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. And, despite Biden’s angry denials, a full 56% of Democrats say that Israel is committing genocide with only 22% believing otherwise.
A poll published in March shows that nearly three times as many Democrats believe that “Israel has gone too far and its military actions are not justified” as those who believe that “Israel is defending its interests and its military actions are justified.” While that number has almost certainly grown in light of subsequent Israeli atrocities and condemnations by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the Democratic administration and the vast majority of Democrats in Congress continue to say just the opposite.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests.
Despite 62% of registered Democratic voters supporting a suspension of military aid to Israel, the Biden administration, along with all but three Democratic Senators and 173 out of 213 House Democrats, approved nearly $18 billion in additional unconditional military aid to Israel in recent weeks. Even though Biden suspended one shipment of particularly lethal ordnance in April, he has continued to approve additional arms transfers despite ongoing Israeli violations of U.S. and international law. This could have a real political impact, as a more recent poll shows that a majority of Democrats would prefer a presidential nominee who does not support military aid to Israel.
More significant to the outcome of the presidential race, a recent poll shows that 20% of voters in five swing states are less likely to vote for Biden because of his support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Biden’s policies are particularly damaging with core constituencies, such as Arab Americans, who compose a large enough percentage of the voting population to affect the outcomes in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Virginia. Close to 60% of Arab Americans supported Biden in 2020 while only around one-third supported Donald Trump. This year, a recent poll of Arab American voters in those swing states shows that, as a result of the war in Gaza, Biden’s support has dropped to only 20%.
Other minorities in the Democratic coalition are becoming alienated as well, with growing evidence that support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by Biden and congressional Democrats could negatively impact electoral support among Black and Latinx supporters.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift is among the country’s diverse base of 2.5 million Muslim voters, 86% of whom supported Biden in 2020. That support has now dropped to 36%.
But it is with young voters that support for Israel’s war could have the biggest impact for Biden and congressional Democrats. Recent elections have shown that when youth turnout is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Democrats lose. All indications suggest that the Gaza war will depress the youth turnout and lessen the enthusiasm necessary to recruit the army of young volunteers to canvas and get out the vote. Nearly three-quarters of voters under the age of 30 oppose Biden’s policy in Gaza, a higher percentage than opposed George W. Bush on Iraq, Ronald Reagan on Central America, or even Richard Nixon on Vietnam.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests. There have been more than 8,000 anti-war and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States since October, attracting more than 1,000,000 people, with particularly high numbers of younger Americans taking part. Even College Democrats of America, the official student organization of the Democratic Party, has not only called on the President to support a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, but has endorsed the protests as well.
Despite 97% of campus protests being completely nonviolent, the crackdown against student demonstrators have been far more repressive than comparable pro-divestment protests targeting South Africa during the 1980s, with more than 3,600 arrests and hundreds of injuries from police assaults, and hundreds of student suspensions. Notably, the colleges and universities with the most arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters have been in cities led by Democratic mayors and located in states led by Democratic governors.
Such repression, along with ongoing atrocities in Gaza by U.S.-backed Israeli forces, is leading to greater anger and more militant protests, with massive demonstrations planned this August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The New York Times and others have noted how this can play into the Republican narrative, as it did in 1968, enabling them to give the impression that, under Democratic leadership, the country is falling apart and things are getting out of control, thus requiring a strong Republican leader to restore order.
Using Nixon’s playbook, Biden has tried to depict the anti-war movement by its most extreme elements. In his nationwide address on May 2, Biden reiterated the right to peaceful protest, but implied that the majority of protesters were engaged in such practices as “threatening people, intimidating people, [and] instilling fear in people” as well as “vandalism, trespassing, [and] breaking windows”—in spite of the fact that such incidents have been extremely rare among the more than 130 encampments that sprung up in colleges and universities across the country. Biden even blamed demonstrators for “forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations” even though these were decisions made by school administrators and were not being advocated for by the protesters.
A recent poll shows that only 41% of registered Democrats approved of Biden’s response to the protests.
The Biden administration has falsely claimed that a popular slogan calling for a democratic secular state in historic Palestine and the use of an Arabic word traditionally connoting civil resistance are antisemitic hate speech. Congressional Democrats have joined Republicans in an effort to codify a definition of antisemitism so broad as to make it possible to suppress pro-Palestinian activism under civil rights statutes.
Democratic politicians have also joined Republicans in attacking anti-war and pro-divestment protesters as “pro-Hamas,” “pro-terrorist,” and “antisemitic,” citing incidents involving a tiny minority of extremists within the ranks of these protesters as somehow being representative of the entire movement and even portraying peaceful demonstrators as violent mobs who have threatened the physical safety of other students. Some Democratic officials, using language reminiscent of the 1960s, have also insisted, without evidence, that protesters were outside agitators paid by foreign authoritarian interests.
All of this will only fuel the resentment and cynicism of Democratic-leaning young voters angry at being slandered by Democratic politicians, having their anti-war organizations banned, and seeing Democrat-led city governments bring in cops to beat and pepper spray them.
As a result, for many young Americans, this election has gone well beyond Israel and Palestine. They see it as a question of democracy—showing that Democrats are not only willing to ignore the vast majority of their constituents in pursuing what they see as a fundamentally immoral policy of aiding and abetting a far-right government engaging in war crimes on a massive scale, but also attacking international legal institutions and human rights organizations seeking accountability, supporting corporate interests profiting from an illegal war and occupation, and actively suppressing dissent.
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, pointing out how Trump would pursue even worse policies in regard to Israel and Palestine—and how his election would threaten American democracy itself—is not enough. The Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
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Sunrise Protesters Arrested at VP's House Demanding Biden Declare a Climate Emergency
"We deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
Apr 15, 2024
Six young activists were arrested outside Vice President Kamala Harris' Los Angeles home on Monday while calling on the White House to declare a climate emergency, according to the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
Harris and President Joe Biden–Democrats who are seeking reelection in November—campaigned as climate champions in the 2020 cycle but have had a mixed record on the topic since entering office.
"My generation is spending our teenage years organizing for climate action because people like Kamala Harris have failed us," said Adah Crandall, one of the activists arrested after blockading the street outside her California residence overnight.
"We're ready to do whatever it takes to win a climate emergency declaration—we will camp out overnight, we will get arrested, we will mobilize our peers by the thousands to win the world we deserve," the 18-year-old continued. "The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
"The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
The White House has been praised for climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act as well was a recent pause on liquefied natural gas exports. However, the president has also faced criticism for continuing fossil fuel lease sales, backing the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Willow oil project, and skipping last year's United Nations summit.
Just last week, the Biden administration approved a license for a pipeline company to build the nation's largest offshore oil terminal off of Texas' Gulf Coast—despite surging fossil fuel pollution that is pushing up global temperatures.
Sunrise last week condemned the approval as "very disappointing" and also joined with Campus Climate Network and Fridays for Future USA to announce Earth Day demonstrations intended to pressure Biden to declare a climate emergency.
Biden
claimed last year that "practically speaking," he had already declared a national climate emergency; however, as campaigners and experts have stressed, actually doing so would unlock various federal powers to tackle the fossil fuel-driven crisis.
"Our communities in California breathe toxic air from fossil fuels and face fires that destroy our homes," noted 18-year-old Ariela Lara, who was arrested at Harris' home.
"I'm on the frontlines raising my voice for my Black and Latine families and friends," Lara added, "because I know that we deserve to have affordable housing and healthcare, we deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
The action targeting Harris came after a February protest at Biden's campaign headquarters in Delaware that also led to arrests.
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Why Biden’s Strident Support for Israel Could Lose Him Critical Youth Turnout
While few of these young anti-war voters will vote for Donald Trump, they are now far more likely to vote third party or not vote at all.
Mar 21, 2024
Young people are increasingly turning away from President Joe Biden as his administration refuses to budge in its support for Israel despite its assault on Gaza killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Older Americans, in contrast, largely remain in support of Biden’s stance. This generational gap could cost him the election.
A recent poll showed that 72% of voters ages 18 to 29 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war. That is a higher percentage of young voters than those who disapproved of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America, or even Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.
Another poll in December noted how 18 to 29-year-olds sympathized more with Palestinians than Israelis, while those over 65 were seven times more likely to sympathize with Israelis. Similarly, while two-thirds of Americans over 65 thought it “very important” for the United States to support Israel, only 14% of those under 30 agreed. A poll this past week showed that only 38% of Americans 18 to 34 have a positive view of Israel, as compared with 71% of those over 55.
The alienation of young Democratic-leaning voters by Democratic nominees supporting unpopular wars has led to weak Republican candidates narrowly defeating them on three occasions—1968, 2004, and 2016.
Perhaps even more than LGBTQ+ rights, there is no other political issue in which there is such a direct correlation between age and political attitude.
There are a number of reasons for this shift.
Younger Americans are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever, including a significantly larger population of Muslims than previous generations. People of color are more likely to identify with Palestinians against the predominantly white Israeli leadership. The younger generations also have a keener understanding of institutionalized racism, as exemplified in the Black Lives Matter uprising and movements for Indigenous rights. Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through those lenses, it is pretty hard to support Israel. Zionism, to many younger Americans, is seen as a settler-colonial project instead of a national liberation movement for Jews.
Another reason is that older Americans remember when Israel was led by social democrats who had created a relatively progressive society for its Jewish citizens, so it was easier to hide their racist and exclusionary policies. Israel provided its citizens with universal healthcare and a generous welfare program; many saw it as the Sweden of the Middle East. Socialist collective farms known as kibbutzim attracted idealistic volunteers from around the world, including Bernie Sanders and even Noam Chomsky. The ruling Labor Party was open to at least some territorial compromise, so they could claim it was the Arabs who were not interested in peace.
Younger Americans, by contrast, have only known Israel under right-wing leadership that categorically rules out a withdrawal from occupied territories. The government’s overt racism, implementation of what leading human rights groups refer to as a form or apartheid, colonization of the occupied West Bank, and savage repression of the Palestinian population have been the status quo for at least the last two decades.
While Israeli Jews have moved to the right, American Jews have been moving to the left, with nearly half of younger Jews believing that Biden is too supportive of Israel. As a result, it has become easier for non-Jews to be critical of Israel and U.S. policy without coming across as being motivated by antisemitism.
Yet another factor is that while older Americans get most of their news about the ongoing war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from mainstream media outlets, which still tend to somewhat favor the Israeli narrative, younger Americans increasingly get their news through TikTok and other social media, which more frequently relies on information directly from the source—including from Palestinians on the receiving end of the bombings.
Another point is that, unlike the first several decades of Israel’s existence when its support came from the liberal establishment, Israel’s biggest backers today are right-wing Republicans and Christian fundamentalists. Opposing U.S. support for Israel is now often perceived as part of the longstanding tradition of challenging U.S. support for other repressive right-wing governments engaging in war crimes in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, rather than unfairly singling out the world’s only Jewish state.
Still, another shift is that we are getting further away from the Holocaust. The guilt surrounding the failure of the United States to prevent it or even allow fleeing Jewish refugees into the country weighed heavily on many older Americans. And while overt antisemitism still exists, it has become harder to justify and get away with. Despite Biden’s insistence that “were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe,” most young Americans recognize that Jews are, in fact, relatively safe in the United States and most other democratic nations, so the need for an Israel—particularly at the expense of the Palestinians—is less persuasive.
Until recently, even among older U.S. progressives willing to criticize certain Israeli policies, Zionism was seen as a national liberation movement of an oppressed people. There was a recognition that all nationalist movements had both progressive and reactionary currents and that oppressive policies by a government did not necessarily negate their people’s national rights. The Zionist movement, like nationalist movements in Indochina, Southern Africa, and Latin America, were guilty of certain excesses but were still progressive manifestations of self-determination.
Not only has Israel’s rightward turn made it harder for younger Americans to appreciate such an analysis, but their conception of nationalism is very different than in previous decades when most nationalist struggles challenged colonialism and neocolonialism in the Global South. They see nationalism in the form of reactionary, chauvinistic, and racist movements like those that have emerged in post-Cold War Eastern Europe and elsewhere. And the kind of Zionism that dominates Israel today more closely resembles the latter than the former.
As a result of all the above, Biden’s strident support for the Israeli government, his opposition to an immediate and permanent cease-fire, his unwillingness to condition arms transfers to adherence to international humanitarian law, and his opposition to an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, has left younger voters significantly less likely to vote for him. His popularity among voters ages 18 to 34 has declined by 18%, a rate twice that of older voters, to an abysmal 30%. This is all the more disturbing in light of the fact that younger voters have normally been far more likely to vote Democratic and voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020.
While few of these young anti-war voters will vote for Donald Trump, they are now far more likely to vote third party or not vote at all. The past several election cycles have revealed that youth turnout is critical. When it is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Democrats lose. Even those willing to vote for Biden may now be far less likely to donate money or do the important door-to-door campaigning and the get-out-the-vote efforts that rely on an army of young volunteers.
The alienation of young Democratic-leaning voters by Democratic nominees supporting unpopular wars has led to weak Republican candidates narrowly defeating them on three occasions—1968, 2004, and 2016. It appears that this could very well happen again.
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