BOB EHRLICH: Here’s Why Biden Is Losing Support Among Twenty-Somethings

Recent polls reflect unexpected (bad) news for the Biden campaign, especially with respect to hugely important voting blocks within the Democratic Party’s base. Many pundits have focused on trend lines among Hispanics (especially Latinos) and African Americans that show declining enthusiasm for the prospect of another four years of Joe Biden.

But the truly startling numbers reflect a serious fall off of twenty-somethings, that familiar cohort that delivered big for the Democrats in 2020 and again in 2022.

The surface-deep media analysis of this phenomenon tends to focus on the president’s age, the economy and the political vulnerability that follows from the possibility of American military involvement in wars over Ukraine, Taiwan, and/or Israel. So, let’s take a quick look at these popular but inadequate explanations:

Age: It’s not Biden’s age per se. Rather it is how he looks, acts, and carries himself. He stumbles and falls and walks with an impossible to miss old age gait. To boot, he regularly engages in indecipherable mumbling, especially when attempting to speak at a rapid pace. It is, therefore, highly unlikely thisversion of Joe Biden will elicit the type of excitement young voters want.

Cost of living: Young people are traditionally more liberal-minded but also more sensitive to rapid spikes in the cost of living. And there is no doubt the cost of living has sky-rocketed under the inflationary policies of the Biden-Harris administration. It has accordingly become much more expensive to get married – secure a mortgage – and have kids. Poll after poll reflects the resulting frustration and explains why so many young people are postponing the traditional marriage-house-children life goals that had seemed so accessible a mere four years ago.

Some might argue that the President’s repeated attempts to forgive student loans might mitigate some of the political damage on this front, but I say not so fast. There is another side to this issue: Those high school graduates who resent paying off the loans of college/grad school students as well as the millions of Americans who paid off their loans without a thought of asking for a government bailout.