Young Voters

 Jon Chait makes a bit of a thin argument about young voters being less progressive than originally thought. There are some shocking polls showing as much as a 30 point swing against Biden and towards Trump. What makes this so bizarre is that young voters tend to say they prioritize the following:

- Climate action
- Gun safety
- Tolerance towards LGBTQ
- Pro-choice policies
- Pro-Palestinians policies

On every single one of these issues, Biden is closer to what they want than Trump, so why are they moving towards Trump. Chait's conclusion is that they are actually more moderate and conservative than we think. Defying almost all other data, we have to conclude that young people are moderate and conservative despite holding more liberal positions. One data point he notes is that Black and Hispanic voters are actually a lot more moderate than White Democrats and since young people are more racially diverse, they must also be more moderate. However, most of the Black and Hispanic moderates are church folks who tend to be older. There is certainly an argument - a strong argument - that what James Carville called "faculty lounge politics" lands flat with non-college educated Black and Hispanic voters.

While I was skeptical at first, I do think Biden's embrace of Israel is definitely hurting him with young "progressive" voters. The problem is that Trump would already have us bombing Gaza alongside the IDF. A number of young voters anecdotally have said "I can't vote for Biden." The worry, of course, is that they vote for some charlatan like Cornell West.

Any campaign that depends on the youth vote is likely in trouble, frankly. They tend to be fickle and turning them out can be problematic. However, losing the youth vote would probably doom Biden. Young voters of ANY era tend to be more liberal than their older counterparts. 

My gut feeling is that this is the famous "vibes" problem. Inflation hit recent college graduates fairly hard, but as that eases the "vibes" should improve. 

The big conundrum is how to package Trump for young voters. Since being booted off Twitter, Trump has been screaming frothing nonsense over at Truth Social. His campaign events are outright fascistic calls for racial purity. He is directly responsible for Dobbs. His every utterance is a moment away from uttering the N-word. If you were to feed Trump's unhinged rhetoric to younger voters - especially those younger Black and Hispanic voters - Biden recoups his loses. (In fact, we might be starting to see some of that.)

However, we also know that the Republican Party is a cult. Anything Trump says becomes what they believe (see the 2020 party platform). Mainlining his bilious hatred into mainstream media will not turn off so-called "moderate" Republicans, it will simply become the established beliefs of tens of millions of Americans. 

The Biden campaign's strategy is apparently to use social media figures to re-shape the debate around Trump and Biden. Remind people how bad it was under Trump, point out that while you might be frustrated that Biden has not delivered your pony yet, Trump will send all ponies to the abattoir. I think it could pay off.

Still, the key to a comfortable election season will be a conviction of Trump this spring. I was a it skeptical of the Merrick Garland hate in 2021-2, but if that trial had already happened, we could settle down to a normal election with Trump safely behind bars.

The question thus becomes this: will young voters understand the stakes if it turns out to be (as it almost certainly will be) a Biden-Trump rematch? I think they will, and as for Chait, he did think DeSantis was the wave of the future so....