For some in the American commentary class, Joe Biden’s unpopularity remains a mystery. Is it the economy? Inflation? Gaza? Biden’s disastrous approval ratings make the question hard to ignore, but few seem able to answer it. As Ross Douthat fairly pointed out back in March, “there is no universal agreement or commonly concise articulation about why his presidency has been such a political failure.”
I don’t have any particular insight into the causes of Biden’s unpopularity. As a socialist, I thought (and was vocal about) that he would be a bad president, and that predictions of a “FDR-like” administration were more liberal wish-fulfillment than a serious possibility. The point is, for someone born close to Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration to run for reelection when 70% of voters didn’t want him to, it probably wasn’t a good idea. Whatever the official view on the state of the U.S. economy and the brilliance of Biden economics, there is still a lot of economic pain and general hardship remaining in the country as a whole, even if inflation slows.
But the debate’s tendency toward mystification is much more puzzling when it comes to Biden’s least popular demographic of voters. Having won the under-30 vote by a comfortable 23-point margin in 2020, Biden is now lagging behind Donald Trump with that generation in several battleground states and essentially tied nationally. Because it’s election season, analyses of Biden’s drop in support among young people tend to emphasize more immediate factors like the economy and cost of living, and the debate often focuses on whether these factors, or the president’s support for Israel’s continued destruction of Gaza, are the reasons reliably Democratic-leaning voters are defecting.
These are questions worth investigating. VoxFor example, Christian Paz notes that Biden was already losing support among young Americans before October 7, citing data suggesting that economic issues are a higher priority for young voters than more directly progressive concerns like war and climate change. Eric Levitz hypothesizes that an environment of reduced trust in government is likely to provide greater electoral benefit for the right, because the liberal mantra that “America has never been great” runs counter to the preferences of people who have lost faith in the system (while Trump’s message is more likely to appeal to them).
What’s more shocking than the fact that the incumbent president’s approval rating has plummeted among those under 30 is that anyone is surprised by it. Indeed, there is good reason to think that a deeper kind of alienation is at play among young people than can be reduced to any particular candidate or any particular election.
In this regard, a recent poll conducted by the Democratic firm Blueprint suggests that there is something more deep-seated and existential at work than how well a typical twenty-something from California or Michigan feels Biden has handled the cost-of-living crisis and the protests that have erupted on America’s college campuses. The online survey found that roughly half of 18-30 year olds don’t believe they or people like them are represented in the election, agreeing with statements like “the US political system doesn’t work for people like me” and “it doesn’t matter who wins the election, nothing is going to change.”
Meanwhile, an astonishing 64 percent believe America is in decline, and a slightly higher percentage agree that “most politicians are corrupt and use their political power to make money,” with only 7 percent disagreeing. In assessing these findings, Blueprint’s lead pollster Evan Ross Smith was surprisingly forthright about their meaning and impact: “I’m astonished by these statements, by the magnitude of the numbers among young voters. Young voters look at our politics and don’t see good people. They see a dying empire led by bad people.”
There are many interpretations for all this, and no single explanation is necessary to explain why Biden is currently declining among voters under 30. That said, the Blueprint survey shows that there is no need to mystify the broader skepticism that many now share toward politicians. It is foolish to think that age comes with inherent values, or that age neatly assigns people a particular measure of political wisdom or ignorance. Contrary to popular belief, young people have not always leaned left, and older voters have not always been the reliable bastions of conservatism that they are today. But people belonging to a particular generation who have lived through the same events often share a common view of politics, even if its contours are blurred and its implications highly variable.
In this light, it is absurd to think that the profound melancholy and perennial lack of optimism we see among today’s young people represents some kind of mystery. Those who grew up before the 1980s may remember the broadly shared prosperity of the postwar period and the sense of democratic possibility that came with it, but those born near the turn of the century grew up in its ruins, with wages stagnating and social programs dismantled, at the mercy of an increasingly financialized economy that offers few freedoms or security, while a wealthy few have accumulated levels of wealth not seen since the pre-democratic era.
They have watched presidents, Democratic and Republican, preside over destructive and unpopular wars and guardians of objectivity repeat lies to justify those wars. They have seen civil liberties eroded and stable employment turned into a luxury only a few can experience. They have come to learn that politicians are pathologically resistant to change, that political institutions are distant and foreign, and that they are disproportionately populated by people decades older whose bank balances tend to resemble the GDP of a small Balkan republic.
Left rhetoric may speak to these sentiments in the broadest terms, but it is also not particularly prone to channeling them to reactionary ends. In both 2016 and 2020, there were credible figures to voice the concerns of young people and defend them in the form of populist programs. In their absence, as we enter yet another election cycle in which no mainstream political option offers a real alternative to the current barren cruelty and peripheral despondency, it is no wonder that many people born after the 1990s feel more cynicism than hope today.
