Politics
As protests roil college campuses, young voters' support for Biden hangs in the balance
After days of protests roiling college campuses, President Biden broke his silence with a short, terse speech condemning the chaos and calling for order, while also holding up protest as a fundamental American right.
Will Biden’s comments be enough to sate young voters? Some political analysts think not.
“For Biden to get back on track with young voters, he needs to think and act differently and really take to heart what these young activists have been asking for,” said Diane Wong, assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University.
In a five-minute speech at the White House on Thursday, the president tried to balance two fundamental principles — the right to protest and the rule of law.
“Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation — none of this is a peaceful protest.”
In addition to calling on their universities to divest from companies doing business in Israel, students have called on the administration to withhold military support from Israel. They’ve also urged Biden to push harder for a peaceful solution in the war between Israel and Hamas.
“Mr. President,” a reporter asked, “have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?”
“No,” Biden said, turning away from the lectern and leaving the room.
Biden’s dismissive reaction to students’ concerns about Gaza has already hampered his campaign, Wong said, pointing out that students at Rutgers University, located in New Jersey, campaigned to push Democratic Michiganers to vote “uncommitted” rather than cast a ballot for Biden in Michigan’s primary.
For months, the Biden campaign has been pushing issues seemingly close to young voters’ hearts — forgiving student debt, advocating for abortion access and even reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Still, Democratic strategist Carly Cooperman said, the campaign’s messaging is not cutting through to youth voters.
“We’ve seen poll after poll show that Biden is just underwater with this group,” Cooperman said.
Wong said the Biden campaign is banking on wooing young voters with issues other than Gaza.
“To me, that seems risky, and a move that Biden will likely regret come November,” Wong said. “Because yes, Gen Z are not single-issue voters, but they’ve collectively just experienced some of the worst political repression on college campuses that we’ve seen in decades. And trauma from from this kind of violence is remembered.”
Until this week, Biden had left it to other administration officials to speak out about the college protests. Former President Trump also has said relatively little, though on Wednesday he praised police for cracking down on protests at Columbia University, and called the students “raging lunatics” and “Hamas sympathizers.”
He mused about whether the students who vandalized campus buildings would be prosecuted in the same way as his supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Young voters famously don’t vote at the same rates as older adults and retirees. Still, their turnout has inched up in recent years. The 2022 midterms saw the second-highest percentage of voters ages 18-29 casting their ballots, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC’s Price School.
A poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, released last month, found that more than half of Americans between 18 and 29 say they will vote in November — which is on par with its 2020 findings.
“Young people today have clear concerns about where our country is headed,” Setti Warren, director of the institute, said in a statement. “From worries about the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and climate, young people across the country are paying attention and are increasingly prepared to make their voices heard at the ballot box this November.”
One of the foremost issues young voters agree on is support for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Slightly more than half of 18- to 29-year-olds support a cease-fire while 10% oppose, the Youth Poll found.
Biden’s dilemma with young voters over his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict has become even more pronounced after a week of protests on college campuses. College-educated youth voters are both Biden’s most likely supporters and those most closely following news about the conflict.
The Harvard poll found that youth voters with a college degree are 50% more likely to pay attention to the news about Israel-Hamas, compared to 39% of current college students and 32% of those who never attended college.
Those voters without degrees present a particular challenge to Biden.
“There’s a lot of voters who don’t have college degrees,” Cooperman said. “And these younger people are really struggling with day-to-day cost of living and the impact of inflation. For them, they’re generally discouraged and unhappy with the status quo. And their current president is Biden. So there is an aspect of this that becomes a referendum on him.”
Trump’s support among young voters generally pales in comparison to his rival — Biden leads by 19% among likely voters under 30, according to the Harvard poll. But, the poll notes, “The race is even among those not in college and without a four-year degree.”
For college students, the war in Gaza is creating unusual momentum for political engagement, Romero said. Typically, she said, political issues in the news do not translate to droves of young voters going to the polls. But the Middle East war is different.
“The topic itself lends it, because of how big it’s intertwined with the Biden administration and their policies,” Romero said. “And it’s an election year, where they feel they have some power. There’s some consequence. They can hold the administration accountable.”
Campaigns would be smart to capitalize on the youth engagement by offering a listening tour, she added.
“Just from an engagement, democratic process perspective, this is an opportunity for the president for both parties to talk to young people about what they care about, and campaign around their positions,” Romero said, while acknowledging, “This is of course an incredibly difficult issue to navigate.”
While Biden has been reluctant to address young voters directly on the issue, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) is one of the Biden campaign’s go-to surrogates grappling with Gaza.
Though Khanna supports the president, he has has been outspoken about his belief that the U.S. should refrain from sending more military aid to Israel, and has been open about his disagreements with Biden on the issue.
In a recent visit to the University of Wisconsin Madison, Khanna asked a roomful of Jewish and Muslim students about their views on Biden, according to a video he posted to X Wednesday.
“The generation in Washington, regardless of party, has been unable to solve it,” Khanna said of the Middle East conflict. “And my hope is more with your generation.”
The school year will soon end, and there’s no telling where pro-Palestinian encampments on campuses — or young voters’ support for Biden — will go.
Ever since Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024, Democratic politicians, activists and policy wonks have argued about whether the party should move toward the left or the center.
But in this week’s New York Times/Siena poll, there’s a lot more common ground than one might expect within the Democratic coalition — a group defined here as Democrats, Democratic-leaning independents and independents who voted for Ms. Harris.
A surprisingly clear majority of the Democratic coalition is mostly fine with where the party stands on the issues overall. Only 20 percent say it’s “too far” to the left; only 17 percent say it’s “too far” to the right. The dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party seems less about its ideology and more about its failures to stop President Trump — whether in the last election or once in government.
With Democrats generally satisfied with the party’s ideological position, the poll arguably contains the outlines of a potential path forward for the party. Respondents offered relatively clear answers on three basic questions that have divided the party since the last election: They say Democrats should embrace economic populism, oppose aid to Israel and find modest ways to shift toward the center on the cultural issues thought to have contributed to President Trump’s victory in 2024.
This path happens to have a lot in common with the Democratic politicians who have seemed to resonate across the party’s ideological spectrum this cycle, like Graham Platner in Maine or Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia. While Mr. Platner is more progressive and Mr. Ossoff more moderate, they’ve both earned a reputation for attacking corruption and corporate power, they’ve supported restrictions on offensive military aid to Israel, and they’ve de-emphasized the culture wars.
But the debate within the party hasn’t been about whether to embrace this specific mix of populist economics, moderation in the culture wars and the progressive view on Israel. Instead, the biggest argument is whether the party as a whole should move toward its left or center flanks. On that question, voters in our poll appear more divided.
Overall, 47 percent of the Democratic coalition said they would like to see the party move toward the center, while 28 percent said the party should move to the left, and 19 percent said the party shouldn’t move at all.
A slightly higher proportion — 52 percent — said the party needs to move to the center to win the next presidential election, compared with 25 percent who say it needs to move left and 18 percent who say it doesn’t need to move in either direction to win.
In each case, the centrist position may not be quite as far in the lead as it looks. If “move to the left” and “do nothing” are combined, the party is split 47-47 on whether to move to the center. When the question shifts to “in order to win” the 2028 election, moving to the center is ahead by a modest margin of 52 percent to 43 percent.
The appetite for a shift to the center also looks weaker when voters are asked about specific issues, including those often blamed for Ms. Harris’s defeat, like immigration or transgender rights. On immigration, just 46 percent said the party needed to move to the center to win, while only 38 percent said the same about transgender issues (though in each case, voters may feel that Democrats have already made some movement toward the center).
Perhaps even more important, the preference for shifting toward the center vanishes altogether when voters are asked about bread-and-butter issues, like the economy and health care. Most strikingly, half of the Democratic coalition wanted to see the party move toward the left on health care, compared with only 25 percent who wanted to see it move toward the center. Democratic supporters split roughly evenly on whether the party should move to the center or the left on economics, with 38 percent saying the party should move to the center and 37 percent calling for a move toward the left.
The poll found very little awareness of the so-called “abundance” movement, which calls for making it easier for the government and the private sector to build more housing and energy. More than 90 percent of the Democratic coalition said they had never heard of it. When asked whether they preferred a candidate who would pursue those goals or one who would try to lower prices by going after corporate monopolies, Democratic supporters preferred the populist by a two-to-one margin.
The party’s preference for a candidate who goes after the nation’s largest corporations — and presumably issues like wealth inequality and corruption — is underpinned by broad and deep dissatisfaction with the nation’s economic system. Overall, 88 percent of the Democratic coalition said the economic system was generally unfair to most Americans. A similarly large 83 percent said the political and economic system in America needs at least “major changes.”
And while the war in Gaza divided progressives from the party’s establishment during the Biden years, the progressive view on Israel is more like a point of consensus today. Only 15 percent of the Democratic coalition says it sympathizes with Israel more than with Palestinians, while 74 percent opposes additional military and economic support for Israel.
These examples of relatively populist and progressive policy preferences don’t necessarily mean that Democrats are always opposed to moving to the center. Two-thirds of the Democratic coalition does want to move to the center on at least one of immigration, transgender issues or crime, and nearly 70 percent say doing so is necessary to win in 2028, even if there is not a consensus on exactly which issue it should be. Of all the issues tested, “crime” is the one where Democrats are the likeliest to say the party should move to the center.
It’s also worth noting that respondents may want the party to move to the center in ways that do not necessitate shifting on policy. Although this was not asked in the poll, the backlash against “woke” was often less about the Democratic Party’s policy platform and more about a kind of righteous and identity-centric politics that had spread into everyday life.
Deliberately or not, the Democratic Party’s politicians have been inching toward the consensus positions found in the poll. In their own ways, many of this cycle’s most successful Democrats, like Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Platner and even Zohran Mamdani, could be said to fit the description across all three areas of consensus, even though they hail from very different parts of the ideological spectrum.
Whether this emerging solution to the party’s internal divisions would address the party’s other problems is another matter. The poll doesn’t offer insight into whether this kind of candidate would stand a much better chance of winning the general election in 2028, let alone winning by the decisive margin that Mr. Trump’s growing unpopularity could potentially allow. It also can’t foretell whether the party would succeed once in government if it enacted such an agenda. And of course, it was the party’s perceived failures in elections and governance that left Democratic voters dissatisfied and its elites searching for a new direction in the first place.
There’s no reason to assume that the preferences of the Democratic coalition offer a solution to those bigger challenges.
The detailed polling cross-tabs are available here.
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A top Senate Republican is publicly pressuring President Donald Trump against pursuing what he described as a weak Iran deal as administration officials signal negotiations with Tehran are making progress.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a sharply worded warning Thursday urging Trump not to abandon military pressure on the Iranian regime in favor of diplomacy.
“We are at a moment that will define President Trump’s legacy,” Wicker said in a statement. “His instincts have been to finish the job he started in Iran, but he is being ill advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on.”
REPUBLICANS URGE TRUMP TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON HIS PLAN TO DISMANTLE IRAN’S NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES
“Our commander-in-chief needs to allow America’s skilled armed forces to finish the destruction of Iran’s conventional military capabilities and reopen the strait,” Wicker went on. “Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness. We must finish what we started. It is past time for action.”
The remarks expose growing tension inside Republican national security circles as the Trump administration weighs whether to pursue a negotiated agreement with Iran or continue its military campaign against the Iranian regime and its nuclear capabilities.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a sharply worded warning Thursday urging Trump not to abandon military pressure on the Iranian regime in favor of diplomacy. (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.
Wicker’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged there had been “some progress” in ongoing negotiations with Iran, while cautioning that no agreement had been reached.
“There’s been some progress,” Rubio said Thursday. “I wouldn’t exaggerate it. I wouldn’t diminish it.”
Wicker’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged there had been “some progress” in ongoing negotiations with Iran. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’re not there yet,” Rubio added. “I hope we get there.”
Rubio said key issues remain unresolved, including Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and whether Tehran would be permitted any future uranium enrichment capability under a potential agreement.
“The issue of highly enriched uranium has to be discussed. Its disposition has to be dealt with. And of course, the issue of future enrichment has to be dealt with as well,” Rubio said.
He also indicated discussions involving the Strait of Hormuz remain part of broader negotiations.
The comments marked one of the clearest public signs yet that active diplomacy between Washington and Iran remains underway despite recent military escalation and fears of a wider regional conflict.
Trump himself recently signaled he remains open to giving diplomacy additional time before considering further military action.
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
“If I can save war by waiting a couple of days, if I can save people being killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it’s a great thing to do,” Trump said in recent days.
PAKISTAN’S AMBASSADOR WARNS IRAN TOO ‘WAR-TORN’ TO RESPOND QUICKLY AS TRUMP EXTENDS STRIKE DEADLINE
The administration’s diplomatic push has coincided with intensified regional mediation efforts, including a high-profile visit by Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to Iran — a trip widely viewed as part of broader backchannel efforts aimed at reducing tensions between Washington and Iran.
The visit fueled further speculation that Pakistan is playing a quiet intermediary role as negotiators explore possible frameworks to avoid additional military escalation.
Still, Rubio repeatedly emphasized Thursday that negotiations remain fragile and could ultimately collapse.
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“We’re dealing with a very difficult group of people,” Rubio said. “It may not” happen
He added that Trump “has other options” if diplomacy fails, while stressing the president still prefers “the negotiated option and having a good deal.”
Americans always say they want politicians with backbone — men and women of principle who will stand up for what they believe in, even when it’s unpopular.
And every so often, the American people prove their commitment to this noble aspiration by firing anybody who actually tries it.
Take Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who just lost a reelection bid by double digits after President Trump’s affiliated committees dumped enough money into Kentucky to purchase, well, Kentucky.
Massie committed the cardinal sin of modern Republican politics: He behaved as though Congress were a coequal branch of government instead of the warm-up act before a Trump rally.
He bucked Trump on spending, Iran and — in what apparently qualified as political suicide — whether or not to release the Epstein files. For this display of independent thought, Massie was summarily retired by what can only be described as the Trump cult (formerly known as the Republican primary electorate).
Before anybody accuses me of hyperbole, consider the remarkably revealing example presented recently on the New York Times podcast, “The Daily.”
At a town hall in Burlington, Ky., one voter explained to Massie that Trump is basically omniscient.
“As I see it,” the voter said, “the one person in the whole United States, maybe the world, that understands everything and has input to everything is Donald Trump.”
Not content with mere earthly wisdom, Trump also possesses universal awareness, superior intelligence and perhaps even low-level clairvoyance. The voter continued that Trump “gets more information, more meetings, more everything” than anybody else in government.
When Massie noted that Trump opposed releasing the Epstein files, the man calmly explained that if Trump changed positions, “there was a reason” — one too profound for ordinary mortals to comprehend.
Massie’s reply deserves to be bronzed and mounted over the entrance to the U.S. Capitol: “I don’t give anybody but God that kind of trust.”
Unfortunately, for a large portion of the Republican electorate (about 55%, based on the Kentucky primary results), those words constitute sacrilege against their earthly savior.
As South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham cheerfully boasted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “This is the party of Donald Trump.” Which is true in much the same way North Korea is the party of Kim Jong Un.
The one ironic twist in all of this is that Americans finally managed to punish somebody over the Epstein files — only it turned out to be the guy who wanted them released.
There’s American justice for you.
Massie isn’t the only Republican currently being fitted for concrete shoes. Trump also helped finish off Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, whose unforgivable crime was voting to convict Trump during the impeachment trial following Jan. 6. And Trump has endorsed controversial Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, which in today’s GOP primary environment is roughly the equivalent of finding a horse head in your bed.
Now, to be fair, Cassidy and Cornyn are no Massie, who openly opposed Trump and paid the price standing upright. Cassidy and Cornyn demonstrated brief moments of independence, only to spend years vainly performing political interpretive dance routines in hopes of regaining Trump’s favor.
Still, there may be a silver lining here for students of political irony.
Trump’s endorsement of Paxton will force Republicans to spend enormous sums defending a deep red state that would ordinarily require little more than a campaign sign and a pickup truck.
Meanwhile, Trump is creating resentful lame-duck Republicans in Congress who now possess the most dangerous attribute in politics: nothing left to lose.
But the broader message is unmistakable. Trump wants Republicans to understand that disagreement will not be tolerated. No criticism. No distancing. No independent branding.
The party line is whatever Trump said five minutes ago, amended by whatever he says five minutes from now. By now, everyone knows this to be true.
Which would be excellent news for Trump, if not for one small complication: The rest of the country appears to be tiring of his act. Recent polling shows Trump’s approval slipping to 37%, while Democrats gain major ground, surging to a +11 on the generic congressional ballot.
Trump, it seems, has created a situation in which Republicans can either oppose him and be destroyed in a primary, or they can embrace him and risk losing the House and the Senate in November’s general election. It’s the old “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum.
The point is this: With the midterms approaching, Trump is making sure Republicans are ensnared in the gravitational pull of his unpopularity.
That may satisfy the president’s desire for complete loyalty. It may also hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress.
Trump is settling all family business this week, by purging those pesky disloyal Republicans. Only time will tell whether he’s also purging America’s non-Republican “swing” voters, as well.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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