Opinion | Biden’s Highest Hurdle Isn’t Age, It’s Passion


Ufot, channeling the rapper Ice Dice, stated of Biden: “I want you to place your again into it!”

However each Ufot and Albright thought-about the hesitation about Biden’s age a little bit of a purple herring. For them, coverage and voter engagement — and the time and assets put into each — will likely be extra determinative.

On the coverage entrance, Albright believes that the polling for Democrats, notably within the fall of 2022, ticked up not solely as a result of the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade, but in addition as a result of Biden lastly took motion on pupil mortgage forgiveness, the passage of the Inflation Discount Act with probably the most important local weather provisions in American historical past and the passage of comparatively slender, however nonetheless important, federal gun laws. A half 12 months later, these Democratic wins can really feel like outdated information, however they have been agenda objects that Democratic voters, together with younger voters, cared deeply about.

So if Biden made positive factors on a few of the points that younger voters care about, why are the activists nonetheless involved?

Biden’s problem in relation to youthful voters isn’t a lot his age, however his posture, they are saying. He was elected partially as an antidote to the chaos of the Donald Trump years. However, as Albright sees it now, “a few of that stability that he affords, a few of that consolation or no matter that he affords some people, that has truly been, from our perspective, a part of the issue.”

“If you’re in a second like what we’re in,” Albright stated, “you need to acknowledge that this isn’t a time for the conventional, the standard, the nostalgia or no matter, and that you simply want one thing completely different.”