Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose upstate New York district includes several college campuses, argued that the dissatisfaction among young voters was not necessarily personal to Biden, but in part due to lack of faith in the functioning of government. For example, Gen Z saw the U.S embroiled in two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq—spanning most, if not all, of their lives—with little to show for it. “The trust in institutions to get it right is so low,” Ryan said.
Some young voters’ frustrations may stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates; in a recent interview with NBC News, one young voter faulted Biden for failing to codify Roe v. Wade after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to obtain an abortion. Democrats have introduced legislation to codify Roe in Congress, but they don’t have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster, and it wouldn’t pass in the GOP-controlled House anyway.
“Part of what we have to do over the next few months until the election is connect the policies of President Biden that are very popular with young people—from fighting for abortion rights, to delivering the largest amount of money in in climate action in history—to the actual administration, and to this ticket,” said Lobel, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested hundreds of millions of dollars in policies to combat climate change.