CNN’s Sara Sidner said if the Biden campaign doesn’t focus on garnering support among young voters over the Israel-Hamas war it “could be really damaging” to the president’s chances at re-election.
Biden has been struggling to hold onto support from younger voters amidst the war, with 43% of Americans opposed to sending weaponry to Israel, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Forty-six percent of Americans polled by Deseret News and HarrisX said they trust former President Donald Trump to handle the war, compared to just 36% who trust Biden more. An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from November also found that 44% of Democrats thought the U.S. was not being supportive enough of Palestinians.
Sidner asked CNN political analyst Seung Min Kim how the current disapproval ratings could impact the president’s re-election chances, especially in crucial swing states like Michigan. (RELATED: Kamala Harris Reportedly Pushing Biden To Be More Sympathetic To Palestinians)
“Well certainly when you’re talking about these swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, every vote really is going to matter. Especially when the battleground, those really contested states, aren’t that big. You are looking at the blue wall, certainly Biden’s campaign is looking to retain Georgia, Arizona. They have their eyes set on North Carolina, they’re carefully watching Nevada to make sure they don’t lose that state. So of course every vote is going to matter, and they’re really watching the discontent among the young voters and the Arab American voters certainly after the Israel-Hamas war broke out in early October,” Kim said.
“I think that they are — there’s two thoughts,” Kim continued. “Obviously, I think people generally feel that these aren’t voters that would necessarily go to Donald Trump, and the Biden campaign has been highlighting that obviously in the last several weeks. You are looking at their reminders to voters of the Muslim ban that then-president Donald Trump … implemented in the first weeks of office. But there is the concern, there’s always the concern of just discontent, that these voters, just, they don’t like Donald Trump, but they don’t like what Biden has done in office. And that apathy is really what the Biden campaign and Democrats are watching right now and make sure that doesn’t spill over and that discontent doesn’t spill over into next year when voters start voting.”
“Yeah I mean they may not go to the polls to vote for Donald Trump. They may not go to the polls at all if they can’t live with their decision and that could be really damaging to Joe Biden,” Sidner warned.
Biden has apparently begun to shift his outward public support of Israel, telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he must change his government because the nation was losing support over its alleged “indiscriminate bombing.”
“Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union. It has Europe. It has most of the world supporting them,” Biden said. “They’re starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
The move comes as allies warn Biden his pro-Israel stance could hurt him with young Democrats.