CNN’s Van Jones said young people are “miserable” under President Joe Biden’s leadership, which may spell bad news for the president ahead of the 2024 election.
Jones pointed to young people’s grievances about the economy, artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the workforce, and the Israel-Hamas war as reasons why Biden and former President Donald Trump are “essentially tied” among 18-to-29-year-olds. A poll conducted by The New York Times/Sienna College found over 60% of the young demographic, along with Hispanic voters, voted for Biden in 2020.
“It should be a wake-up call,” Jones told CNN’s John Berman Monday. “Young people are upset, and it’s not just the situation in Gaza. The economic prospects for young people are miserable, and that’s been building under Obama, it’s been building under Trump, it’s building under Biden. We just do not have a pathway for young people to be able to pay off their student debt, get a house. People are looking at this AI wave and are worried about what job, what career path — and so that pain has to be spoken to directly and specifically. And I think that we’re not yet hearing a full-throated approach to the young people. There’s a symbolic piece about the student loans, that’s not gonna be enough for Joe Biden.”
The poll further found Trump is continuing to lead in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Nevada. Nearly 40 percent of Trump supporters said the economy and the cost of living is the most important issue, as many young people have had to cut back on their way of living under Biden’s leadership. (RELATED: CNN’s Van Jones Warns ‘Republicans Are Not Afraid Of Joe Biden’)
Left-wing pundits have warned of the potential consequences of the anti-Israel campus protests that have led to hundreds of arrests, commencement cancellations and violent clashes with law enforcement. A mob of 200 protesters barricaded Hamilton Hall at Columbia University and trapped three janitors in the process.
Many have compared these protests to the anti-Vietnam campus occupations of 1968, an election year that witnessed the victory of former then-Republican nominee Richard Nixon.
Biden has lost support among the key black and Hispanic vote, a demographic that has overwhelmingly voted Democrat since the Civil Rights movement. The president garnered 63% support from black voters in a GenForward survey from the University of Chicago ahead of the 2024 election, after receiving 92% of support from black voters in 2020.
The Times/Sienna poll found just 13% of voters believe Biden will bring the major societal changes needed in his second term while believing Trump will make changes to the status quo.
