On Wednesday, The Hill posted an opinion piece by a young voter who has worked for and voted for Democrats in the past, but is voting for President Trump this year.
The author notes:
The generation that was raised during the global financial crisis and the onsets of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been a stalwart for the Democratic Party for over a decade. I was knocking doors for President Obama and local Democrats in 2012 even before I could vote.
I served as a College Democrats chapter president through the 2016 election cycle, and then voted for President Biden in 2020. In 2024, less than four years into the Biden administration, the world and our country have entered alarming trajectories. If Biden is nominated for reelection, he will be the first Democratic nominee whom I do not support.
The author explains:
Now disapproval of Biden is widespread among young voters, with him losing 18–29 year-olds and all under-45 voters when polled against all general election candidates. The dissent is not baseless, and not all young dissenters are doing so because of American support for Israel’s war against Hamas. Beyond Biden’s personal cognitive challenges, his administration’s policies are having indefensible consequences.
The United States is now entrenched in numerous international conflicts, each of which is increasingly dangerous and more complicated than a good-versus-evil narrative. Biden is largely responsible for escalating the Russia-Ukraine war, funding Ukraine through their incremental defeat while ignoring diplomatic negotiation and ceasefire offers. Biden has also allowed the funding of Iran throughout their proxy war against American and our Middle East allies. Meanwhile, North Korea has abandoned the decades-long reconciliation process with South Korea, following our escalation of multilateral military exercises in the region. Nuclear world war is now more probable than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The author also comments on the ‘threat to Democracy’ accusation that the Biden administration and the press frequently use against President Trump:
Biden supporters may say that none of these issues are dispositive because they pale in comparison to President Trump’s “threat to democracy.” Yet, if protecting American democracy is a top priority, as it should be, then we all must be alarmed by the unprecedented prosecution of a presidential candidate on novel legal theories, in the middle of a campaign. Regardless of what the appellate court decides, the political weaponization of prosecutorial discretion is anti-democratic and disconcerting.
Many voters in the younger generations are thinking about these various crises and their consequences for the rest of the 21st century when evaluating Biden’s administration, not just one issue like some suggest. They are looking for a president who can stand up to the corporate lobbies and transcend partisanship to execute meaningful reform. Biden demonstrably is not that president.
Maybe our education system is working better than we thought!