(Headline USA) Joe Biden’s toleration of oil drilling, weak attempts to regulate TikTok, and failure to eliminate student loan debt threatens to alienate his young and spoiled ‘voter-base.’
Youth turnout ‘surged’ in the three elections since 2016. These young and impressionable voters helped Biden appear to eke out victories in swing states in 2020 and to pick up a Democratic Senate seat in the 2022 election.
But the 80-year-old president has never been the favorite candidate of young woke leftist. As Biden gears up for a potential re-election campaign, actually governing by banning TikTok, allowing drilling in Alaska, and failing to forgive student loan debt is weighing him down.
The risk for Biden is that young leftist will sit out the election altogether.
“I’m a Democrat, but I’m not voting for Biden,” said Mark Buehlmann, a 20-year-old Arizona State University student who said he likely would abstain if Biden is the Democratic nominee, as expected. “He’s maybe capable of doing a good job, but he’s not capable of gathering the troops, rallying the people. Especially the Democratic voter base. I don’t think he’s a strong candidate.”
Part of Biden’s Treasury Department, has threatened to ban TikTok if ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake in the app, according to a Wall Street Journal report this month.
President Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but the move was blocked in court and later rescinded when Biden took office.
The Biden administration also irked environmentalists and young people by approving the Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.
Young activists have been particularly active in pushing to drastically reduce oil drilling and move away from reliance fossil fuels. Before the president’s decision, a #StopWillow campaign garnered millions of views on TikTok and other social media sites.
Meanwhile, his plan to wipe out billions of dollars in student loan debt is in jeopardy at the Supreme Court. The effort, announced shortly before last year’s midterms, was an attempt by Biden to win more young voters over after defeating the old socialist, Bernie Sanders. in the 2020 election.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
