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What Biden Owes Young Americans (Socialists Included)

What Biden Owes Young Americans (Socialists Included)

President-elect Joe Biden kept moderates, liberals and lefties together last week and won more votes than anyone in U.S. history. But it’s already clear how tricky it’s going to be to maintain or expand that coalition. Some of the moderates peeled away to vote for down-ballot Republicans. Meanwhile, many on the left were never going to be happy voting for Biden, requiring the national emergency of the Donald Trump presidency to force a grudging hand.

Yet they voted. And some young, left-leaning voters did a good deal more, donating time and energy to a campaign that they didn’t fully trust or believe in. Democrats have powerful reasons to reward those voters as best they can. If those young voters grow into middle-aged Democrats, the advantages accruing to the party could stretch for decades.

According to the Circle research institute at Tufts University, Biden wouldn’t have prevailed against Trump without voters aged 18 to 29. His margins among young people in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania all exceeded his statewide margins of victory. And that margin was decisive nationwide.

According to estimates provided by exit polls, Biden:

  • Won first-time voters by 66% to 32%
  • Won voters aged 18 to 24 (9% of voters) by 67% to 29%
  • Won voters aged 25 to 29 (7% of voters) by 55% to 42%
  • Won voters aged 30 to 39 (16% of voters) by 52% to 45%

There is a powerful racial component to those numbers. The younger an American is, the less likely that American is to be White. But even among Whites, the majority of whom once again voted for Trump, the 18-to-29 cohort was Trump’s weakest age group.

Socialism has been polling favorably among young Americans for the past decade, an era scarred by a global financial crisis and intense wealth inequality. Bernie Sanders was the choice of the young in the 2020 Democratic primary, as he was in 2016. But with Republicans routinely calling mainstream Democrats such as Barack Obama and Biden “socialists,” it’s hard to know exactly what broad support for “socialism” means. Is Medicare for All socialist enough? What’s the difference between socialism and aggressive efforts to curtail climate change? Where is the line?

In a somewhat peevish interview with the New York Times last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her concerns that the left will once again get the brushoff now that Democrats have secured the White House. “The history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected,” she said. “And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.”

Biden’s presidency is going to be constrained — either by Republicans, if Democrats fail to win two Georgia Senate runoff elections in January, or by the most conservative Democratic senators, if Democrats do manage to win both contests. (Based on current projections, Democrats need to win both Georgia races to produce a 50/50 partisan alignment in the Senate, under which Vice President Kamala Harris would cast tie-breaking votes.)

The left is simply not going to get what it wants on a variety of issues, from health care and taxes to green energy investment. Without a cushion in the Senate, Biden couldn’t deliver left policy on those even if he wanted to. But Biden will have significant influence on how Democrats frame those issues, and also on how they treat racial justice — including policing. Biden promised, for example to “expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.”

The Harvard Youth Poll released in late October found that 70% of 18- to 29-year-olds (including half of Republicans in that group) “think that the government should do more to reduce systemic racism.” Black Lives Matter brought millions into the streets this year. If ever there were an easy contrast to draw with Trump, and one on which progress can be made through both executive rhetoric and action, this is it.

Likewise, Biden can produce immediate relief for young immigrants in the U.S., including students and those in the Deferred Acton for Childhood Arrival program, both of whom were victims of Trump policy. On climate, too, Biden, who has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord immediately, has the capacity for both symbolic and tangible results without congressional support.

Like the past two presidencies, Biden’s will begin acutely polarized by race. Trump’s marginal improvement among some Hispanic and Black voters doesn’t alter the reality that MAGA is a fundamentally racial movement with clearly defined racial goals. The easiest part of the White electorate for Democrats to reach is young people. And because partisan attachments begin early, often with the first president a voter chooses, those voters can keep paying political dividends.

Governing is choosing. After Biden is sworn in as the oldest president in American history, he should choose whenever possible to put his party squarely on the side of the young.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson writes about U.S. politics and domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously executive editor of the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.