Former Obama adviser Van Jones argued that while some young people are angry about President Biden’s foreign policy stance on the war between Israel and Hamas, they have been outraged for years about their economic situation at home.
"It should be a wake-up call," CNN senior political commentator Jones said Monday of new polling on CNN News Central. "Young people are upset, and it's not just the situation in Gaza. The economic prospects for young people are miserable."
Amid the war in Gaza, President Biden has struggled to maintain support from young people as well as Muslim and Arab Americans. During a previous broadcast in February, Jones said Biden faces a "big problem" as he has been labeled "Genocide Joe" by young voters.
CNN host John Berman spoke to multiple guests about a new poll from the New York Times indicating that former President Trump has made significant gains with voters who would normally be in Biden’s coalition.
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"’Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds and Hispanic voters, even though each group gave Mr. Biden more than 60% of their vote in 2020,'" Berman quoted from the Times' write-up.
"’Mr. Trump also wins more than 20 percent of Black voters — a tally that would be the highest level of Black support for any Republican presidential candidate since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964,'" he continued reading.
"That’s some paragraph about swing state polls a few months before the election, Van," he said.
Jones agreed the results were alarming and said part of young voters' anger stems from economic misery.
"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," he said. "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 feeling, hearing a full-throated approach to the young people."
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"There’s a symbolic piece around student loans," Jones added. "That’s not going to be enough for Joe Biden."
