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In the throes of the pandemic, Darcy Pollard’s first full-time job was pulling long hours on the digital team of the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign. From her childhood bedroom in Maryland, Pollard monitored where on the web the campaign’s ads popped up in order to ensure Biden’s ad dollars were being spent wisely.
At the time, Pollard was eager to help elect Biden over President Donald Trump, hoping a Democratic victory would lead to meaningful differences in health care and student loan reform. Four years later, she has mixed feelings about what many would consider an impressive bullet point on a young politico’s resume. “I feel incredibly embarrassed for having worked for him,” says Pollard, who was 20 when she started the job during a gap year in college. “I’m glad I did the work, but it’s really hard to have my name attached to him now.”
She was one of more than 500 former Biden 2020 staffers who in November signed an open letter imploring Biden to call for an Israeli ceasefire. As of mid-February, at least 28,000 people—including thousands of children—have died in the ongoing conflict. Roughly 2 million people have reportedly been displaced.
Some of the signers, like Pollard, believe Biden is complicit in the destruction. They cite his failure to pressure Israel to de-escalate its assault on Gaza and his administration sending unconditional military aid to Israel, bypassing congressional approval in the process.
“Mr. President, you have spoken intimately about the unbearable pain and grief of losing a child—we were shocked and saddened to see you justify the death of Palestinian children as ‘the price of waging a war,’” read the letter Pollard signed.
The sentiment that Biden is blundering the crisis in the Middle East is widely shared within Pollard’s age cohort. A New York Times poll in late December revealed that only 3 percent of voters between 18 and 29 strongly supported the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war; nearly half of these voters strongly disapproved. Even among Democrats, Biden is increasingly at odds with one of the party’s largest voting blocs: the youth. Between October and November, the proportion of young Democrats who viewed Biden as “too pro-Israeli” doubled, increasing from 21 percent to 42 percent, according to a University of Maryland–Ipsos poll.
But the political issue Biden faces in 2024 isn’t merely that young people might not feel compelled to vote for him. Young people like Pollard—often childless and more able to take on low-paid or even unpaid entry-level campaign work with unconventional hours and an abrupt end date of November 6—might not feel motivated to campaign for him.
“Personally, I would have a harder time going to work for them,” remarks Gwen Schroeder, who says at 40 she was the oldest member of a Biden 2020 video team. She adds, “We have missed the opportunity to save countless lives, and to do literally anything to pressure Netanyahu to take a different approach.” Schroeder signed the letter from 2020 Biden campaign workers, but she says she would begrudgingly support Biden over Trump this year.
In addition to those Biden 2020 staffers who have protested, 17 current Biden 2024 staffers recently urged the president to press for a permanent ceasefire in an open letter. Several prominent young TikTok and Instagram influencers who have promoted Biden’s policy agenda through White House events are also growing disillusioned with the administration, citing Biden’s position on Israel and Palestine as a primary factor. And more than a half-dozen current and former leaders from large, youth-centric grassroots political organizations, such as March for Our Lives, GenZ for Change, and the Sunrise Movement, penned their own letter in November calling on Biden to restrain Israel.
“Young people are a cornerstone of a winning Democratic coalition, and the vast majority of young people in this country are rightfully horrified by the atrocities committed with our tax dollars, with your support, and our nation’s military backing,” these activists wrote. “We did not spend hours upon hours knocking doors and making calls to turn out the vote so that you could support indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and violations of international law.”
Democratic campaigns rely on young staffers.
But Biden’s backing of Israel has made some question working for him.
Derek French/SOPA/ZUMA
The open letters may be the tip of the iceberg of the eroding support among young progressives. Conversations with more than a dozen former Biden 2020 staffers, senior aides from other past Democratic presidential campaigns, leaders of political canvassing networks, and content creators with large youth followings suggest mounting outrage with the president’s longstanding deference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will cause young foot soldiers who typically do much of the work to turn out the Democratic vote to sit this election out. Some will neither vote for Biden nor do the pivotal work of encouraging other voters to turn out.
“Increasingly, our democratic elections are extremely reliant on young people,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, which helps elect progressive leaders such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, tells Mother Jones. “Not only are we talking about the staff of these campaigns, but we’re talking about the people they’re mobilizing.”
Few people understand the importance of young people in campaign apparatuses as well as Kunoor Ojha, who served as the director of student organizing for the 2016 bid of Bernie Sanders, and later, Hillary Clinton.
Sanders’ Nashua, New Hampshire, office, where Ojha started the 2016 cycle, was, in her words, “like basically every office on every Democratic campaign, staffed by almost entirely young, under-25-years-old, field organizers.” At the time, Ojha herself was 25.
There, Ojha oversaw field workers who hosted nonstop phone banks in the evenings and did marathon door-knocking stints on weekends. “You’re bundling up in the cold knocking doors for hours with volunteers. You’re staying in the office late at night, tallying up everyone that you talked to that day, and everyone that your volunteers talked to over the phone,” she says. “You’re meeting with volunteers in coffee shops and restaurants to try and understand their passion and if you can get them more engaged.”
The volunteers included “high school students and young people working part-time jobs at coffee shops and restaurants who were drawn to Sanders’ economic message.
The work of Ojha’s young field workers—and the volunteers they recruited—paid off big for Sanders in the Granite State. He bested Clinton there by more than 22 points, with exit polls showing 83 percent of Democrats aged 18 to 29 supporting Sanders.
Relatively insufficient youth engagement may have contributed to Clinton’s 2016 loss in the general election. When Ojha joined Clinton’s team in the summer of 2016, she says, she was the first national staffer dedicated to mobilizing student and campus voters in the general election. Clinton ultimately received 55 percent of votes among people age 18 to 29; Obama received 66 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2012.
Youth engagement also played a significant role in Biden’s 2020 victory. The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement estimated that roughly half of adults under 30 cast ballots in 2020, matching the proportional turnout for Barack Obama’s first presidential election.
Biden’s win was assisted by progressive youth-led groups, like Sunrise Movement, whose 3,000-plus volunteers engaged with3.5 million young voters encouragingthem to vote for Biden after his campaign heeded the group’s calls to beef up his climate positions. Biden’s 2020 campaign also worked with more than 90 social media influencers who landed 264 million “impressions” and 2.1 million “engagements.”
Fast-forward to Biden’s current campaign against Trump, and there’s little involvement from progressive grassroots groups such as Sunrise and Justice Democrats, which helped defeat Trump in 2020.
“Biden’s policies have made our jobs a lot harder,” says Michele Weindling, Sunrise’s political director. “There’s a lot of questioning and silence [within Sunrise]. There just isn’t a clear path forward to seeing Biden as a candidate that people feel speaks to them and represents them. And that makes it really hard to build a robust strategy that accounts for his election.”
Beyond volunteer groups, the Biden campaign may face headwinds in recruiting enough field workers. The campaign’s jobs page currently shows more than six dozen openings, including one listing for a “youth engagement intern” spot that’s open in multiple states.
“I would not want to be in the shoes of a young or mid-level staffer running a field office this year,” says Ojha. “I think it is already a pretty tough year for hiring. There are hundreds and hundreds of jobs that this campaign needs to fill. Several hundreds of those would usually be filled by twentysomething field organizers. I think it’s going to be hard to fill all those roles. And if they can’t do that, that just makes the whole situation a lot scarier in those states we know are going to be field-margin states: the Pennsylvanias, the Arizonas.”
Even among the TikTok and YouTube thought-influencers the Biden administration has sought to work with, inviting them to bill signings and special press briefings, more and more have begun to speak out against Biden’s positions on Israel and Palestine.
Consider George Lee, an internet personality and educator whose “Conscious Lee” TikTok channel has 2.5 million followers. In 2020, Lee says, he used his platforms to support local Democratic candidates and oppose Trump. In 2022, Lee was invited by the Biden White House to attend a State of the Union watch party and share his experiences from that event online. By the end of 2023, Lee was posting multiple videos pointing out times he believed Biden had lied about the Israel-Hamas war.
“If you told me that there would be genocide whether we have Trump or Biden…That whether Trump or Biden was in office, the Supreme Court was still going to overturn Roe v. Wade. That whether Trump or Biden was in office, they would still overturn affirmative action—I think that there will be a lot more individuals that do not participate in this election,” Lee says.
V Spehar, a content creator whose UnderTheDeskNews channel has 3 million followers on TikTok, thinks Biden could learn from the young creators who have expanded their platforms through authentic content. Spehar says Biden would make huge leaps with young people by leveling with them about policy mistakes in the Middle East.
“If he came out on TV right now and was like, ‘Fuck Netanyahu. That Motherfucker punk’d me so bad.’ Oh my god. I’m trying to be cool with him and he comes out here and says this crazy-ass thing,’” says Spehar, who was invited to the White House to see Biden sign the Inflation Reduction Act. “I think people would be like, ‘Yo, okay, yeah, we’ve all had a friend betray us, I can understand that.’”
Biden allies are far from considering the brazen approach Spehar suggests. But some acknowledge there’s a disconnect between older and younger Democrats.
In November, a group of top Biden campaign aides and Obama alumni converged in Chicago to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Obama’s 2008 election victory. While there, dozens of them gathered in a Sheraton conference room to discuss Biden’s 2024 campaign.
At the meeting, previously reported by New York magazine, Obama alumni had questions for the Biden camp. “How might third-party candidates affect youth turnout? What’s your precise understanding of how to reach voters with inscrutable media-consumption habits?” New York reported.
An Obama alumnus who was in the room had another question. “Where are the young people?” this person, who requested anonymity, said to Mother Jones. “They’re not here. They’re not in this room.”
But other experts in Democratic politics suggest the erosion or absence of youth in Biden’s campaign might not be as high of an obstacle to Biden’s reelection as pundits and left-wing progressives paint it to be.
“There is just a functional reality of the political numbers that there are more Boomers in this country than there are Gen Z,” says Christopher Hale, a staffer of the Obama-Biden White House and Obama’s 2012 campaign, who also ran for Congress in southern Tennessee.
The Biden campaign could also try to make up for the lack of young volunteers with paid canvassers. “Of course it’s helpful when the people that you’re engaging to do the work are passionate and driven,” says longtime Democratic strategist Melissa DeRosa, “but at the same time—not to be cynical—you can also do a lot of paid canvassing. As long as you can raise the money to get the bodies on the street to pull the identified voters, it almost doesn’t matter. You’re never going to recapture the magic in a bottle that we had in 2008 with someone like Barack Obama, where the interest and the enthusiasm were so pure and so mission-based. You didn’t see that before and you haven’t seen it since.”
Further, there’s a concern among some Democratic strategists, Hale says, that doing too much to sway young voters, who tend to be far more liberal, would vex middle-aged and older moderate voters, especially former Republican or swing voters who dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden.
Recent Quinnipiac University polling on Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) offers some reassurance that a more pro-Israel policy stance is being well received among older cohorts—though not so much among the youth. Fetterman, whose metamorphosis from a progressive gym-short wearing populist to a (still-gym-short-wearing) pro-Israel hawk has riled young liberals who helped him get elected, has only 28 percent of registered voters in Pennsylvania age 18 to 34 now expressing a favorable view of the senator. But among voters age 65 and above, 56 percent have a positive perception.
“At the end of the day, this campaign does not want to win over MSNBC hosts,” says Hale. “And it doesn’t want to even win over young progressives. It wants to win over reliable voters. And young progressives, for better or worse, are not reliable voters right now.”
If that’s the calculus, it’s working. Darcy Pollard, the young progressive from Maryland, doesn’t feel particularly won over. Nor is she doing much to convince people to vote for her old boss. When her peers mention they are considering not voting for a presidential candidate in November, the former Biden 2020 staffer offers a somber expression of understanding: “I see where you’re coming from.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
