USA Today had an interesting report in April on young voters who don’t like Donald Trump but who haven’t exactly warmed up to President Joe Biden. The article included a quote that stood out for me.
The newspaper spoke to a young University of Memphis student, who said she considers herself liberal but who also said she’s willing to see Trump prevail in the fall. USA Today reported, “She’s mad Biden and Democrats have failed to protect reproductive rights or wipe out student loans.”
That was a frustrating sentence to read. Biden has canceled $167 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million Americans, and it’s certainly not his fault that Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade. On the contrary, the Democratic president has championed reproductive rights for many years and remains a fierce opponent of GOP abortion bans.
But the young woman highlighted in the aforementioned article nevertheless said she’s willing to punish those who agree with her, while rewarding those who don’t.
This voter wants student loan debt relief and reproductive rights. As of two months ago, she was willing to see Republicans win, despite their opposition to student loan debt relief and reproductive rights.
It was a difficult position to understand, but the phenomenon extends well beyond an individual student in Tennessee. The New York Times published a report yesterday on Black farmers in Georgia, which touched on a related issue.
As the article noted, Biden and his administration have taken important steps to help Black farmers overcome decades of discrimination, including launching a program intended to help Black farmers clear their debts. A problem, however, soon arose:
The promise of the debt relief program was dashed after groups representing white farmers filed lawsuits to block it, arguing that the federal government was engaging in reverse discrimination by awarding money based on race. The lawsuits were initiated by America First Legal, an organization led by Stephen Miller, a former top Trump administration official.
The Times spoke with one Black farmer in Georgia, who voted for Biden in 2020 but who’s now so frustrated by the lack of progress that he won’t support the Democratic incumbent again this fall. This, too, is a difficult perspective to understand, for the same reasons as the University of Memphis student. The Times highlighted a situation in which: It’s not altogether rational, but voting often isn’t. The challenge for the incumbent president isn’t insurmountable — Team Biden can take steps to better inform these voters — but it’s an additional hurdle the Democratic campaign would likely prefer not to have to deal with.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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