April 19, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Has Biden’s Border Crisis Turned Young Men Conservative? New Poll Shows Vast Decline in Support
By Manzanita Miller
The latest Harvard Youth Poll reveals President Joe Biden has lost significant ground with voters under thirty compared to four years ago, with a 20-point decline among young men. While young Americans give Biden low marks on foreign policy and economic issues including inflation, housing, and the job market, immigration is a leading factor in young people’s departure from Democrats.
Biden currently leads Trump by thirteen percentage points (50 percent to 37 percent) among registered voters under thirty in the Harvard Youth Poll, a slightly higher margin than he has led by in other recent polls that include young people as a subset.
Biden leads by just eight percentage points (45 percent to 37 percent) with 16 percent undecided among Americans under thirty with no screen for voter registration. Among those classified as likely voters, Biden’s lead rises to nineteen points (56 percent to 37 percent).
These numbers are significantly lower than Biden’s lead in the Harvard Youth Poll conducted in the spring of 2020 when Biden led Trump by 23 points among young people in general (51 percent to 28 percent) and by 30 points (60 percent to 30 percent) among young likely voters.
The poll shows much of this decline in support for Joe Biden is concentrated among young men. Biden went from a 26-point lead among men under thirty in 2020 to a mere six-point lead in the current poll. Young women’s support for Biden has remained fairly stable, with Biden sitting at a 35-point lead among young women in 2020 and with a comfortable 33-point lead today.
Young men also identify as Democrats at a significantly lower rate now than they did in the 2020 election, with the share of young men identifying as Democrat and Republican nearly equal today. Just 32 percent of men under thirty identify as Democrats, down from 42 percent in 2020, a ten-point decline. Over the same period, the share of young men identifying as Republican has increased nine percentage points from 20 percent in 2020 to 29 percent today. Among young women, Democrats gained six points.
According to the poll, young men shifting away from Democrats may have less to do with an objection to entitlement programs and government intervention, and more to do with a distrust of Democrats’ handling of issues like immigration.
While the press release for the poll mentions the gender gap, it states that, “while party ID and self-identified ideology show younger men shifting from Democrat to Republican and from liberal to conservative -- their views on the role of government have not changed as dramatically.” The press release goes on to indicate that a majority of young men still support government attempts to reduce poverty and subsidized healthcare.
Young men’s economic views may not have shifted significantly on certain entitlement programs, but they have shifted on a metric that may be more important to the average 20-something than it was in previous years – immigration.
Over half of young men (51 percent) say immigration is a more important issue to them than all others. The poll asked, “thinking about the major issues facing the United States today, please tell me which of the following two is more important to you: Immigration vs. All others”, and over half of young men said immigration was the most important.
Young men also say by a margin of 37 percent to ten percent that immigration has made the U.S. economy worse as well. Interestingly, young women agree by a smaller margin, saying 31 percent to nine percent that immigration has worsened the economy.
Majorities of all racial groups among young voters say that immigration is making the economy worse, with young whites saying so by a margin of 41 percent to 7 percent. Young Hispanics say so by a margin of 26 percent to 13 percent, and young Blacks say so by a margin of 24 percent to 7 percent.
This is far from the first time we have seen young people rejecting the left’s Open Borders agenda, in fact a recent Economist/YouGov poll showed young people disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration by a 33-point margin.
Democrats are losing double-digits with young voters – especially young men – and while polling young people on their views on entitlement programs may not explain the loss, polling on immigration does. Biden’s border disaster has created strong pushback from young Americans, and young men say the border is more important than a slew of other prominent issues leading into November.
Manzanita Miller is an associate analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/04/has-bidens-border-crisis-turned-young-men-conservative-new-poll-shows-vast-decline-in-support/
A Paul-Massie alliance fight FISA’s renewal. They’re running out of time.
By David Catanese
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul formed a noisy alliance with Rep. Thomas Massie this week that scrambled Congress’ plans to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without additional privacy protections for Americans and threatened the six-month tenure of the Republican speaker of the House.
The libertarian duo scored a substantive victory in the House on Wednesday when the chamber passed legislation that would force federal agencies to obtain a court order to buy the online data of U.S. citizens from service providers.
Massie, a Northern Kentucky Republican, was joined by Rep. James Comer in supporting the “Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act” while Lexington Rep. Andy Barr opposed the restriction, voting “no” without an explanation.
The total vote muddled usual party lines, tallying 219-199 with 1 voting “resent.” Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy heaped praise on Paul, saying, “Today, the good guys won.”
Then came a new day and a new body co-led by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who belittled “chicken littles on the left” who decried the government’s authority to spy.
“The reality is, we’re out of time,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a proponent of swift reauthorization of FISA’s Section 702, the program that provides 60% of the intelligence included in the president’s daily briefing.
With Section 702 of FISA set to expire at midnight Friday, the Senate barrel ahead toward passage without forcing law enforcement to obtain a warrant in order to tap the data of Americans FISA was designed to provide more tools to intelligence officers to eavesdrop on foreigners.
But the wide net inevitably captures Americans who may be unwittingly communicating with someone being surveilled.
When House Speaker Mike Johnson broke a tie vote in the House to kill the inclusion of a warrant in FISA’s reauthorization, it triggered Paul to take the unlikely step to call for the ouster of a leader of his party from the lower chamber, endorsing Massie’s announcement he would co-sponsor a motion to vacate.
“Speaker Johnson and the uniparty are united behind their laundry list of bad ideas. From borrowing $95 billion from China to send it to other countries to killing a FISA warrant requirement – they’re ticking all the boxes to put America last,” Paul said.
Paul said he would force the Senate debate amendments to FISA, but it was unclear how many votes would be allowed as debate continued on the floor into Thursday evening. It was Massie who helped reorient the debate last week during his aggressive probe of the law during a House Rules Committee hearing.
“Massie’s questioning in Rules [Committee] of [Rep. Mike] Turner is brilliant and he deserves a lot of recognition for what he did there, because he was strong, he hit the points he needed to hit and really got Turner on the ropes at times,” said Jason Pye, a senior policy adviser to Freedomworks, a libertarian-leaning advocacy group in Washington.
But it appears unlikely Paul will have the same impact in the Senate, which voted 67-32 on Thursday afternoon to proceed with the bill on the floor. Paul joined 17 Republicans, 13 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders in opposing expediting consideration of the controversial spy law.
To view online: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article287797440.html
The Great America Show 4/19/24 - Devin Nunes Warns Big Shorts
Devin Nunes warns of stock market shorts manipulation against Truth Social shares.
To view online: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1lDGLPaLXWmGm