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It seems a new poll comes out every five minutes that shows Joe Biden’s re-election chances sinking further. Biden’s eroding numbers among younger voters are particularly alarming for Democrats. ABC News political analyst Steve Roberts appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to analyze Biden’s poll problems. He contends that Biden’s handling of the Israeli hostage mess and the Hamas cease-fire are holding back his support among the younger voters who helped his beat Donald Trump in 2020.
“Do I think progressives are going to vote for Donald Trump? No,” Roberts told Berman and Riedel. “The real threat here is disillusionment. It’s discouragement; it’s not defection. If these voters stay home or they vote third party, that could be a real threat. These elections are a fine balance, and that’s the real problem… I think a lot of American progressives are very resentful of the Netanyahu government… and the other factor here is social media, and the fact that supporters of the Palestinian cause now have access to the media ecosystem they never had before.”
Roberts feels that the perception of Israel among these younger voters is further shading how they perceive Biden. “There is this tendency of young people, often particularly progressive young people, to identify with the oppressed… These are not unexpected or unusual impulses on the part of young voters, and Israel comes across to many of them as this powerful occupying power oppressing the suffering civilians in Gaza, and what they don’t focus on is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. They don’t focus on the fact that it was the Hamas attack killing all those Israelis which brought the suffering on the Palestinian civilians.”
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