Biden’s efforts to buy votes don’t impress young Black voters who stand in solidarity with the oppressed
If only young voters knew more about what Biden has done to erase billions in student loan debt, for example, they’d feel differently, the president’s allies contend.
In an interview before the church service [in Sumter, SC], Clyburn summoned one of his security aides, a Black man in his 40s, who described his delight in getting a letter telling him that his and his wife’s student loan debt totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars had been wiped off the books courtesy of Biden’s forgiveness program.
More of those letters will be going out before the election. At a fundraising event in Columbia on Saturday, Biden said that 25,000 people a month would be getting letters from him saying they’d be getting relief from student loans.
Yet some of the students [at South Carolina State and Claflin universities in Orangeburg] are unmoved. The war in Gaza and Biden’s inability to rein in the Israeli military is a bigger concern. Biden could do more to address urgent needs at home if he redirected the money going toward Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, some said.
“As Black voters, we have the ability to empathize with the people of Gaza because we have a history of oppression,” said Olivia Ratliff, a 20-year-old sophomore at South Carolina State, Clyburn’s alma mater. “It’s really hard for our president and our lawmakers to understand that because they’ve never been in a situation where they’ve been oppressed like the people of Gaza have.” [Continue reading…]