As Kerry Singleton looks ahead to the next presidential election, he’s thinking back to the excitement he felt when President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited the historic grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College.
“I remember the energy that was here on campus that day,” said Singleton, a Morehouse senior, who stood in the crowd and applauded the speech on voting rights, democracy and more.
On that crisp winter day in January 2022, the president was closing in on his first year in office and Singleton and others in the audience had high hopes.
Since then, voting rights legislation has stalled in Congress. The Supreme Court rejected a student loan forgiveness plan. And high prices – from food to housing – are fueling economic anxieties that Singleton said have come together to dampen his enthusiasm for the possibilities of what the Biden administration could achieve.
“We’re not expecting them to make change overnight,” Singleton said in an interview this week. “But I do think that everyone is willing to hold the administration accountable for some of those promises that were made. If they don’t happen, I think it’s going to be a scary election.”
For all of the warning signs facing the president a year before the election, apathy and skepticism from young voters is high on the list. A spokesman for the Biden campaign called the election “deeply consequential for young people,” and pledged to build on a strong turnout from younger voters in the 2022 midterm elections.
Yet a respectful resistance toward the president comes alive in one conversation after another, with the deepest concerns touching on his age – he turns 81 next week – the economy and the Israel-Hamas war.
“If they can fund a war, they can find the money to pay off our student loans,” said Rachael…
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