For lack of a better way to put it, Thursday’s presidential debate was a disaster. As we approach the week mark, I can’t help but think about the disaster that was the debate and what it means for younger voters.
As things stand, I don’t have high hopes for the debates. The ones I’ve seen so far have been disappointing. Usually, one side or the other declares victory. That wasn’t the case last Thursday.
Thursday night’s debate called into question President Joe Biden’s mental capacity — and was so bad that members of Biden’s own party are calling for him to drop out of the race — and it also gave former President Donald Trump a platform to spew lies without real-time fact-checking.
As a Gen Z voter, the debate left me feeling powerless. Biden’s answers left me unsatisfied and I was concerned about his mental capacity. Trump’s inaccurate comments about abortion and hateful rhetoric about immigrants made me worry about the state of the country if he were to return to office. Neither candidate is doing any good.
Gen Z is not enthusiastic about Biden
It was a particularly bad night for Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, who are already unenthusiastic about Biden despite polling data showing the Democrats leading the way.
President Biden didn’t make the strong statements I was hoping for on abortion, student loan debt, or Israel’s war with Hamas, and he clearly struggled to answer questions, even freezing for a few seconds on a question about the economy. Trump was being Trumpy in full effect, which bodes well for his ardent supporters but is upsetting to those of us who just can’t stand him.
A Harvard University poll conducted in the spring revealed a disparity in enthusiasm across age groups: 76% of Gen Zers who voted for Trump were enthusiastic about the candidate, compared with 44% of Gen Zers who voted for Biden.
The failed abortion debate:Biden and Trump’s abortion debate was the most depressing thing I’ve heard in the last week.
A Harvard University poll suggests that just over half of Gen Z plans to vote in November. The Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement estimates that 40.8 million Gen Zers will be eligible to vote, meaning at least 20.4 million of them are likely to actually vote. These are voters that neither candidate can afford to lose.
My generation could decide the election.
There’s no data on how Gen Z responded specifically to the debates, but it’s hard to imagine it did Biden any favors, which is ultimately the most worrying thing given what a terrible candidate Trump is.
Biden clearly lost the debate. There’s no question about it.
Biden took a beating in the debates among all age groups.
More than 40% of Democrats think Biden should be removed from the Democratic nomination list, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, while only 14% of Republicans think Trump should be removed from the nomination list, even though he has already been convicted.
For Gen Z, that means choosing between two old guys: one who is said to be cognitively declining and the other who will do anything to win. Many Gen Z voters already take issue with Biden’s handling of what’s happening in Gaza and the state of the economy.
Admittedly, he didn’t get his point across well on Thursday night.
But none of that means Trump is a better choice for young voters who already don’t want him.
Let me control my body:Republicans wanted so much to control women that they voted against protecting birth control.
Trump is the same threat he was before the debate, and Republicans are still pretending otherwise
As the debate continues, we must not allow Biden’s poor performance to overshadow the lies Trump told onstage. Trump claimed that abortions are being performed after birth, argued that immigrants are taking jobs from black and Hispanic people, and used the word “Palestinian” as an insult.
He lied about his affair with Stormy Daniels. He even smirked when Biden called him a “convicted felon.”
Trump wanted to muster more sound bites for his enthusiastic supporters, and he did. But it remains to be seen whether he’s able to reel in undecided voters. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows Trump slowly leading Biden, but there are still four months until the election. Anything could happen, including a swap between the two candidates.
Editorial boards of news organizations across the country are calling on both candidates to withdraw from the race, and I doubt either will, because no matter how much we wish things were different, these are the two people we’re voting for in November.
It’s especially doubtful that Republicans will actually pressure Trump to resign, given how much they have tolerated his behavior thus far and how they seem comfortable supporting a felon who denies the election.
I sympathize with the argument that Biden should resign, but I also know that doing so would plunge the United States into chaos.
Trump may be doing well in the polls, but it was the voters he lost on Thursday night. Democrats, in particular, need to consider how Biden is perceived by our nation’s youngest voters and consider the possibility of finding someone new for the job. They need to have the honest conversations that Republicans have refused to have and that continue to be ignored because of Biden’s performance.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeno on X. Formerly on Twitter, @sara__pequeno and on Facebook at facebook.com/PequenoWrites
