For a certain niche of America’s pundit class, Joe Biden’s lack of popularity remains something of a mystery. Is it the economy? Inflation? Gaza? Biden’s catastrophic approval ratings make the question difficult to ignore, but few seem able to settle on an answer. As Ross Douthat fairly observed in March, “There isn’t a chattering-class consensus or common shorthand for why his presidency is such a political flop.”

I have no special insight into the causes of Biden’s unpopularity as such. Being a socialist, I thought (and argued vociferously) that he would make a bad president and that predictions of an “FDR-sized” administration were more a case of liberal wish fulfillment than a serious possibility. Suffice it to say, it was probably not a good idea for a man born closer to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln than his own to seek reelection when 70 percent of voters didn’t want him to. Whatever the official story might be about the state of the US economy or the wonders of Bidenomics, there also remains plenty of financial pain and general hardship throughout the country even if the pace of inflation has slowed.

When it comes to the segment of the electorate in which Biden is the least popular, however, the debate’s tendency toward mystification is a lot more puzzling. Having won the under-thirty vote by a comfortable margin of twenty-three points in 2020, Biden is now trailing Donald Trump with that cohort in several battleground states and is essentially drawing even with him nationally. Being election season, analyses of Biden’s cratering youth support have tended to emphasize immediate factors like the economy and cost of living, and the terrain of discussion has often been about whether these or the president’s support for Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza are the reason such a reliably Democrat-leaning demographic seems to be jumping ship.