@ReneeVoiceBrand With respect, I think that attitude is in part the cause of young voter dissatisfaction and apathy, especially among would-be #DNC supporters.

@MHS_Jenkins @ReneeVoiceBrand I believe that a lot of young people think we are already in the hand basket and headed down, so what's the point. Also, I believe that many of them would like to see a less-geriatric candidate.

@walterbays With respect: Opinion pieces like this are part of the reason why so many young voters don't vote blue. Approaching their concerns a bit differently and acknowledging that Gaza is a legit issue would go a long way.

No one is owed the youth vote--or any other vote. That attitude is destructive.

@MHS_Jenkins All true. Yet there's no effective way for a US president to deal with the leaders in a conflict, both sides of which are hell bent on genocide and have no regard even for their own people's suffering.

So even if the youth protestors' contention is true that Biden is biased towards Israel, their answer is the man who vows another tougher Muslim ban, internment camps, deporting legal residents back to their ""shithole" countries.

@walterbays The issue is that the administration, the DNC, and most leading Dem politicians are actively supporting and abetting this genocide. I cannot find fault with anyone who refuses to vote in support of that, or even speak out against it in a meaningful way.

@MHS_Jenkins When you look at disregard with bomb targeting, refusal to allow displaced gazans to return, tacit support for settler atrocities as they steal more land, refusal to allow Bedouins to have bomb shelters like all other Israeli citizens, it's hard to argue their policy is anything but genocide.

Yet Hamas policy is also genocide.

Ordinary people on both sides would overwhelmingly just like to live and let live.

@walterbays Hamas is not the people of Palestine, nor the people of Gaza. Again, shades of the Bush/Trump years when all Muslims/immigrants/"others" were the enemy.

@MHS_Jenkins Remember the only reason Hamas was in a position to commit the atrocities that started the war is the support of Netanyahu. He helped them get Gulf state funding as part of his campaign to undermine the PLO. Thus he would not have to face a credible proponent of a two state solution for peace. He could continue to try to expel all Arabs permanently. Hamas was effectively his partner in ethnic cleansing.

But Hamas has a different idea of who needs to be cleansed from the land.

@walterbays I'm not here to defend Hamas. I'm here to point out that the US government and the Biden administration are actively aiding and abetting the kind of genocide we were all outraged about not long ago. This in turn effects how many voters, particularly young voters, will cast their ballots in November and for good reason.

@MHS_Jenkins Nor would I accuse you of being pro Hamas. I think most of the demonstrators are not antisemitic but pro human. Most of the Jewish counter demonstrators support a two state peace and oppose Netanyahu but are pro human.

Biden's open support for Israel with quiet diplomacy to restrain Israeli attacks failed. Even his open cautions to the government failed to restrain them. I do wish he had shocked them with a pause in assistance pending human rights review.

@MHS_Jenkins But the many wrongs on both sides was not my initial point.

I don't suggest youth must vote my interests, but they should vote their own. They may elect a dictator for life who will begin ethnic cleansing not in the Middle East but in America. Black, brown, and Muslim people rounded up in internment camps. Citizens deported. Women with no rights, menstrual cycles monitored daily by the state.

However bad they think things are, they could be much worse.

@walterbays They won't elect a dictator, MAGA voters will. They'll exercise their rights to vote as they think best and follow their moral dictates. If the DNC wants their votes, they need to engage with that.

The Dems have relied on fear-mongering and the "lesser of two evils" approach for decades and I think that ship has not only sailed but sunk. The DNC needs to start delivering and living up to its supposed morals if they want to remain valid after the boomers age out.

@MHS_Jenkins All I can hope is that a greater number of MAGA voters will also reject "lesser of two evils" arguments. And refuse to vote for Trump because he fails to explicitly endorse deporting Black citizens to Rwanda, FBI monitoring of mosques, or nationwide weekly pregnancy tests by police of all women. Then the GOP can blame them for re-electing old Uncle Joe. After which I'd be fine if he would resign and Harris, who would do fine, would promise not to run throwing 2028 wide open.

@walterbays this is a key distinction: the administration is actively supporting, funding, and excusing Israel's actions in Gaza.

@MHS_Jenkins Finally. Actions to match quiet words.

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/05/israel-us-ammunition-shipment-hold

@walterbays It's the actions that count.

@MHS_Jenkins Short of sending CIA assassins to eliminate Netanyahu I can't see how Biden could have handled the war better. And decades of experience with that tactic in Latin America illustrate how such a policy is ill advised and apt to backfire.

He went as far as to call for new elections in Israel, unprecedented and provoking outrage there. But as long as Netanyahu and Hamas leaders are in power there can be no peace. War is all that keeps them in power, which is all that matters to them

@walterbays That's not really the reality of the situation--we as a nation have had the option of taking a moral stand and ending our support for Israel's apartheid regime for the entirety of this current conflict.

What you're fundamentally doing is asking young voters to support the same kind of human rights atrocities you demanded they decry during the Bush/Trump years. Morality isn't a political switch we flip at will.