Dem
51
GOP
49
Joe Biden's student-loan-debt forgiveness program is currently on ice as the courts consider the various objections raised by Republican activist groups across the country. And so, the President announced yesterday that the pandemic-inspired suspension of loan repayments would be extended, yet again, to June 2023.
Is this a winning issue for Republicans? Undoubtedly, there are some people in red states who are very upset by the loan forgiveness, but most of those folks are already in the bag for the GOP. There's only a benefit here if fighting back against loan forgiveness impresses persuadable voters in swingy states and districts. Are there really a lot of those people?
Oh, and there's another part to the calculation. No matter how many voters are impressed by the anti-forgiveness activity, there needs to be more of them than the number of voters who are driven into the Democratic camp by the same issue. Recall that young voters showed up in unusually high numbers this election. And yet, their turnout was still less than 30%, meaning there's still plenty of room for that vote to grow. Meanwhile, Biden is getting opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to remind them that he and the Democrats are trying to help with their loans while the Republicans are aggressively defending the opposition position. From where we sit, this looks like bad math for the red team. (Z)