Dem
51
GOP
49
Joe Biden has a secret weapon and he is going to use it to the max. It is former president Barack Obama, who is still popular with Democrats. This doesn't mean Obama will be out on the trail every day. He won't. But he will be used for fundraising and at strategic moments, when Obama thinks he can maximize impact.
In particular, Obama is popular with young voters and he will try to energize them, make sure they are registered, and work on getting them to the polls. He is going to do that in nontraditional ways. For example, he sat for interviews with CNN's Christiane Amanpour and comedian Hasan Minhaj. He was blown away when he saw the interviews had been watched 27 million times. It is an extension of what he did when he was in the White House, such as going to Alaska with Bear Grylls and having dinner with Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi for the chef's show Parts Unknown.
If Obama can connect with young voters, that would be a major boost for the 80-year-old Biden, who is not good at that. Young people are strongly Democratic, but they tend not to vote. Obama's job is to convince them that voting is important. He doesn't have to tell them who to vote for. They can figure that part out themselves. Pollster John Della Volpe recently noted that young people are now more apathetic than ever and the recent Supreme Court decisions will just make that worse. They don't believe that politics is a meaningful way to change the system. It is Obama's task to convince them otherwise. A lot rests on whether he succeeds or not. (V)