Beginning Saturday, 2 July, News Items will be off the grid. It returns Monday, 18 July. There may be a News Items Note or two between those two dates, but the morning News Items email will be sleeping in.
1. An overwhelming and growing majority of Americans say the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction, including nearly 8 in 10 Democrats, according to a new poll that finds deep pessimism about the economy plaguing President Joe Biden. Eighty-five percent of U.S. adults say the country is on the wrong track, and 79% describe the economy as poor, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The findings suggest Biden faces fundamental challenges as he tries to motivate voters to cast ballots for Democrats in November’s midterm elections. (Sources: apnews.com, apnorc.org)
2. Time magazine:
Biden’s approval rating with voters under 30 has dropped 23 points since the first months of his presidency, according to Gallup polling. It’s fallen 17 points with voters between 30 and 50. Only 34% of Millennials and Gen Z voters say they approve of Biden’s presidency so far, according to a Marist poll sponsored by NPR and PBS, and only 2% say they strongly approve. (Source: time.com)
3. William Galston:
In recent months I’ve had the chance to talk to several presidents and executive directors of established left-leaning centers and groups. They all tell versions of the same story:
Around 2015, something changed. The young people they were hiring were focused on issues of race, gender, and identity as never before, and they were impatient with — even scornful of — what they regarded as the timid incrementalism of the organizations’ leaders. They wanted equity (as they defined it) immediately. They were acutely sensitive to what they saw as micro-aggressions, including the use of terms to identify different groups that they regarded as out of date and insulting. They were prickly, quick to take offense and to see malign motives rather than inadvertent mistakes.
This generation gap has forced leaders to devote unprecedented time and energy to internal governance, sometimes to the detriment of their organization’s mission. The left has a long tradition of turning on itself, and what I’ve reported is the latest chapter in a long running saga. (Source: nytimes.com, Thomas Edsall)
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