Gen Z Agita, Manchin Gossip, and More Hot NYT M&A Action!

Good afternoon and thanks for joining us at The Daily Courant, surfacing the latest and most provocative reportorial endeavors at Puck as we head into the holidays.
 
Today, we lead with Peter Hamby's characteristically astute inside reporting on the demographic time bomb facing Joe Biden: a rising generation of highly liberal, socially conscious but politically disaffected young voters who couldn't care less about  the Democratic Party. (At least until Uncle Joe forgives their student loans.) 

Meanwhile, below the fold, Dylan Byers examines the deal murmurs surrounding the Times and Athletic’s M&A tango, the David Zaslav rumor mill, Bob Iger’s next moves, and other insights into the media in-crowd’s inside conversation.

The Biden Youth Bomb

Joe Biden was elected to be competent, compromising, and stoic. But his staggering—no, seriously, staggering—unpopularity among younger voters suggests that the Democratic establishment really doesn’t have an earthly idea about what matters to their kids.

Joe Biden has a problem with young voters—and it’s not just because he’s 79. Since the spring, Biden’s approval ratings have fallen across the board, a spiral worsened by the ongoing pandemic, rising inflation and a fragmented media. Gas prices, which always correlate with national sentiment, are a particular source of public dissatisfaction. But one group of voters is making the problem worse—and it’s not S.U.V.-driving, Facebook-addled Boomers. It’s Americans under the age of 30. 

Gen Z (and older millennials) showed up in record numbers during the anti-Trump midterms of 2018, and broke for Biden by a more than 20-point margin in the 2020 election. But today, according to Ben Wessel, a Democratic strategist who formerly directed the youth outreach group NextGen, “almost all his negative movement comes from young people. Older voters are wildly stable in mild dislike for Biden.” Data released by The Economist and YouGov last week found that just 29 percent of American adults between the ages of 18-29 approve of the job Biden is doing as president, and a full 50 percent of young people now disapprove of Biden’s performance. Go ahead and read that sentence twice.

This drift of young people away from the president flies in the face of a common assumption on the left, that earnest young people are a secure part of the Democratic coalition, and that it’s the aging curmudgeons who are ruining progress for the rest of us. No, young people aren’t suddenly going to embrace MAGA Republicans in next year’s midterms. Younger millennials and Gen Z care deeply about diversity and inclusion. Youth voter turnout smashed records back in 2018, largely a reaction to Donald Trump. But their eroding support for Biden today is a fundamental driver of his upside-down approval ratings, a problem that Democrats must fix if his party wants to stave off a bloodbath in 2022...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT