So, what is Biden thinking politically? “It doesn’t make strategic sense. [Democrats] were in a good position. All the momentum was going in their favor,” Arizona-based pollster Mike Noble told NBC News. “Why forgive debt on a group that never turns out to vote in the first place? The people who vote are the ones who paid their loans back or never had loans to begin with.”
Foolhardy as it may turn out to be, though, there is an obvious political strategy here: Biden is hoping that he can bring those low-propensity-but-overwhelmingly Democratic voters out to the polls in November by forgiving their student debt. “The thing about student loan debt relief is that, while other policies would be more economically progressive, it fairly efficiently redistributes well-being toward people in the Democratic coalition. Youngish, middle-class-ish college/grad school attendees = a *very* D[emocratic] group,” polling analyst Nate Silver wrote on Twitter.
As Biden said in his remarks unveiling his legally dubious executive order, 43 million Americans will benefit from his plan, including “27 million people who will get $20,000 [each] in debt relief.” That’s a lot of money saved by a lot of people. In 2018, 113 million Americans voted in the midterm elections. How many of the 43 million beneficiaries of Biden’s order will show up in November because of it? And how many people will vote against Democrats because they oppose it?
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