The (Fifteen) Youts!

The Biden Campaign and DNC are taking the youth cohort seriously this cycle

What’s a “yout?”

In this case it’s fifteen major youth organizing groups coming together to jointly endorse President Biden and Vice President Harris and work to organize Gen Z and Millennial voters to support them this week. This comes after the launch last month of Students for Biden from the campaign.

You can’t deny that the Administration has been prioritizing young American issues from the climate to student loan forgiveness. Vice President Harris has been the lead on charting a course with young Americans including a tour of Historically Black Universities and Colleges last year where she was greeted like a rock start at every stop.

This all comes as there is increasing worry and anecdotal accounts of frustration among young Americans with the Administration’s handling of the crisis in Israel and Gaza. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear that many young people are angry about the plight of the Palestinians and demand that President Biden do more to stop the Israeli onslaught.

I’m an advisor to Voters of Tomorrow and regularly discuss the issue of youth voting and activism with past guests including Santiago Mayer and John Della Volpe. This week I had the president and executive director of NextGen America, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez on the show to discuss why she thinks that President Biden is the right choice, what she and her organization heard from the State of the Union, and what she thinks of his approach to the ‘age question.’

The Biden campaign and President seemed to have settled on a clear message that it isn’t the age of the person but the age of their ideas. Donald Trump wants to take us backwards to the 50’s and the Biden/Harris Administration wants to take us forward. This resonated with a lot of the right people and Cristina pointed out to me during our conversation that let’s not forget the “youth” candidate the last two cycles was Bernie Sanders and he is older than Joe Biden!

This was another great and eye-opening conversation. I hope you’ll watch it or listen on your favorite podcast source. While you are there, I would love you to subscribe to the On Democracy Podcast YouTube channel as well.

The Show

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez is the President of NextGen America, the country’s largest youth voting rights organization. NextGen America helped mobilize one in nine young voters across the country in the 2023 elections. Named “Hero of the New South'' by Southern Living Magazine and People of the Year by Tribeza Magazine, Cristina has spent the last twenty years founding and leading some of the most creative organizations to raise wages, tackle the climate and student debt crises, and fight for immigrant rights. Cristina is an author on issues of race, gender and immigration and was a 2020 U.S. Senate candidate. She also teaches at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. You can find her on X/Twitter at (@)cristinanextgen.

New Series Launches

I am so excited to have launched our new series ‘In the Hot Seat with FPWellman’ this past week. I have had so many great candidates approach me about being on the show that I could not do them all and its hard to get a candidate for a 40 minute interview. So, I got the idea to do short 15 minute interviews with Democratic candidates for Congress and Governorships around the country.

I want to talk to the ones you might know like Colin Allred in Texas taking on Ted Cruz or one’s you might not like Ryan Busse running for Montana governor or the amazing Kaylee Peterson running again for Idaho’s 1st Congressional district. There are amazing stories out there that you should know and support.

We launched with Colin Allred, then Ryan Busse, and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell running for Snate in Florida against the vampire Rick Scott. Tonight we will launch my conversation with Kaylee on MeidasTouch network.

Check them all out!

Colin Allred for Senate in Texas:

Ryan Busse for Governor in Montana:

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for Senate in Florida

Thank you for your support. More news coming in our fight with Mike Flynn this week too!