Joe Biden, upon first meeting his current campaign pollster John Della Volpe at a gala dinner in 2018, started taking notes from their conversation about the student debt crisis and gun violence on the back of a name placard at the table between speeches honoring former secretary of state Colin L. Powell.

Biden made it clear that the issues facing young people were deeply personal to him, well before he announced his run for president, said Della Volpe, who last month took leave as director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics to start officially advising the Biden campaign on the youth vote. Biden spoke about helping pay off student loans taken on by his youngest daughter, Ashley, now 39, as “the kinds of things you do for your kids,” Della Volpe said.

With less than eight weeks until the Nov. 3 election, the Biden campaign is making an urgent and final push to turn out the voting bloc that has proved to be his most elusive: young voters he struggled to win over in the crowded Democratic primary. Biden’s team, previously criticized for lackluster youth outreach, is now pulling out all the stops — bringing celebrities to virtual policy conversations and launching massive grass-roots outreach campaigns to better introduce Biden to younger voters and convince them he is attuned to their concerns….

More…

image…Mandel Ngan/AFP-Getty