Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren To those casually scrolling on X (formerly known as Twitter), it may be easy to assume that VICTOR SHI is the most energetic Gen Zer on the platform, though one plainly out of step with his generation. For starters, Shi is really excited about JOE BIDEN’s reelection campaign. He blasts out dozens of tweets a day to his 238,000 followers about the president’s policy record. He constantly appears on cable news — he was on Fox News on Thursday to defend Biden’s efforts to ease student debt. And he goes after Republicans nonstop for, as he puts it, trying to undermine American democracy. “Oh damn. Dark Brandon has just risen again & doesn’t hold back any punches for Sen. Ron Johnson during a speech in Wisconsin right now, directly calling Ron Johnson's disastrous economic vision,” Shi live tweeted on Tuesday during the president’s visit to a Milwaukee manufacturing facility. “This is Joe Biden at his best. This is how it’s done. Call all of them out.” At 21, Shi, a senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has become one of Biden’s most prolific defenders on air and online. He is an outlier: a young person actually, deeply excited about Biden. And a proselytizer, too. Shi argues that young people are actually fired up about the president, despite what the polls might indicate. His verve and bravado are held up as proof that Biden’s age does not mean there is a lack of voter enthusiasm for him. “If you look at what he's been able to do, during a presidency in which he barely had the House and barely had the Senate 50-50 in the first two years, I think it's pretty remarkable what he's been able to get done,” Shi told West Wing Playbook. But if Shi is on a crusade to get young people hyped up to vote for Biden, he has his work cut out for him. Young voters are an increasingly disaffected segment of the country’s electorate. A June Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of people ages 18-34 were extremely proud to be American. Gen Z voters routinely rank climate change and LGBTQ rights among the issues they value most, and have criticized Biden for approving the Willow Project, a controversial oil drilling plan in northern Alaska. Biden’s age has also been a factor for some wary young voters. Despite all that, Shi believes Biden is the best person for the job in 2024 — and that young voters will show up next year to reelect him. He seems, at times, determined to will this idea into existence. Shi touts the president on his Politicon’s podcast, “On the Move With Victor Shi,” where he recently interviewed press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE. He also hails Biden on “iGen Politics,” another podcast he co-hosts with JILL WINE-BANKS. He tries to reach older and more independent voters with his frequent appearances on Fox News — including one Thursday that earned a retweet from former chief of staff RON KLAIN. His activism has caught the eye of Biden staffers who have reached out to support his work (Shi declined to share who in the West Wing he’s heard from directly without their permission first). Since Biden took office, the White House has engaged with TikTok stars and other social media influencers to spread their message to young voters. But those close to Shi say he stands out for his earnestness. Shi got his start in politics interning for Rep. BRAD SCHNEIDER (D-Ill.) at 15 and later joined his high school’s political action club, moderating debates for the town’s local village board. He took advice from his government teacher to become a delegate for Illinois’ 10th Congressional District, and at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Shi was Biden’s youngest delegate at age 17. He went on to intern at the White House last summer, working in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and also worked as a communications intern for the DNC in January 2022. For his contemporaries, this may seem all basically unrelatable. The age of 21 is meant for legally drinking, spending time doing dumb things with friends and only vaguely taking stock of the political world that surrounds you. But those who know Shi aren’t surprised that he’s become an informal Biden ambassador to the nation’s youth. “At a very young age, you can see Victor was very skilled at creating networks,” ANDREW CONNEEN, Shi’s high school government teacher, told West Wing Playbook. “So probably even before he could drive, he was connecting with local candidates and party organizations to start building this network.” MESSAGE US — Are you A VICTOR SHI FOLLOWER? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| 
