Campaign volunteers, political activists, and organizers descend on Iowa every 4 years to knock on doors for their candidate. This time around, the army of 20-somethings stumping for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are getting asked about an issue that’s a bit outside their current life experience: Social Security.

That’s where Alex Lawson comes in.

“Social Security comes up on the doors all the time,” said Lawson, a Sanders supporter who is also the executive director of Social Security Works, a Democratic-affiliated group that pushes for an increase in Social Security benefits.

Lawson has traveled to Iowa multiple times to help his candidate out. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he noted that canvassers “were not feeling as equipped with the Social Security story as, say, Medicare for All.” Lawson has held impromptu seminars for organizers: he is there to “tell them how it plays together” he says.

The importance of Social Security has broken into the open in recent days as Vice President Joe Biden and Sanders trade increasingly harsh attacks over Biden’s record on the issue.

View photos Senator Bernie Sanders, during a roundtable focused on senior issues in 2019. (Photo by Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) More

The Sanders campaign has circulated older comments from Biden to argue that a President Biden might put retirement security at risk. Bill Neidhardt, the Iowa Deputy State Director for Senator Sanders, says that Iowans are “realizing that someone running for president has a decades-long history of working with the GOP to try to cut Social Security.”

Biden’s campaign has responded by calling comments like that dishonest. Many of the clips that the Sanders campaign has circulated “didn’t tell the full story,” according to Politifact.com, and Biden has defended his past record of working with Republicans on budget issues. The former Vice President has been consistent throughout the campaign in saying he would not cut Social Security as president. “No. No. No. No,” he said on Jan. 22 in an interview with MSNBC when asked if he would consider Social Security cuts.

The issue will likely get even more fuel after President Trump, in an interview with CNBC in Davos, Switzerland this week, seemed to suggest a willingness to look at reforming entitlement spending (political code for cuts). “At the right time, we will take a look at that,” Trump said. He later tweeted, without evidence, that Democrats would destroy Social Security, but he would “save” it.

Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2020

According to a search of trumptwitterarchive.com, Thursday’s tweet was only the third time Trump has used the term “Social Security” in a tweet since becoming president. His last mention of the program, before Thursday, had been in 2018.

Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments and a close observer of financial issues in Washington D.C., wrote that Trump's move to bring up Social Security was a “late Christmas present” for Democrats.

Plenty of campaigns are involved

Seven debates have passed with a grand total of zero questions about Social Security or retirement issues but the campaigns on the ground have been focused on the issue for months.

View photos Senator Elizabeth Warren during a break in a presidential debate in Westerville, Ohio on October 15, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton More