The US president has touted the record of his first year in office despite numerous setbacks
Boast about his economic and health record, going more into contact with Americans: Joe Biden explained on Wednesday, during a marathon press conference, how he hopes to relaunch his presidency before perilous legislative elections in the fall.
Joe Biden, who doesn’t like press conferences and who rarely gives them, answered questions for nearly two hours on Thursday about his stalled reforms, the new wave of the pandemic, inflation records, and on his anemic confidence rating… In response, the 79-year-old Democrat, for whom this is not the strong point, tried to oppose a sometimes bravado tone.
“A year of challenges” and “enormous progress”
“Can you name another president who has accomplished as much as I have in a year? “, he launched. “To hear you, it sounds like nothing happened.” Since his inauguration on January 20, 2021, the United States has, according to him, experienced “a year of challenges but also a year of enormous progress. »
He pointed out that 75% of American adults were now fully immunized, up from 1% when his administration took over. The president also boasted of “record job creations”, “record growth”. And faced with the “fatigue” and “frustration” of his compatriots, the Democrat, who in his long political career has always relied on his pleasant personality, has promised to meet them more.
“I don’t have the opportunity to look people in the eye […], to go out and do the things that I’ve always known how to do rather well: get in touch with people. Let them gauge my sincerity. Let them gauge who I am,” Joe Biden lamented.
Conservative Opposition
The president wants to save “large sections” of a huge social reform of 1,750 billion dollars, which he failed to pass in Congress, because of dissidents in the Democratic ranks.
And he assured that he had not “exhausted all options” on another emblematic promise: to protect access to the vote for African-Americans, mainly Democratic voters. There too, his draft federal legislation was buried by parliamentarians, a few hours after his speech.
Joe Biden the optimist has actually conceded, so to speak, only one mistake. This cantor of dialogue between parties and a great supporter of consensus, who was a senator for thirty years and vice-president for eight, assures us that he had “not anticipated” such a degree of opposition from the conservatives to his projects.
Declining popularity rating
However good-natured he may be, Joe Biden will have a lot to do to rally an American population that is mainly concerned about the cost of living, and the new wave of the pandemic. Fighting inflation will require “a long-term effort”, he conceded. “By then, it will be painful for a lot of people.”
Inheriting a country bruised by the Covid-19 pandemic, shaken by a historic protest movement against racism, and where divisions have been heated white-hot by Donald Trump, Joe Biden considered that the country was still “far from ‘to be as unified as it should be’.
A new Gallup poll puts his approval rating at just 40%, down from 57% when he came to power. This is enough to worry the Democrats, who fear a debacle in the mid-term legislative elections, scheduled for the fall.
With Kamala Harris in 2024
The president, however, projected himself into the 2024 election, indicating that he would again choose his current vice-president, Kamala Harris, to be his running mate.
In the immediate term, however, it is above all a statement by the Democratic president about Ukraine that has aroused the most comments. Joe Biden raised the possibility of a “minor” incursion by Russia into the country, in which case the NATO countries would risk, according to him, being divided on the response to be provided.
“If Russian military forces cross the border of Ukraine, it will constitute a new invasion which will attract a rapid, severe and united response from the United States and our allies”, hastened to clarify the spokesperson of the White House, Jen Psaki.
The Republican opposition has nevertheless seized on the subject, accusing the American president of resigning himself to an attack from Moscow, provided that it is not too spectacular.