Joe Biden celebrates the anniversary of his victory over Trump with a very nasty surprise – The HuffPost

Kevin Lamarque via Reuters

INTERNATIONAL – One year after his victory against Donald Trump, Joe biden does not necessarily have the heart to the party this Wednesday, November 3. The President of the United States suffered his first major setback at the polls with the election of the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, in a ballot that appears to be a sanction vote against the Democratic leader.

State bordering the capital Washington DC, supplier of American presidents, Virginia is not to be neglected. As proof, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and even Barack Obama made the trip to support the Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, already in charge between 2014 and 2018.

But it was not enough. In a state where Democrats have led more often than Republicans, a state where Joe Biden has won with about 500,000 votes ahead of Donald Trump, the next governor, Glenn Youngkin, will be a Republican for the first time since 2009. In New Jersey, where a similar election took place, the candidates are neck and neck, even though the state is taken for granted by the Democrats.

“A good part of the Virginians took advantage of this election to make a referendum against the Biden administration”, explains to the HuffPost Marie-Christine Bonzom, political scientist, journalist and specialist on the United States. And La Virgine is like a “microcosm” of the United States. “Biden is at its lowest in the polls” -54% of Americans disapprove of his policies according to a recent NBC News poll- “and that trickles down to the Democratic candidates.”

Purely local factors of course helped the Republican victory – Youngkin is a native of the country, unlike McAuliffe, parachuted by the Democratic Party – but explanations are also to be sought in the national and international issues at the start of his mandate. by Biden. They illustrate the inevitable rupture of the Americans – in particular the “free electrons”, acquired by no party and whose vote varies – with the current president and his policy.

April 2021, Biden confronted with the migration crisis

First pitfall for the American president. Three months after taking office, Joe Biden has to face to a large-scale migration crisis. After the inhuman and controversial policy of his predecessor, the case is double-edged for Joe Biden who must stand out.

He will not succeed and will not satisfy anyone. American public opinion is marked by the record figures of illegal entries into the United States and by the images of thousands of people waiting at the border with Mexico. Republicans accuse the president of causing a “draft” by easing Trump’s draconian measures. The Democrats, and especially the more progressive wing of the party, accuse it of minimizing the crisis and are indignant at the maintenance of the quotas inherited from the previous administration.

July 2021, the Covid gets involved

Joe Biden managed to get elected in part thanks to his position against Donald Trump on the management of the health crisis. Optimistically, the American president encourages Americans to return to the traditional July 4 barbecue and fireworks in March, while the White House says the national holiday will also mark the “independence” of the United States from the United States. vis-à-vis the pandemic.

The numbers are certainly nowhere near as catastrophic as in previous months, but the prediction did not come true either.

The management of the health crisis “remains the issue in which Joe Biden still has a majority of approval today”, analyzes Marie-Christine Bonzom. But, underlines our expert, “this majority is very small compared to what it was” before.

August 15, 2021, Kabul “drives the point home”

It is the ball that the American president will drag from the beginning to the end of his mandate. The disastrous withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan, marked by the bombing of the Kabul airport and the abandonment, even temporary, of some of their allies there dealt an almost fatal blow to the image of Joe Biden in his country. And of image it was in particular question when several observers did not hesitate to draw a parallel with the evacuation of civilians during the fall of Saigon in Vietnam in 1975.

In Virginia, where military families and army bases are numerous, the Afghan issue is one of the subjects that brought the Republican to victory, says Marie-Christine Bozom.

“The portrait that had been made of Biden during the campaign has been cracking for several months,” says our specialist. Joe Biden is increasingly seen as “incompetent”, and voters “doubt” him internationally. After Afghanistan, the submarine crisis facing France, a long-time ally, has only reinforced the trend.

Reforms promised … and still awaited

In addition to the Covid, Joe Biden was also elected by promising to erase all traces of the Trump administration. He got down to it –the return to the Paris agreement is the most telling example – but he did just that, or almost.

With the exception of the American Rescue Plan (the post-Covid recovery plan voted in February), the major reforms promised by the presidential candidate never came to fruition. In oblivion, the tax project for the richest and the reform of the police expected after the murder of George Floyd, to name just two of the most emblematic.

As for its large-scale investment plan – on infrastructure and a second social and climate component, called “Build Back Better” – they are currently blocked in Congress, both by the Republicans who consider them disproportionate, and by the Democratic left wing for whom they are insufficient.

The awakening of Republican hopes?

The difficulties on these two major plans perfectly sum up the first months of the mandate of Biden, a president who satisfies almost no one and “displeases a lot”. “He is in a very special situation because he is an extremely weakened president on all fronts, with majorities in the House and the Senate which are very fine,” recalls Marie-Christine Bonzom.

And without a strong majority, he cannot reassure enough on either side: “The Democratic left wing feels that Biden may have to give in on certain points. On the other hand, the Republicans profit from the discontent of a good part of the population ”, she adds.

For Republicans, victory in Virginia bodes well after Trump’s defeat and the tears surrounding him. It is also reminiscent of 2009, the year when the defeat of the Democrats in Virginia foreshadowed the red wave during the midterm elections, and the loss of Congress for Obama. Enough to give hope for the next ones in 2022.

However, the change in Virginia also hides another reality: the sanction vote does not apply only to Joe Biden but to the entire American political class. “Americans are more and more dissatisfied with the electoral choice offered to them (…), they have only one way to express their dissatisfaction: it is to vote for the other party for sanction whoever is in power, whoever he is, ”explains Marie-Christine Bonzom.

In February 2021, a Gallup Institute survey showed that 62% of Americans polled were in favor of creating a third party, a record figure.

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