This Tuesday, February 7, the United States is preparing to experience one of the major rituals of its political life: the President will hold his State of the Union address. As is the tradition, Joe Biden will address the elected representatives of both chambers of Congress, but also the Americans who will be millions to follow him on television in prime time.
The State of the Union address is the largest audience of the year. And as Joe Biden’s term comes to halftime, he will take the opportunity to brag about his record. Despite the difficulties in his own ranks, the president managed to pass three major laws during his first two years at the White House: a text on microprocessors, his infrastructure renovation plan, voted in the Senate with the help of a few elected officials Republicans, and finally his landmark climate plan, the Inflation Reduction Act.
Moreover, the US economy is doing quite well despite inflation. The unemployment rate is at its lowest, with only 3.5%. The president should therefore have no trouble finding good news for the start of his speech.
Americans don’t approve of Joe Biden’s work
Despite these undeniable political successes, Americans curiously do not feel that their daily lives are improving. According to a Washington Post/ABC poll published on Monday, February 6, 62% of them believe that Joe Biden has only ” little or nothing accomplished during his presidency. And that’s a problem for the president, who in all likelihood will seek a second term in 2024 and is expected to make the announcement in the coming days.
” If he wants to run for a second term, he must make sure to rally all Democratic voters as well as independents says Antoine Yoshinaka, professor of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. ” This is why Joe Biden is going to talk about subjects such as immigration, safety in big cities or even abortion, issues which – as we saw during the mid-term elections – were carriers for the Democrats. »
Joe Biden before a divided Congress
But the two most important domestic political topics imposed themselves in Joe Biden’s speech. First, there is the raising of the debt ceiling. Unlike last year, Congress is no longer controlled by Democrats alone. On screen, seated behind Joe Biden, we will see this Tuesday evening Kevin McCarthy. The new leader of the Republican majority in the House has already announced the color: a compromise on the budget is only possible if the Republicans obtain deep cuts in federal government spending.
The other topic is police reform. A text to this effect which bore the name of George Floyd could not be adopted in Congress. But this painful file came back to the fore with the terrible murder of African-American Tire Nichols by five black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee.
” I believe Joe Biden will ask Congress to reinstate the bill that was abandoned last year in the Senate regarding a reform of the national standards on the use of force by the police predicts Antoine Yoshinaka. ” The family of Tire Nichols will also be in Congress to attend this speech as the president’s guest of honor. »
War in Ukraine and tensions with China: the foreign policy narrative under Joe Biden
In 2022, the war in Ukraine, which had just broken out, was the surprise guest of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. In 2023, it is a chinese spy balloon who comes to play spoilsport. But, in the end, believes Martin Quencez, deputy director of the German Marshal Fund in Paris, both the war in Ukraine and the tensions with China allow Joe Biden to reinforce the narrative he has built on his foreign policy.
” It is a narrative of opposition to autocratic regimes which says that democracies today must unite in the face of an autocratic and fundamentally dangerous model, carried by Russia and China. And Joe Biden, from his 2020 election campaign for the presidency, presented himself as the one who would unite the allies and democratic partners of the United States to prevent these authoritarian and hostile countries from changing the international order and the rules of the game. worldwide. »
This will probably still be Joe Biden’s line of defense this Tuesday against Republicans who accuse him in particular of weakness in the face of China.
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