(Washington) The entry of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court is an undeniable success for Joe Biden, at a time when the American president badly needs a new political breath, a few months before legislative elections badly started.
Posted at 7:09
The 79-year-old Democrat has already shown that he intends to take all the credit possible from this historic appointment, which was a campaign promise: to bring a black woman into this powerful institution for the first time, where so many debates of society.
He received the brilliant magistrate at the White House when he announced that she was his candidate on February 25. Then he phoned her to encourage her before her endless hearings before the Senate — and let it be known.
On Thursday, the White House rushed the photographers to one of the lounges at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where they found the president and Ketanji Brown Jackson watching together the televised Senate vote confirming his nomination. And if that was not enough, the American president then published, on Twitter, a selfie taken on this occasion.
Reception
Finally, on Friday, Joe Biden, with First Vice President Kamala Harris, will receive Ketanji Brown Jackson with all the honors on the lawns of the White House.
With the approach of the mid-term legislative elections in November, traditionally difficult for the party of the president, Joe Biden badly needs a new breath.
His teams may repeat in all tones that the United States is experiencing a dazzling economic rebound and a flourishing job market, none of this benefits him. American households only see the dollars gobbled up more and more quickly at the gas pump and at the supermarket checkouts, due to galloping inflation.
The president’s confidence rating is around 41 or even 42% and cannot take off.
While there was a slight positive effect after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, which saw Joe Biden take the reins of the Western response, it did not last, in a country where partisan divisions were white-hot by Donald Trump.
These divisions played out during Ketanji Brown Jackson’s auditions, even though the candidate proved to be rather popular with public opinion: “The Republicans want to take back the majority [au Congrès]so there were a lot of questions, in my opinion, that were off topic,” said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond.
He also recalls that if three Republicans voted in his favor, this has nothing to compare with the momentum that once united the two parties around Stephen Breyer, whose Ketanji Brown Jackson will occupy the chair of the Supreme Court. The outgoing judge was confirmed by 87 votes to 9 by the Senate in 1994, the one who succeeds him was confirmed by 53 votes to 47.
remobilize
Failing to move the party lines, Joe Biden can at least hope, with this appointment, to remobilize a crucial electorate: African-Americans.
He owes his election to them, and also in large part his very slim current majority in the Senate, after intense fieldwork by leaders of the African-American community to snatch two crucial seats in Georgia.
But past the euphoria of these victories, many activists criticized the president for having abandoned the promises he had made to them, in terms of the fight against police violence or the defense of access to the vote.
The appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson could at least temporarily forget these disappointments. She has been hailed by figures such as Michelle Obama, Martin Luther King III – the son of the civil rights icon – or the charismatic Stacey Abrams, black candidate for governor of Georgia.
Basically, what could really spoil the party on Friday at the White House is COVID-19: contaminations have exploded in recent days in the small world of politics and the media in Washington.