(Washington) In the momentum of a speech with Rooseveltian accents, unanimously interpreted as a disguised campaign launch, Joe Biden left on Wednesday to meet this “forgotten” popular America of which he now wants to be the champion.
After a speech “on the state of the Union” which galvanized his camp, the American president left Wednesday for Wisconsin, a highly contested northern agricultural state during the last presidential election.
Joe Biden, given at the start by a large margin, had finally won only a short head over former Republican President Donald Trump.
The 80-year-old Democrat, who intends to run again but has not officially launched a campaign like his predecessor, will visit a training center for construction workers.
What better framework to continue chanting than it is he, Joe Biden, who best understands the working world and low-income households?
Wisconsin then Florida
He will boast, according to the White House, of having attracted $4 billion in private investment into the state, while launching infrastructure projects and reducing the cost of health care.
Then the president will go to Florida on Thursday, a southern state now mostly Republican popular with retirees. He will detail his programs for seniors – showing in passing that he is ready to do battle with the hard right, of which local governor Ron DeSantis is a rising star.
The American president presented himself before Congress as the champion of a middle class “crushed” by decades of globalization, to which we must give “pride” and prosperity – basically the same electoral target as Donald Trump, but with an “optimistic” speech where the Republican chooses the rhetoric of “decline”.
“Seen from the angle of an informal campaign launch, this speech was successful,” commented on Twitter David Karol, professor of political science at the University of Maryland.
“He gave no argument to those who believe he is not ready for a new presidential race”, he judged after this removed performance from Joe Biden, interspersed with improvised projections against the Republicans the most virulent of the assistance.
The Democrat has at least remobilized his camp. “Joe Biden is doing what he knows best” when speaking to the middle class, enthused Senator and left-wing Democratic Representative Elizabeth Warren, hailing promises of a billionaire tax and spending on families.
But what will be the effect on the electorate as a whole? According to a hot poll for CNN on Tuesday evening, Joe Biden received a “positive” reaction from 72% of those polled. The score was almost identical a year ago after his “State of the Union speech”, and that had in no way boosted his confidence rating.
The majority of Americans today say they are opposed to both a second term for Biden and another Trump presidency.
Roosevelt
In an attempt to change the dynamic, the octogenarian president put himself on Tuesday, by evoking the “forgotten” of growth, in the footsteps of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1932, when the United States was going through the worst recession in its history, the architect of the “New Deal” had sworn to restore “faith in the forgotten man who is at the bottom of the economic pyramid. »
Joe Biden is betting that it is by talking about difficult month-ends, and down-to-earth subjects such as bank overdraft fees or potholes, that he will be able to lift America’s spirits.
In front of the parliamentarians, he did not dwell on the social subjects of which the radical right is fond, such as abortion or gender issues.
In Tuesday’s “counter-speech” on behalf of Republicans, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the opposite bet.
She denounced the “leftist culture war” according to her orchestrated by the White House, a term used on the right to attack in particular school content on sexuality and racism.