Midterm elections | Biden calls on Americans to ‘stand up for democracy’

(Bowie) Joe Biden has urged Americans to “stand up for democracy,” in a final plea on the eve of an election that could render him politically powerless while putting rival Donald Trump into orbit for 2024.

“Now is the time for you to stand up for democracy,” the US president said on Monday.

“We viscerally know that our democracy is in danger”, he still assured, while Republican candidates in this multitude of ballots gathered under the name “midterms” threaten to contest a possible defeat.

“We will be there. Power in America is where it has always been: in your hands, the hands of the people,” the 79-year-old Democrat said at a historically black university in Maryland, outside Washington.

The choice is significant for this president-designate largely thanks to the support of the African-American community, which he has tried to remobilize in recent days.

Faced with a generally enthusiastic audience – with the exception of a few noisy opponents quickly exfiltrated by security – he also tried to paint the Republicans as the party that “wants to get rid of” the social advances initiated under his mandate.

Trump 2024?

Former President Donald Trump is due to speak right after Joe Biden. He is in Ohio, an industrial state in the Midwest, emblematic of an America distressed by globalization, which thinks it has found its providential man in the billionaire.

Donald Trump, who dreams of a “red wave” on Tuesday, the color of the Republicans, has raised the suspense over a possible announcement, as of Monday evening, of his candidacy for 2024.

Joe Biden, for his part, says so far that he intends to run again in 2024, but the prospect does not delight all Democrats, because of his age – soon to be 80 – and his unpopularity.

This confrontation by rallies interposed between the current and the former president concludes a campaign which has crudely exposed the divisions of the first world power.

In the audience who came to listen to Joe Biden, Marisha Camp, a photographer who made the trip from New York State (northeast), summarizes the feverishness of the Democratic camp.

“There is a sense of urgency on the right, the feeling that everything is falling apart and that there is a moral duty to fix it… This urgency, I do not know why, is not not felt the same way on the blue side ”, that of the Democrats, she worries.

“We know deep down that this is an election to save the country,” echoed Republican candidate for Arizona senator Blake across the country. Masters. It could allow the “Grand Old Party” to regain a majority in the Senate if it wins.

Election security

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre expressed calm on Monday, saying authorities had identified “no credible, specific threat” from within against election security.

The Americans will renew the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. Many major local elected positions are also at stake.

Republicans believe they can not only take the House of Representatives, which is the classic scenario in these traditionally difficult elections for the party in the White House. But also snatch Joe Biden’s slim control of the powerful Senate.

In the event of victory, the conservatives promise to scrutinize all the initiatives of the Biden administration, including internationally.

Ukraine

Kevin McCarthy, possible future Republican boss of the House of Representatives, repeated Monday on CNN that he did not want to “write a blank check” to Ukraine if his party seized the majority.

The White House countered that US support would be “unwavering” regardless of the outcome of the ballot – which may slowly settle as the votes count.

Faced with the effectiveness of a Republican campaign centered on galloping inflation, Joe Biden had a hard time touting purchasing power reforms, which will only be felt in several years.

The Democratic camp has therefore, beyond these economic subjects, sought to the end to portray the Republican Party as a threat to democracy and social achievements such as the right to abortion.

Whether this will have the desired effect remains to be seen. Or if the well-known saying of an adviser to former President Bill Clinton will be verified again, namely that in elections, it is always “the economy that counts” (“It’s the economy, stupid”).