Thursday, Joe plays big | The Press

The traditional State of the Union address delivered by the President of the United States will take place on Thursday and, quite frankly, it has been a long time since I have looked forward to this event with such impatience.

I am not going to pretend that the fate of the November presidential election – and therefore that of the entire planet – is linked to this speech.

Except that…

Less than 250 days before the presidential election in the United States, while his leadership is contested and questions about his age are making headlines, the speech that Joe Biden will give promises to be decisive.

Especially since Donald Trump has the wind in his sails. The United States Supreme Court has just confirmed his eligibility for the November presidential election. And “Super Tuesday” should allow him to cement his lead over his Republican rival Nikki Haley.

Read our guide to “Super Tuesday”

I discussed this with two academics specializing in American politics.

They are of the same opinion.

For Joe Biden, “this speech is important electorally, it is its great particularity, to face criticism about his age”, underlines political scientist from the University of Sherbrooke Karine Prémont.

“Whether justified or not, these criticisms take up a lot of space in the media and among activists,” she adds.

So the State of the Union speech will not be evaluated, this time, solely on its merits.

It will also be in form.

“On Joe Biden’s ability not to make mistakes, not to hesitate, not to stumble over words, to appear vigorous when he is on the podium,” indicates Julien Tourreille, researcher in residence at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at UQAM.

Joe Biden will definitely have to try to make Americans forget his age during this speech. If he succeeds, his mission will have been largely accomplished.

Which does not mean that the content of his message will be secondary. “Because, obviously, it is the opportunity to lay the first milestones of the campaign speech,” points out the expert.

And what should he talk about?

The best summary of the challenge facing Joe Biden was given to us, in my opinion, by Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan.

“There are only three issues: America at home (illegal immigration), America in the world (Ukraine, Israel) and the economy,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

“He will try to convince the Americans that his administration has really done a lot to improve living conditions,” predicts Karine Prémont.

It won’t be so easy…

Inflation is falling, the US economy is doing better, but the mood of many voters remains gloomy.

According to the Gallup polling firm, only 20% of Americans said last January that they were satisfied with the “state of the nation.” However, we note that since the end of last year, American consumer morale has been on the rise, the University of Michigan recently reported.

Immigration is also an unavoidable issue. This is also why Joe Biden went to the Mexican border last Thursday. He called on Donald Trump to convince him to authorize Republican parliamentarians in Washington to adopt the bill on the issue.

He will surely reiterate this call during his speech to the American Congress.

“Biden must absolutely demonstrate that he is doing more, that he is doing better and that he wants to reduce the flow of immigrants,” summarizes Karine Prémont.

The Democratic president will also seek to convince the Republicans who are blocking aid intended for Ukraine to stop holding back.

In these two files, his strategy will, in my opinion, have two components. He will first want to put pressure on Donald Trump’s most loyal allies, who are preventing these two initiatives from moving forward.

At the same time, he will try to demonstrate to potential voters that he is in good faith, but that his rivals are not.

On this subject, Julien Tourreille thinks that the president “could be referring to Mitch McConnell”, the leader of the Republicans in the US Senate. This senator, who has just announced that he will leave his post, is not always on the same wavelength as Donald Trump. He is thus notoriously in favor of granting military aid to Ukraine.

By citing him as an example, the American president could “say that there were people in the Republican Party with whom we could work and that American democracy could work,” says the expert.

But today it is increasingly difficult, largely due to Donald Trump, Joe Biden could argue.

And he won’t be wrong.

However, the fate of democracy and that of the right to abortion remain, in my opinion, the two most promising subjects for the Democratic president.

It is these issues that allowed his party to save the furniture – to the great surprise of many analysts – during the mid-term elections in 2022.

Two issues that could contribute to the re-election of Joe Biden in November.

But for that, he will have to above all, from Thursday, persuade a majority of Americans that he is not too old to lead the country.

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