Paralyzed by the veto of a single senator to its gigantic environmental and social reforms supposed to arm the United States for the challenges of the XXIe century, powerless in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, Joe Biden saw his presidency crack on all sides on Monday.
Returning to the White House after a weekend with his family, the Democratic President, wearing a thick black mask, walked towards the Oval Office without addressing a word or a glance to the journalists who were waiting for him at his. helicopter descent.
His agenda does not foresee, for the time being, any public appearance on Monday.
His “Build Back Better” plan, $ 1.7 trillion in spending to win the United States over climate change and competition from China, received a possibly fatal blow this weekend after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, endowed de facto of a veto, voted against.
The 79-year-old president has so far been content with a message on Twitter, in which he says he is “more determined than ever” to defend this project, among other things, to significantly lower the cost of insulin.
The leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, was trying to boost morale by promising in a statement: “We will vote on a revised version” of the big bill, “and we will continue to vote until we have something ”.
“Inexplicable” turnaround
But what can be left of the most important project of the Biden presidency without the voice of Joe Manchin?
After revealing it on Sunday on Fox News, the conservative channel that Donald Trump was fond of, the elected representative of West Virginia repeated Monday in an interview with West Virginia Metro News radio that he would not vote in favor of these ” very, very ambitious reforms ”aimed at lowering the cost of childcare or drugs, supporting household purchasing power or encouraging the purchase of electric cars.
This centrist fears an inflationary effect and considers that aid should be more targeted.
Without him, there would be no Democratic majority in the Senate. And impossible to count, as Joe Biden did recently to vote for gigantic infrastructure spending, on votes from the opposition: Republicans consider that “Build Back Better” would tip America into “socialism”, the supreme political foil in the United States.
We will keep voting until we have something
The White House expressed its frustration on Sunday in a statement of unprecedented virulence from its spokesperson Jen Psaki, criticizing “a sudden and inexplicable turnaround” and a “violation” of Joe Manchin’s commitments.
“It is not the president, it is his collaborators” who did “inexcusable things”, said the senator in a rather enigmatic way Monday, after having brutally put an end to the discussions, he who was for weeks the object of all the attentions of the White House.
This turnaround further erodes the political credit of Joe Biden, whose confidence rating is already very low, one year away from the mid-term legislative elections which could turn into disaster for the Democrats.
The president, a former senator who prides himself on having mastered the parliamentary game like no other, had indeed personally invested in Joe Manchin – to the chagrin of the progressives in his party, who feel cheated.
Wave of helplessness
Powerless in the face of the senator from a small rural state of 1.7 million inhabitants, the president also seems to be in the face of the new wave of COVID-19 which is sweeping down the country, already the most bereaved in the world by the pandemic, with more than 800,000 deaths to date.
All over the country, lines are stretching out in front of screening centers, sports competitions and shows are canceled, universities are sending students home … The Omicron variant has become the vast majority, and represented 73.2% of new COVID-19 infections in the week ending Dec. 18, according to data from U.S. health officials.
Extremely transmissible, it took over the Delta variant within a few weeks. It is believed to be responsible for up to 96.3% of new cases in three states in the northwestern United States (Oregon, Washington and Idaho), according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
A disaster scenario for Joe Biden who, after the chaos of the Trump presidency, was elected on the promise of ending the pandemic.
But how do you keep this promise in a deeply divided country where the power of the federal state is, anyway, limited? Where any constraint, whether wearing a mask or vaccines, is the subject of controversy and numerous legal actions?
Joe Biden is due to speak to Americans on Tuesday about the Omicron variant. His adviser on the health crisis, Anthony Fauci, announced the color on Sunday: “We are going to have weeks, even months, difficult as we move forward into the winter. “