During the 2020 US presidential campaign, “Barack Obama has very rarely shown himself alongside Joe Biden”. Since Biden moved into the White House in January 2021, “Obama has not been invited to any official event”, remind him Washington Post. Generally speaking, “although ostensibly close and residing only two miles apart [à Washington]the two men have hardly seen each other lately”, points out the newspaper.
This Tuesday, April 5, however, former Democratic President Barack Obama will make a rare appearance alongside his former vice-president at the White House, “officially to attend the promulgation by Joe Biden of an executive order coming to reinforce theAffordable Care Act”the major affordable health care reform signed into law by Obama in March 2010, dubbed “Obamacare”.
A strategic visit
An event in itself, since Barack Obama has “not set foot in the White House since 2017, when he left the premises to make way for Donald Trump”, note it Washington Post.
But this high-profile visit also aims to galvanize the Democratic troops in view of the mid-term legislative elections next November. And this, “while Joe Biden’s popularity rating is not at its highest” and that the current tenant of the White House is struggling to reassure Americans about their most important concern of the moment, namely galloping inflation, wiping incessant criticism from the opposition:
“Republicans attack Biden and Democrats on rising prices and rising crime, and other quality of life issues.”
As former Obama adviser David Axelrod points out in the columns of the daily newspaper in the federal capital, “Inviting the former president to the White House for the first time in a year and a half is an excellent strategic choice”. Barack Obama could therefore be led to play an even more active role in the coming months, while “Democrats want to be successful in drawing attention to the government’s actions in favor of ordinary Americans”.