2023-04-25 17:51:06
The re-nomination of the president was welcomed without enthusiasm by his party. The Republicans (who feared Michelle Obama’s descent into the field) were satisfied. Will it be a new challenge with Trump?
From our correspondent
New York – The announcement has arrived, it’s no surprise. The tone is calm, measured, evocative, and even nostalgic like the cursive pen writing that accompanies each frame of the video, and which is no longer taught in many American schools. The slogans: “We have to finish the job,” as in the state of the Union; “The battle for the soul of the nation”, as when he ran exactly four years ago in the 2020 elections. At his side will be Kamala Harrisdespite doubts also in the democratic field.
Bridge of generations
In 2020 Biden defined himself as “a bridge” to the new generation: some thought he would run for a single term, but Biden felt he was not ready to pass the baton. The party has concluded that he is leaving and that if at some point in the campaign or presidency he fails to move forward, then his race will become a relay.
It is the latest chapter in a long public life that began in 1970 with the election to the New Castle County Board, which he spent 36 years in the Senate. This is his fourth candidacy for the White House: the first, at the age of 44, was disastrous and ended amid accusations of plagiarism, the second ended with eight years of vice presidency, and the third with victory.
Is Trump replying?
Biden’s re-nomination heralds a possible repeat of a confrontation with Trump in 2024: it is something that most Americans say they don’t want to. Fifty-one percent of Democratic voters in an NBC poll on Sunday said Biden should not run again, and half expressed concern about his age: at 80 he is already the oldest president in US historyhe would have 86 at the end of the second term (nine more than Reagan when he quit the White House). His approval rating is at 42%, lower than 10 of 13 predecessors at this point in their presidency. Repeated polls have shown that Democrats would like a fresh face, but don’t know who it should be.
little enthusiasm
Biden’s decision is also welcomed with stoicism rather than enthusiasm by many democratic politicians, who say: “We need stability”. The push to contest his re-nomination faded after the party’s much better-than-expected results in the midterm elections. And the fear and anger against Trump is a force that unites the Democrats: the former president’s descent into the field as early as November helped to coagulate the party again around Biden, as already in 2020. The left wing of the party also remained in linealthough Biden has recently shown – from the environment to crime to immigration – that he wants to move towards the centre.
“I’m not omnipotent”
Starting today and for the next 18 months before the vote, the president will have to convince the skeptics and plans to do so by touring the country (unlike 2020 when the pandemic often forced him to stay in Delaware) and showing the results of his presidency . The video does not mention the ambitious legislative achievements obtained in its first two years (aid during the pandemic, the infrastructure plan and climate change) even with the support of the Republicans, nor the strengthened alliances with the leadership in Ukraine, but there will be time to do it. “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, but to the alternative,” Biden often says. And when in the video he talks about the “MAGA” extremists who threaten the freedom of Americans, they are framed both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Republicans are satisfied
Thus begins a new phase of the electoral campaign. Democrats are counting on the fact that the “alternative” to Biden is Trump: however ambivalent the swing voters (voters hanging in the balance) on the current president, they don’t want a return to the predecessor. Even the Republicans say they are satisfied that their rival is Biden (the worst fear of the Trumpians at the last Cpac conservative conference was that the candidate was Michelle Obama). According to the polls it would be a competitive challenge. Would be the first time since 1956 which challenge the same contenders of the previous elections (it happened when Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson for the second time). Would be the first time since 1912 that a president is challenged by his predecessor (Theodore Roosevelt attempted a comeback against his successor William Howard Taft, in a three-way campaign that was later won by Woodrow Wilson).
Shared values
Biden wants to make it a campaign for freedom, against right-wing radicalism that bans abortion, books in schools, the choice “who you can love”, but in addition to personal freedoms there is an appeal to shared values that seem today lost. There is no hope of truly unifying the country, which Biden has demonstrated in the past, but the observation that anger and dissatisfaction are factors that motivate the electorate. Biden has often repeated that his candidacy is linked to the desire to prevent Trump’s return, but the truth is that he is running again not only for the Americans but also largely for himself. Frank Bruni on New York Times he invites us not to forget “how the rejection heard by Biden must have weighed after he, having served Obama faithfully as vice president, saw him choose Hillary Clinton to succeed him”. She invites us not to forget “how she continued to run after the humiliating primary results in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020”. He waited longer than anyone to become president, and giving up chasing a second term would have been like admitting failure. It’s his whole life.
April 25, 2023 (change April 25, 2023 | 5:50 pm)
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