Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump played their last cards before the midterm elections that will mark the rest of the US president’s administration, and which could pave the way for their predecessor’s return to the White House.
“This is the time to defend” democracy, the president of the United States said on Monday.
“Our democracy is in jeopardy,” he added, at a time when Republican candidates in the midterm elections threaten to defeat the Democrats.
“We’ll be there,” added the 79-year-old Democrat, at a university in Maryland outside Washington with many African Americans in the student body.
Biden was elected largely thanks to the support of the African-American community, which he has tried to mobilize again in recent days.
In front of a generally enthusiastic audience — with the exception of a few vocal opponents quickly expelled — Biden described the Republicans as the party that “wants to undo” the social gains made under his rule.
Trump 2024
Former President Donald Trump will speak shortly after Joe Biden.
The billionaire is in Ohio on Monday, an emblematic industrial state in the American Midwest that he managed to seduce: the middle class, mostly white, who live in the countryside or on the periphery, and who believe they have lost prominence with globalization.
Trump, who dreams of a “red wave” on Tuesday, the color of Republicans, put on hold the possibility of announcing his candidacy for 2024 this Monday night.
Biden has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024, but the prospect doesn’t appeal to all Democrats because of his age (he will soon be 80) and unpopularity.
The campaign exposed divisions in the world’s leading power.
In the audience that came to hear Joe Biden, Marisha Camp, a photographer who made the trip from upstate New York, sums up the situation.
“There’s a sense of urgency on the right, a sense that everything is falling apart and that it needs to be fixed… That urgency, I don’t know why, isn’t felt the same outside the blue side” of Democrats, she says worriedly.
As Republican candidates threaten not to recognize the results if they lose out, billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter fuels concerns about a wave of misinformation.
In a tweet published on Monday, Musk urged Americans to vote Republican. “Sharing of power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, so I recommend voting for a Republican Congress as the presidency is Democrat,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, Russia is adding fuel to the fire.
“We interfered (in American elections) and will continue to do so. Cautiously, precisely, surgically, in our own way,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to the Kremlin.
Electoral security
The White House was not surprised by these comments, according to spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, who also said officials had not identified “any specific credible internal threat” to electoral security.
Americans go to the polls to renew the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, in addition to electing governors and various municipal offices.
Republicans hope to take control of Congress, that is, not just the House of Representatives, as is often the case in midterm elections, in which the ruling party has traditionally been the target of the electorate’s dissatisfaction, but also the Senate, where Biden’s Democrats only have a majority by one vote, that of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Kevin McCarthy, a possible future leader of Republicans in the House of Representatives, considered in an interview with CNN the possibility of opening investigations into the Joe Biden administration, from the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan to the management of the covid-19 pandemic. A possible impeachment process against the Democratic president is not ruled out by Republicans.
He also said he will not give Ukraine a “blank check” if his Republican Party wins a majority in the election.
On Monday, the White House insisted that US support for Ukraine is “unshakable” regardless of the election result.
Punitive vote
Historically, midterm elections have often been a referendum on the tenant of the White House.
If the Democrats are defeated, Congress will be in the hands of the opposition when Biden still has two years in office to go.
Faced with the effectiveness of a Republican campaign focused on rampant inflation, Democrats have in recent days tried to push through reforms launched by Biden, such as lowering prescription drug prices, increasing microchip manufacturing and record investment in infrastructure, something that will take years. for Americans to feel the effects.