US Democrats in Crisis: Biden is running out of time

Things are not going well for US President Biden. His own party is blocking his reform agenda, the disengagement debacle in Afghanistan has not been forgotten, and his approval ratings are at rock bottom. Can he still turn things around?

It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine Donald Trump cheering with pleasure in Mar-A-Lago when this image flickered across the American television screens: Joe Biden at the climate conference in Glasgow, with his eyes closed, fell asleep. Out of exhaustion, out of boredom? Anyway, the picture impression was devastating.

Biden’s own party had screwed it up, strengthened it, with a decided climate package in his pocket, to travel to Scotland. Biden’s climate protection measures were not even able to win a majority in a scaled-down form.

Opposition leader Trump has many reasons to glee, not just the illustration of his derisive name for the unloved successor, “Sleepy Joe”. It’s going well for the Republicans, who hardly have to do any active opposition work. And the reverse is also true: things are going badly for the Democrats. Really bad.

The crisis is homemade

To make matters worse, the crisis is homemade. Paralyzed by wing battles and the ego trips of two eccentrics, Biden and his party are just getting little done. At least the infrastructure package, which provides for investments of $ 1.2 trillion, was given the go-ahead from parliament. But not because the Democrats wanted to give their ailing president at least one success.

No, there were 13 Republicans in the House of Representatives who ensured the necessary majority – knowing full well that mending the ailing road and rail network or modernizing the digital infrastructure will reach the electorate, whether right or left. The Democrats refused to deliver for either the voters or their president. They prefer to deal with themselves, with tactical games within the party.

The unit has disappeared

Around ten months after the change in the White House, the democratic unity that made Biden’s election victory possible has disappeared. In their deep-seated aversion to Trump, the party had come together. Progressives and moderates had pulled themselves at the belt for the one, overshadowing goal: Trump should go. This unity, combined with the abandonment of an overly ambitious redistribution agenda, won the decisive swing voters in the center: more conservative suburbanites, including the much-vaunted “Suburban Housewifes”, who thoroughly approved of Trump’s politics, but found the bully as a person out of the question. It was precisely this group of voters who gave the Democrats the symbolic election debacle in the state of Virginia.

A quarreling ruling party that throws taxpayers’ money around and does not even want to support its own reform agenda as a single entity: That made the voters, who clearly backed Biden in the presidential election, switch camp.

“Build Back Better” became “Build Back Bigger”

This is exactly what drives the two party rebels Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia um: Too much too fast, not taking the voters away. It is true that Manchin in particular has private assets in the traditional energy industry and is therefore blocking far too extensive climate protection. But if they fear that Biden is overwhelming the voter, they may have a point.

The old-fashioned political veteran ran as a middle-class candidate, appearing to stand for “transition, not transformation”. A transitional president who doesn’t hurt anyone, but above all brings more civilized manners back to Washington. And nobody who turns everything inside out. But then it turned out differently. “Build Back Better” became “Build Back Bigger”: knowing full well that the wafer-thin parliamentary majority could be gone again in the mid-term elections next year, Biden stepped on the gas from the start. With the effect that his reform packages were first shrunk and even then were not able to win a majority. Another promise of salvation Biden was that, thanks to his decades of senatorial experience, he knew exactly how to organize majorities in Congress. He seems to have lost the ability.

For now, the stalemate remains

He still does not have the votes for his social and climate protection package, which should be decided before Rome and Glasgow. And that although Biden has already slashed his reform agenda dramatically. Originally, he wanted to take $ 3.5 trillion in hand to promote education, relieve families and fight climate change. Of that, just half that remained at $ 1.75 trillion. Attractive reliefs such as paid three-month parental allowance, two years of free study at community colleges or the noticeable lowering of the horrific drug prices have been deleted. And whether enough MPs will ever raise their hands for the $ 500 billion that Biden wants to invest in promoting climate-neutral energy remains questionable.

For now, the stalemate remains. Moderate democrats do not want to overwhelm their voters with an overly ambitious reform and climate agenda. And above all not with spending astronomical sums of money. For them, Virginia is proof that overwhelmed voters are switching sides. Progressive Democrats, on the other hand, want to use the small window that remains before a possible majority change in Congress in less than a year for the most comprehensive reforms possible. According to the motto: If not now, then when? The plucked Biden sits between these chairs.

Trump can wait calmly

Meanwhile, the Republicans sit back with relish and watch as political competition relieves them of their opposition work. So they can concentrate on their own reform work undisturbed: changing the electoral law in their favor in as many states as possible. Nobody enjoys this constellation as much as the vengeful Trump. He can be courted and can calmly wait for the appropriate time to declare his candidacy for 2024. Meanwhile, Biden is running out of time. He needs success, not just in voting. If the Americans don’t get the feeling very quickly that it was worth the agonizing turmoil and that Biden’s reform work is noticeably benefiting them, then the Biden presidency remains an episode of failure to meet its own standards.

Then the US will see the return of Trumpism, more unrestrained and vital than ever, with or without its namesake at the top. It is not yet clear how Biden will regain political fortune.