Gubernatorial elections
Two wins are one too few – Joe Biden’s many construction sites
Selfie with the US President. Even if the situation is tricky, bad mood is not Joe Biden’s business.
© Nicholas Kamm / AFP
One year after the presidential election, there are three votes in the US. Two of them should win the Democrats, but Virginia will be tight. There is a proxy duel between the counted Joe Biden and his predecessor.
It looks good in New Jersey, it looks good on the other side of the Hudson River, in New York City: The Democrats will prevail in the upcoming elections there. Less than a year after the presidential election, Joe Biden could actually see the expected outcome as a confirmation of his policies. If it weren’t for the tight gubernatorial race in Virginia, a kind of proxy duel between incumbent US President Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.
“Everything is at stake in this election”
A year ago, the residents of the east coast state voted very clearly for the Democrats, and the last two governors came and are from the current ruling party. Her current candidate Terry McAuliffe ruled Virginia from 2014 to 2018 and was ahead in the polls until recently. But the tide is turning, in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin, a “supporter of Donald Trump,” as Joe Biden recently called him with a deliberately disrespectful undertone. The ex-president called on his supporters to “flood” the polling stations to compensate for fraud and of course to elect Youngkin. “Everything is at stake in this election,” said Trump.
Not only the media, but also the candidates themselves are making the gubernatorial race a test run for no less than the future of the entire country – because in a year’s time, large parts of the US Congress will be re-elected in the midterm elections, and the Democrats would then only be able to narrow theirs anyway Lose majorities in the parliamentary chambers again. Even now, Joe Biden is barely able to get his ambitious reform plans through.
This is due, for example, to party friends like Joe Manchin. Whereby the term friend does not apply to the senator. The 78-year-old belongs to the right wing of the Democrats and is currently slowing down one of two gigantic reform packages planned by the president. Originally, the White House wanted to invest $ 3.5 trillion in the expansion of the welfare state and in climate protection. But the project is too costly for Manchin, which is why the US president had to cut his plans in half. Without Manchin, the Democrats would not have a majority in the Senate.
The left-wing Democrats are also shy
But this damper is only one side of the problem. The other wing of the Democrats is also stubborn. The left are making their approval of the planned billion dollar infrastructure package dependent on a Senate majority for the social package. Biden’s biggest projects are blocking each other – there could be a voting showdown at the end of this week.
If Biden and his supporters fail to find a compromise that is sustainable for everyone at the very last minute, the 78-year-old’s presidency is likely to have failed. Because if he doesn’t get any projects through with his own majorities in both chambers of parliament, how then?
In addition, other bills were ironed out before they even took shape. Including the increase in corporation tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and the top tax rate. Biden’s original goal was to at least partially reverse the tax cuts from the Trump era. But any attempt to distribute the financial burden from the shoulders of the middle class to those of the rich and super-rich seems to be as futile in the USA as it is to tighten gun laws.
Biden’s presidential agenda has further flaws after almost ten months in office: the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal turned into a debacle; the economic recovery from the corona pandemic is sluggish; the political climate remains poisoned, its popularity ratings are accordingly in the basement. And then there is the predecessor who would also like to be the successor: Donald Trump. According to gubernatorial candidate McAuliffe, he is planning to use the vote in Virginia as a prelude to his comeback.
To do this, of course, unlike the presidential election, he should win it. Despite all inquiries, court judgments and a lack of evidence, Trump simply continues to stiffly claim that his November 3, 2020 defeat was due to election fraud. A conspiracy theory that caught on with many Republicans. And why he spreads the same rumors in the case of the Virginia election: “You know how they cheat in elections, better, you look carefully,” said Trump in an interview in early September. “It’s a close race in Virginia, just not when they’re cheating.”
Sources: “Washington Post“, DPA, AFP,”Fivethirtyeight“, Bloomberg, CNN