Next week, the United States will undergo the Midterm elections. President Joe Biden appeals to Democrats, while also polarizing Republicans even more.
The American people will be called to the ballots on Tuesday November 8th. The Midterm elections, which actually already started in some parts of the USA, will be decisive for the future of the country.
In the United States there is an election every two years. Every other election, so the one held in 2020 and the one that will be held in 2024, decides the new President. The so-called “Midterm election”, so the ones in between the “President” elections, decide merely the new formation of the American Congress.
This, however, is crucial because without a majority in Congress, it would be especially hard for Presidents to pass laws and decrees. Right now, President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party hold a slim majority in the House of Commons, while the Senate is evenly split with the Republican Party.
If Biden completely loses the majority in the Midterms, he will always need bipartisan support for any policy he wants to implement. And with a political landscape ever so polarized in the United States, it will not be an easy feat for him.
What did Joe Biden say
So, in an attempt to preserve democratic elections and appeal to his voter pool, President Joe Biden delivered a speech in Washington DC on Wednesday. He claimed that democracy could not be taken for granted anymore in America, and that fair and free elections were at risk.
He blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, to have poisoned American politics by refusing to accept the result of the 2020 elections. “American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president… refuses to accept the will of the people,” Biden said. “I believe the voices excusing or calling for violence and intimidation are a distinct minority in America, but they’re loud and they are determined.”
He said that most Americans did not believe in free elections any longer. Indeed, according to a recent poll, 44% of Americans think the elections were rigged, while 49% believe voter fraud is a widespread problem. However, according to the same poll, 67% of responders also believed their votes would be accurately counted.
Many of Biden’s opponents think this speech was a way to avoid the real issues afflicting the USA. In fact, the current economic challenges faced by the US were not mentioned by Biden. Such challenges include rampant inflation as well as an impending energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine.
Many also accused Biden of hypocrisy, given his support to the violent Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In any case, it is clear that Joe Biden was appealing to his supporters rather than trying to sway Republican votes.
American democracy is showing ever larger signs of sickness. But the main symptom is not any electoral fraud (usually pretty rare in the USA), rather the polarization between the two parties. Democrats and Republicans seem inconsolable with each other, and this cannot be a good sign of a working democratic process.
