The labyrinthine hallways of the Capitol were busier than usual last night, with the rowdy atmosphere of great occasions. Congressmen, senators, members of the presidential cabinet, Supreme Court justices, special guests – among them, the Prime Minister of Sweden, who had recently joined NATO – and a hundred journalists headed to the House of Representatives to witness the most important annual speech. expected at the seat of American democracy. Outside, dozens of protesters blocked the road in protest of the bloodshed in Gaza.
Fulfilling his constitutional obligation, President Joe Biden prepared to give his third – and perhaps last – State of the Union address. He slowly entered the chamber to bipartisan applause, greeted those present and began a long and energetic speech, lasting one hour and ten minutes, in which he described the successes of his mandate and his pending challenges in the last year. It was the starting signal for the intense eight-month race to the White House. All of this, two days after Super Tuesday, which confirmed, in case there were any doubts, who will be his rival in November: Republican Donald Trump, who is seeking revenge after his defeat – never admitted – in the 2020 elections.
With a confrontational tone, with which he sought to give an image of vitality in the face of the growing criticism of his old age – which six out of ten Americans claim invalidates him from remaining in the Oval Office – he drew a speech of contrasts between the “hatred” of Trump and his “honesty”, between “anger” and his “decency”, between his autarkic “predecessor”, whom he did not name even once, and the president who has made the US economy “the envy of the world.”
The November 5 elections will be held under the shadow of the assault on the Capitol, when three years ago the magnate encouraged his followers to prevent the certification of the election results, in the largest attack on American democracy since the War of Secession (1861-1865). “History is watching, as it watched three years ago,” he said at the beginning of his speech: “The insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and put a dagger to the throat of American democracy. Many of you were here on that dark day. “We all saw with our own eyes that those insurrectionists were not patriots.”
The final stretch of Biden’s presidency is marked by his administration’s role in two major geopolitical conflicts, involving two important allies: Ukraine and Israel. And last night also marked a large part of his intervention. The president raised his voice to demand that Republicans lift their blockade of additional aid to Ukraine. “It wasn’t that long ago that a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, told Gorbachev: ‘Tear down this wall.’ Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin: ‘Do whatever you want,'” he recalled, quoting Trump’s incendiary statements last month. “If anyone in this room believes that Putin is going to hold back in Ukraine, I assure you that he will not.”
His speech did not lack references to the border, at the center of the electoral campaign after the Republicans blocked the immigration pact reached between the leaders of both parties in the Senate, one of the most restrictive in history. “I’m told that my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded that they block the bill. He believes it would be a political victory for me and a political defeat for him. It’s not about him or me: it would be a victory for America “.
One in three Americans cites the entry of undocumented migrants as the country’s biggest problem, according to the latest Gallup poll published in February. The number of “border encounters” with undocumented migrants has broken records during each of Biden’s three years in office. Specifically, 1.73 million in 2021, 2.37 million in 2022 and 2.47 million in 2023, according to figures from the Department of Homeland Security.
Both candidates describe the immigration situation as a “crisis”, and this is how they staged it on their trip to the border last week. “My predecessor plays politicking while he pressures congressmen to block this bill,” he said, directly challenging him: “Join me! We can do it together.” And he once again put his vision before Trump’s xenophobic speech: “I will not demonize immigrants by saying that ‘they poison the blood of our country’, as he said in his own words. I will not separate families. I will not prohibit entry into the United States. to people for their faith.”
The speech, on which he has been working with his advisors since last December, also featured an announcement – ??advanced hours earlier by administration sources –: the US will build a temporary port in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. to a trapped and increasingly besieged population. Under pressure from the progressive wing of his party, he sent a message to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government: “To Israel’s leaders I say this: humanitarian aid cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”
The interruptions of the Republicans throughout the appearance were already a constant in the same event last year, and have once again made the speech of a politician who is not known precisely for his oratory uncomfortable. “Liar”; “Fraud!” “Tell Hunter – his accused son – to pay his taxes!”; These are some of the cries of congressmen that could be heard from the press gallery, located just above the protagonist.
Behind Biden, the television cameras showed the attentive gaze of the first two in the line of succession, Vice President Kamala Harris and the president of the Lower House, Mike Johnson. There are many Americans who fear that these could become important if the president falls ill or dies during his second term (which would end at 86 years old, 13 more than the life expectancy for a man in the North American country).
In the three State of the Union speeches he has given since he became president, Biden has had the gaze of three different speakers fixed on his neck – in the first, Nancy Pelosi, and in the second, Kevin McCarthy – a sample of the instability that characterizes current political life in Washington. Pelosi was thrown out by the new Republican majority at the polls; McCarthy, a boycott led by the Freedom Caucus, the ultra-conservative group of his own party.
On tax matters, Biden renewed the promise he made in his speech a year ago to work to raise the corporate tax to 21% so that “all large companies finally start paying their fair share.” A measure that has no signs of succeeding if the Democrats do not recover the House of Representatives in November. “Look, I’m a capitalist. If you want to make a million dollars, great! But it’s only fair that you pay your taxes.” The Trump administration “enacted a $2 trillion tax cut, overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest and largest corporations. That soared the federal deficit and increased the national debt more than any other presidential term in U.S. history.” “U.S.,” he said.
Biden sells himself as the candidate of the working middle class, harmed by globalization processes and the relocation of production chains to third countries, such as China or India. “America’s recovery,” he said, “is about building a future of possibilities in our country, about building an economy from the inside out and from the bottom up, to ensure that we leave no one behind.” Over the past year, the president has reached out to the country’s big unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), which was involved in last fall’s successful motor strike. Its president, Shawn Fain, was present last night in the audience.
In the game of contrasts that Biden drew, and in his emphasis on the constitutive “freedom” of the country, he highlighted the situation of the right to abortion in the United States, which ceased to be protected at the federal level in June 2022, with the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade. Since then, this right has been in the hands of the states, forcing many women to do it clandestinely in places like Florida, Alabama or Texas, or pay for transportation to another state where it is legal to have an abortion.
Six of the nine members of the highest judicial court – three of whom were appointed by Trump – were present in the front row and maintained a firm and serious posture throughout the speech. Also present, although in the audience, was Kate Cox, a woman who was denied an emergency abortion by the Texas Supreme Court even though her future daughter, diagnosed with Edwards syndrome, was given a life expectancy of one week.
The list of twenty guests invited by the White House, an annual tradition that sends a message about the president’s priorities, was in accordance with the main lines of the speech. Biden invited the Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, who marked his entry into NATO, and sat next to the first lady, Jill Biden, during her speech; Keenan Jones, a teacher who has had her student debt forgiven thanks to the government’s massive forgiveness plan; or Jazmin Cazares, whose sister died in the Uvalde shooting. The first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, had also been invited, but she did not attend citing scheduling reasons.
Last night’s speech was a litmus test for Biden, who began the election year as the most unpopular president since Harry Truman in his third year in office (1948). He far surpassed her, with an eloquent speech and without lapses. But it is not clear that he will give him the boost he needs to achieve re-election: he has a poor 37.9% approval rating, and remains behind Trump in the polls in five of the six key states in these elections. .