Biden meets 'blue-collar workers' to build on momentum of congressional speech

MISE À DAY

In the momentum of his “State of the Union address”, interpreted as a campaign launch in disguise, Joe Biden left on Wednesday to meet the “blue collar workers” he wants to be the champ. 

After a pugnacious address to Congress, the US president tried to continue his momentum in Wisconsin, a northern agricultural state that he only barely won against former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. .

“My economic project is for this popular America which gets up every morning to go to work and who struggles to earn a decent living”, said the 80-year-old Democrat in a training center for construction workers, surrounded by trade unionists in helmets and construction vests.

Joe Biden has promised, like the day before, to defend a middle class “crushed” by decades of relocation, and to give it back its “pride”.

The president, who has not officially declared himself a presidential candidate for 2024, basically wants to address the same audience as his predecessor.

But where Donald Trump speaks of “decline “, promised him better days, a” program to rebuild America by and for blue collar workers.

Joe Biden was also happy to return to a defining moment of his “State of the Union Address”.

” Liar !

Tuesday evening, when he accused the Republicans of wanting to abolish the minimum old age pension (called Social Security in the United States) and health coverage for seniors (Medicare), he had been interrupted by invective from hard-right parliamentarians, in particular a “Liar! launched by the elected Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Turning the situation around to the cheers of the Democrats, Joe Biden had joked about this sudden “conversion” of his opponents to the benefits of the welfare state.

In Wisconsin, he drove the point home.

“Many Republicans dream of scrapping Social Security and Medicare. Let me tell you that I will turn their dream into a nightmare by vetoing” any legislative attempt to do so, he promised.

In Wisconsin, Joe Biden continued to hone what his campaign speech could be: a resolutely optimistic tone and the most concrete approach possible, with plenty of details on his past reforms and his future projects, whether huge infrastructure projects or the daily hassle of consumers.

Joe Biden said he heard a commentator on television surprised that he did not talk about “important things”.

Taking the example of bank overdraft fees, which he promises to lower, this president born into a middle-class family launched: “It may not matter for the rich, but it matters for the people with whom I grew up. »

“Pack woke”

In what looks like a campaign before the campaign, Joe Biden will go to Florida, a state in the South now predominantly Republican, popular with retirees.

He will detail his programs in favor of seniors – showing in passing that he is ready to do battle with the hard right, of which the local governor Ron DeSantis is a rising star.

Where Joe Biden plays pragmatism and optimism, the Republicans chose, at least on Tuesday evening, to respond in a darker tone, and to attack on the register of “culture wars” – these battles led by the ultra- conservatives primarily around school curricula addressing gender issues and racial inequalities.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former door Donald Trump's spokesperson and officially appointed to deliver the Republican “counter-speech” on Tuesday, criticized Biden for having “capitulated to a woke pack that doesn't even know how to define what a woman is anymore”.

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Joe Biden's address to Congress has remobilized his camp, but it is difficult to predict the impact of this high political mass, with declining television ratings, on the electorate in general.

< p>Polls so far show that American voters don't want a second term for Biden any more than they want a he new Trump presidency.