After the defeat of the Democrats in Virginia, the US President calls on the elected officials of his party to vote his investment plans, blocked by internal quarrels.
Le Monde with AFP
Joe Biden wants to “move forward”. The US President, Wednesday, November 3, the Democrats to vote his major reform projects blocked at the Congress by internal dissension, in the aftermath of the resounding defeat of his party in the election of the Governor of Virginia, a vote. as a test of its popularity.
“no governor of Virginia has never won by being the same party that the president in place,” he said before the press, refusing to endorse the responsibility of this failure considered as a hinge. his presidency.
“I know that people want things to be done and that’s why I continue to grow very strongly that the Democratic Party is moving forward and voting” its plans, one of the modernization of infrastructures and the other Social and climatic spending, which are the subject of intense negotiations in his party, “said Biden, returned in the night of his European tour for the G20 and COP26.
One year before the crucial mid-term elections that could completely refattreat the cards of power, the defeat Tuesday in Virginie sounds like a sting failure for Joe Biden, who had campaigned alongside the Terry McAuliffe Democratic candidate.
“A harsh evening for the Democrats”, summarized with the France-Press agency (AFP) J. Miles Coleman, from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Even if this election was only on a state, if Joe Biden is in trouble with voters in Virginia – a state he earned 10 points last year – he is probably too In difficulty in states such as Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, which are much more disputed and where senatorial elections will take place next year, “he said.
Defes in Virginia, Democrats save New Jersey
The Republicans could see in the victory of Glenn Youngkin a possible strategic roadmap for 2022, and perhaps even the presidential elevation of 2024: this neophyte in politics has managed to maintain the Trumpiste electoral base while taking enough distances. With the former president to reconquer voices in the wealthy suburbs.
Skinny consolation for Joe Biden, the Democratic Governor coming out of New Jersey has become a hair facing his Republican rival. Phil Murphy was yet widely victorious in the polls preceding the election.
The American president, whose popularity has reached a lower historical at this level of mandate in recent political history, with the exception of Donald Trump, must now plunge into Washington in the conferences of the Congress, since his Two gigantic investment plans are the subject of endless negotiations in its own camp between progressives and moderate.
An agreement on its Build Back Better program (“Rebuilding in Better”) of social and climate reforms would be a major personal victory.
blockade
Las, the overall invoice of this plan, already reduced by half to $ 1,750 billion (€ 1,500 billion), is challenged mainly by the moderate senator Joe Manchin, elected traditionally conservative state of Virginia -Cidental, and which virtually possesses a veto right to the congress in view of the very fine Democrat majority.
“I can not go home and justify [these expense programs], I can not vote for,” he said Monday, evoking the impact of these plans on public debt and inflation. “The political quarrels must stop,” he added, with reference to the blockade imposed by the progressive democrats on the infrastructure component.
This $ 1,200 billion program must renovate the country’s roads, bridges and transportation of the country, and is supported by Democrats and some Republicans. Approved by the Senate in August, the project has since blocked in the House of Representatives by the elected left wing who claim to vote at the same time the Build Back Better project. They fear that the centrists do not refuse to support this very expensive project after obtaining the check for infrastructure.