Washington A giant poster hovers over Joe Biden’s head that reads “Restore Roe.” It’s a commitment to abortion rights that the US abolished in the summer and that Democrats want to restore through legislation in Congress. Roe vs. Wade was the landmark court decision that made federal abortion rights possible in the 1970s.
A predominantly young audience has flocked to Washington’s Howard Theater to see Biden. The art and culture complex resembles a movie theater and is located in the east of the US capital. It’s diverse and sometimes rough here, unlike the tourist districts, there are still more dive bars than cupcake cafes. Biden drove his column over from the White House and had the route cordoned off, shutting down half the city.
His fans don’t care at first. “Let’s go, Roe! Let’s go, Joe!” echoes through the theatre. “You have to vote, vote, VOTE!” Biden calls back. In the important midterm elections on November 8, not only is power in Congress at stake, but also the future of the USA. “We need the right to abortion, the right to use contraception, the right to marry who we love,” Biden said to applause.
In appearances like these, you can feel the issues with which the US President wants to mobilize the democratic base. He often places an emphasis on social politics and urges opposition to the Republican shift to the right — much like he did as a 2020 presidential candidate when he wanted to save the “soul of the nation.”
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Elsewhere, Biden proudly points to what his administration has achieved elsewhere, despite extremely narrow majorities in Congress: partial cancellation of student debt, money for climate protection, millions of dollars against child poverty, an infrastructure package. “I’ve never been so optimistic about America’s future,” Biden said at the White House on Wednesday.
The ex-president and other Republican politicians sow doubts about the economic competence of the US president – and are successful, as current polls show.
(Photo: dpa)
In fact, the job market is strong, and thanks to the infrastructure package, there is mortar, hammering and manufacturing going on across the country. American and foreign companies are benefiting from massive investments in electromobility. But persistent inflation, at its highest level in 40 years, seems to be eclipsing everything, with soaring gasoline, food and production costs thwarting Biden’s final sprint to the congressional elections.
“Abortion was the big hope for Democrats to mobilize, but it’s not the main issue for people at all,” says Karlyn Bowman, a pollster at the Washington think tank American Enterprise Institute. “Concerns about the economy are dominating this election. We may be luckier when it comes to energy supply than many people in Europe, but the prices are a burden here too. Everyone is affected, no one can escape inflation,” Bowman said.
Analysts warn of recession
Polls suggest Biden and the Democrats will be punished, losing at least one of two chambers in the US Congress to the Republicans. If this scenario occurs, a thorny debate will erupt on election night: whether Biden is viable as president and whether the Democrats need someone else to lead the 2024 presidential campaign.
In addition, there are new fears of a recession, analysts assume that the world’s largest economy will experience a downturn in the next twelve months. The risk increases due to inflation and the Federal Reserve’s gigantic interest rate hikes, the rating agency Fitch warned this week.
More and more US citizens fear that rising prices will become a problem for them.
(Photo: dpa)
Fitch gave a small all-clear: “The US recession we are expecting is quite mild.” This is consistent with Biden’s statements, who emphasized that a possible downturn would be “very small”.
But decimal places in growth don’t matter to the average US citizen, Bowman believes. “For most Americans, a perceived recession is already here,” she describes the mood. “We saw the financial crash of 2008, the lockdowns in the Covid crisis, now inflation. Bottom line, people are pretty pessimistic.”
Biden considers release of more oil reserves
The US President now wants to take countermeasures and release 15 million barrels of crude oil from the emergency reserves this year in order to lower the high gasoline prices. On Wednesday, Biden suggested that he would release significantly larger supplies in the winter, much more than originally planned. Oil prices skyrocketed last week after oil cartel Opec and its allies announced they would cut production by two million barrels a day.
The US President promises to reintroduce the right to abortion into law. But for most people in the country, economic issues are coming to the fore.
(Photo: dpa)
Biden’s decision will hardly bring any short-term relief. Many measures take effect with a delay, which also applies to the “package to combat inflation” decided in August, which is intended to lower drug and energy prices, among other things.
The effect will by no means occur in time before the elections, so the election night is also considered a test of the Democrats’ credibility. At times, Biden’s euphoric tone seems tactless. “Our economy is strong as hell,” he said last week while visiting an ice cream chain and licking a vanilla chocolate scoop. The short excerpt of an interview went viral on the Internet, Republicans rushed to the scene and accused Biden of mocking voters.
The Republicans under Trump also pumped trillions into the economy and supported several Covid rescue packages that increased the risk of inflation. “Nevertheless, it’s Biden’s economy now. No matter what happened before his tenure,” says expert Bowman.
In fact, the White House under Biden did not recognize the seriousness of the situation until late, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen described the high prices as “temporary” as late as 2021. Biden then launched the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. Economic aid was intended to help families stay afloat with financial injections.
The labor market is in full swing, but the United States could soon slip into recession.
(Photo: AP)
Supply chain problems, production bottlenecks and the Ukraine war led to higher prices worldwide. Today, economists agree that stimulus spending bolstered the US economy, with the US outperforming all other G7 nations. At the same time, however, the measures ensured that inflation climbed from under two to over eight percent.
Will Biden become a lame duck like Obama did in 2010?
Historically, it has been difficult for the ruling party to assert itself in midterm elections anyway. But the chronically high prices for gas, food and housing are also clouding the prospects for the Democrats. A New York Times poll this week showed that inflation could decide power in Washington.
According to the survey, the issue of the economy is significantly more important to voters than abortion or the state of democracy in the country. Hundreds of candidates who deny election results and want to break up democratic structures are running on Republican tickets.
“The Democrats still have a lead in some polls, but the lead isn’t big enough,” Bowman said. “They threaten to lose the House of Representatives,” the second chamber in Congress. Then Biden would be in a similar position to his former boss Barack Obama after two years in office.
With a divided Congress, the Democrats can no longer pass any major legislation, and Biden would then be a “lame duck”, a president with no leverage. Republicans have recently spent nearly $150 million on TV ads, and the ads revolve around one theme: inflation. It is the dominant issue of the election campaign – and Biden’s opponents want to use it for themselves.
More: Before the midterms: That’s what the two US parties say about the most important issues.