The State of the Nation speech delivered by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, was a speech “clearly in an electoral key” with the objective of highlighting “the achievements of the government” achieved in the last four years and with an eye toward in the November elections, according to several analysts consulted by the Voice of America.
“Biden has taken advantage of this opportunity to speak to American voters and tell them that in these almost four years there has been significant progress in the United States, that not only has the effects of inflation been reduced, but a bipartisan policy has been approved , creating well-paid jobs,” said political analyst Yamila Pino.
However, Jorge Martínez, spokesperson for the conservative organization Free Initiative, believes that although Biden tried to talk about “achievements,” in his opinion, that was not the case.
“What I heard were not achievements, because Biden has not achieved anything. He was painting the economy as if it were flowers and roses, but that is not the case because today we are paying more and receiving less than when President Biden entered the White House,” he said.
For her part, political strategy expert Liz Rebeca Alarcón stressed that Biden “came to demonstrate not only what he was going to say, but how he was going to say it,” taking into account that in recent weeks there have been voices that said his abilities to serve four more years of presidency of the government are in doubt due to his age.
“He was able to show that he is strong, that he is lucid, that he can go outside of a schedule or a script and even make jokes,” he said.
No direct mentions of Trump
The American president aspires to re-election in the November elections and, although the official nomination is missing, Donald Trump will once again be his opponent in the presidential race. However, Biden never explicitly mentioned Donald Trump’s name during his speech and referred to him as his “predecessor” or “my previous president.”
For Alarcón, this was part of “a strategy” well thought out by President Biden’s team, an opinion shared by Jorge Martínez, from the Free Initiative, considering that the president opted for this option “to not shed more light on the name of the former president.” “Donald Trump.”
“This was Biden’s night. Why name the unnameable? “Why name a person who has done nothing but mock the president and attacked democracy four years ago?” asked Pino, who has more liberal opinions.
The impact of the economy on Hispanics
Accompanied by the vice president, Kamala Harris, and the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, regretted having received an economic situation “on the brink of the abyss,” although, according to him, he has been able to reverse it in these four years at the head of the White House.
“We have created 15 million new jobs in just three years and unemployment is at the lowest point in 50 years,” he said during his speech at the State of the Nation speech.
Along these lines, he referred to minorities, mentioning “Hispanics, African Americans and Asian Americans” considering that, thanks to this scenario, they have been able to promote their own companies.
“A record 16 million Americans are starting small businesses and each one is an act of hope, there is historic growth in employment and the small business sector for African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans,” he stressed that “the wealth gap racial is the smallest in 20 years” and that “inflation has gone from 9% to 3% and continues to fall.”
In the opinion of the member of the Free Initiative, “the reality is that President Biden took over an economy that was growing at 6%, with inflation of 1%,” something very different from the current panorama. “Now what we have is the economy growing at 1%, with inflation at 4%, it is almost the opposite,” commented the expert from the border city of McAllen, Texas.
On the other hand, Yamila Pino believes that “Biden has had great achievements” on the economic issue. “Not only are unemployment rates very low, but well-paying jobs have been created, especially in high-income communities, in Latino communities, giving opportunities to small merchants,” she explained.
Along those lines, analyst Liz Rebeca Alarcón admitted that “these are difficult times we are experiencing” but wanted to “put this situation into perspective.” “When President Biden took the reins of the country, we were in the middle of a pandemic, we were in the middle of a very complex situation,” she justified.
An educationn more accessible
During his State of the Union address, which could be his last if he is not re-elected in November, Biden also addressed the policies he has implemented in education – forgiving thousands of student loans – with the goal of guaranteeing a better future. for the next generations.
“I’m connecting businesses and high schools so students get hands-on experience and a path to a good-paying job, whether they attend college or not,” he said.
However, he assured that his intention is to “make university more affordable,” again referring to minorities. “Let us continue to increase scholarships for working-class and middle-class families, and increase our record investments in universities and institutions that serve Hispanics and other minorities,” said the president.
For political expert Yamila Pino, this is nothing more than a declaration of intent of how much she cares about the advancement of minorities in this country. “Biden recognizes that the Latino community, the Hispanic community, ethnic and racial minorities are very important for the economic, social, and labor progress of the United States,” she commented.
Instead, Martínez said that Biden has used education for the sole purpose of “buying votes.” “When is it fair for someone else to pay the debt for the loans you wanted?
«I took out loans to go get my master’s degree. Nobody else paid for it. I did it because I was responsible, because I knew what I was getting into. So, the president is wrong here,” he said.
However, Alarcón considered that the policies that the president has presented in this regard “have later been shown to have greatly benefited” minorities, including Latino communities. “Remember that Joe Biden’s wife is a teacher, she is an educator, she is a professor, she comes from that world,” she said, convinced that “she has influenced that and it seems to me that there is no doubt that they care about this issue.”
The immigration issue
President Biden criticized Trump for “playing politics and putting pressure on members of Congress to block” the immigration bill and, like a few days ago during his visit to the border in Brownsville, Texas, he reiterated his invitation to work together on this topic.
“Join me in urging Congress to pass it, we can do it together,” he said. He clarified that he is not going to “demonize immigrants by saying that they poison the blood of our country.”
In that sense, it also promised to follow a policy that does not contemplate the separation of families or the prohibition of the entry of people based on their religion. “We can fight over the border or we can fix it, I’m ready to fix it,” he said, urging Congress to send him the border bill.
“Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I presented a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border and provide a path to citizenship for dreamers and much more,” he argued.
“It is unacceptable to continue playing with an issue as serious and of such importance to Americans as migration and the situation we are seeing on our border,” said Pino, who regretted that “the agreement that was negotiated covered many issues, but nor did it cover issues that need to be addressed.”
However, he defended that we must “create a humane and fair immigration system that provides security and helps undocumented communities in the United States and, at the same time, helps us address the situation at the border.”
“So the answer is still that we have to address the issue of border security, but at the same time we cannot normalize Donald Trump’s speech,” said Yamila Pino.
It is the same opinion that political analyst Liz Rebeca Alarcón shared when pointing out the Republican Party as the one that “has continued the chaos and has refused to reach the border.”
“After their own bill that the Republicans promoted, in a bipartisan manner, never seen before, they refused to pass their own bill,” he criticized.
On this issue, the spokesman for the Free Initiative considered that these movements are nothing more than “Biden’s hypocrisy.” Why didn’t he do this the first two years that he had full control of the Lower House? Why did he only start talking about this in the last few days of February and the beginning of March? Republicans had legislation in the Lower House to bring that security to the border. He didn’t do anything,” he declared.
Without allusions to Latin America
President Joe Biden ended his speech without mentioning Venezuela, Nicaragua or other countries in the region, whose migrant flows entering through the southern border come from those countries.
“I needed to talk about it. As a Latin Americanist that I am, that outrages me. “I would have liked the issue to be discussed more,” said Alarcón, while Pino believes that the situation in Ukraine and Gaza caused these issues to remain in the background.
“We have a conflict in Ukraine and we have a Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is grabbing all the headlines,” he said.
Taken from Voice of America
#Joe #Biden #gave #speech #State #Nation #electoral #key #analysts #Diario #Página
