Kevin Lamarque via Reuters
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UNITED STATES – The American president faces many obstacles. Joe Biden was fighting hard this Thursday, January 13 to save his vast electoral reform from parliamentary wreckage. This after seeing the Supreme Court block its obligation to vaccinate in business, during a black Thursday which crudely exposes the fragilities of the American president.
“I hope we get there but I’m not sure,” he admitted, visibly tense, about his big law to protect African Americans’ access to the polls. He had moved, which is extremely rare, to the Capitol for a meeting devoted to the project with the Democratic senators.
“If we fail the first time, we can try a second time,” added the 79-year-old president, who continues to fight. Joe Biden received Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema in the evening, two moderate Democrats who are currently blocking the project.
During this meeting, which lasted about an hour and a half and ended shortly before 7 p.m. (1 a.m. French time), “a frank and respectful exchange of views on voting rights” took place, said a White House official.
However, there is nothing Joe Biden can do after the Supreme Court decision blocked his decision to impose either the Covid vaccine or regular testing in companies with more than 100 employees. The president said he was “disappointed” with this setback. The measure, dear to Joe Biden, was denounced as an abuse of power by elected Republicans. In a country where only 62% of the population is fully vaccinated, the issue reveals deep political divisions.
Biden lacks votes
This succession of bad news undermines a little more the political credit of an already very unpopular president and who has perhaps made too big promises, with too little room for maneuver.
Joe Biden has thus promised to protect access to the ballot boxes for minorities and the transparency of voting operations in the face of a multitude of reforms undertaken by conservative states, in particular in the south of the country. NGOs assure that these measures adopted by Republicans particularly discriminate against African-Americans, who overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in the last election.
To block, the Democratic president wants to harmonize voting practices and give the federal state a say in local initiatives. But to pass this major reform in the Senate, it would theoretically need a majority increased by 60 votes.
Unfortunately for Joe Biden, the Democratic camp has 50 votes, plus that of Vice President Kamala Harris, against 50 votes also on the Republican side. And for lack of being able to convince opposition senators – fiercely opposed – the Democrats have only one solution to save their project: break this parliamentary practice and force a simple majority.
A reform (already) doomed?
But this political maneuver was torpedoed by Kyrsten Sinema. According to the senator from Arizona, this strategy would only fuel the “infernal spiral of division”, already very present in the country of Uncle Sam.
Joe Manchin, another centrist senator who once single-handedly blocked a massive $1.85 trillion social program from Joe Biden, said in a statement that he would “not vote to eliminate or weaken” the rule. increased majority. What further destabilize the position of the American president.
The two elected officials are in favor of the reform itself, but have never made a secret of their attachment to the threshold of 60 votes – even in a political landscape polarized as never perhaps, where, after the tumultuous mandate of Donald Trump, partisan dialogue has become extremely difficult, if not impossible.
And Joe Biden knows very well that without their voices, reform is doomed. This Black Thursday therefore cruelly reminds the 46th President of the United States that he has only a very limited latitude. He is now forced to deal with a Congress that he does not really control, conservative states in open rebellion on multiple subjects (abortion, voting rights, health strategy, etc.), and a now very conservative Supreme Court, after appointments made by Donald Trump.
In a few months, Joe Biden also risks losing any majority in Congress in the mid-term legislative elections. He would then be, in fact, paralyzed until the next presidential election in 2024.
See also on The HuffPost: Joe Biden and Donald Trump rail against each other a year after the Capitol assault
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