Joe Biden: The appearance everyone is waiting for Pistorius in Kiev: Ukraine receives more than 100 Leopard 1 tanks from Europe

There are things that are hard to imagine outside of the US. For example, a member of parliament sends ammunition to his new colleagues in parliament – ​​as a friendly greeting from the newcomer to the Military Affairs Committee, accompanied by a letter calling for good cooperation. The 40mm grenade launcher cartridges that Republican Cory Mills’ Florida office had printed with his party’s logo were defused. But the provocation was obvious, since Republicans in the House of Representatives had recently removed the metal detectors installed there after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

So this is the atmosphere in which Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address, the traditional State of the Union address. Mills is one of 535 members of Congress among the hosts on whose behalf Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has invited the president to address them this Tuesday night (local time). A group of MPs from the Democratic Party warns in an open letter that recent experience has shown that parliament is vulnerable to attack “from both inside and outside”.

In addition to removing security barriers, the new Republican majority also scrapped the rule that House members cannot carry guns during committee meetings. The Natural Resources Committee recently made a stir when asked how many of its members are currently unarmed, all Democrats responded, but few Republicans responded. They are “deeply concerned for the safety of the president and his guests,” the group of Democrats wrote to the respective party leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives.

He could only cash in on a few things

The majority of Republican delegates are not considered an imminent threat to the president’s life and limb. And yet, the aggressiveness with which McCarthy’s faction intends to drive the Biden administration ahead of it over the next two years is significant. On the one hand, there are the investigations into Hunter Biden, which are largely based on scandals, but which also keep the spotlight on the business practices and drug history of the president’s son. There’s the US-Mexico border, where Republicans are complaining about an alleged “invasion” of refugees from Latin America bringing drugs and crime into the country. The government wants to use a new sponsorship program to reduce the number of illegal border crossings, but that is lost in the pre-election fuss about the ‘border crisis’. There is the difficult relationship with China; Although Biden had the alleged spy balloon shot down, Republicans accuse him of endangering the country’s security. And last but not least, there is the discovery of the government documents in Biden’s private and office rooms, with which the president and his entourage have not had happy dealings so far and which has now led to a special investigator being deployed against Biden. .

In his speech he will hardly talk about that, certainly not about successes. About the 517,000 jobs created in January, the number of which far exceeds expectations. The economic upswing, the West’s leadership in supporting Ukraine, the comprehensive reforms for better infrastructure and more climate protection: with a narrow majority of Democrats in Congress, Biden was able to fulfill some of his campaign promises and reassert the US international role. strengthen . Then there’s last November’s congressional elections, in which the Democrats suffered surprisingly small losses, unusual for such a midterm election.

In terms of voting rights, police reform and structural racism, hardly anything has changed. The violent death of Tire Nichols, who was brutally beaten by five Memphis police officers in early January, is a painful reminder of that. Biden invited Nichols’ parents to attend his speech.

The polls, which traditionally collect the state of the nation from the point of view of its citizens leading up to the speech, show that even things that appear to be going well under Biden are not necessarily taken that way. According to Gallup, the proportion of people who are satisfied with the distribution of income and wealth in the United States has fallen from 30 percent to 24 percent. While most other values ​​remained about the same year-over-year, this is a marked difference from 2022. Although the economy and the labor market recovered well from the corona crisis in the first half of Biden’s tenure, unemployment is at its lowest level since the 1960s – and gas prices have fallen somewhat again – inflation remains a major burden for many Americans.

The president’s powers, on the other hand, are limited. All the more he will appeal to Congress to take action where it would be easy — for example, on gun violence, where satisfaction with current regulations has dropped from 41 percent to 34 percent. With a wealth tax for billionaires. Or when the debt ceiling is raised, without which in a few months there is a risk not only of US insolvency and, therefore, of a global economic crisis, but also of the loss of countless jobs in the country. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which seems determined to block as many as possible, will only agree to a raise with conditions – which they themselves seem to disagree with.

How much the president can achieve in the next two years will only become clear at the end. Biden will not be able to take so much time with the announcement that everyone is currently waiting for: will he participate again? According to his former chief of staff, Ron Klain, Biden is walking again. Upon leaving the White House last week, Klain told Biden he looks forward to being at his side in 2024.

Many contradict him

If that is really the case and Biden announces on Tuesday that he is officially seeking a second term, the presidential campaign will officially start. While Donald Trump on the Republican side struggles with the fact that there are now many who talk, provoke and agitate like him, Biden on his side still has two important unique selling points: on the one hand he is the incumbent, on the on the other hand, he is the one who manages to push Trump back once before.

But the documents scandal, his advanced age, and the discontent of many Americans — even though Biden’s polls were much lower than they are today — contradict him. It is possible that the ranks of the Democrats break with the convention and that there are opposing candidates. Finally, the fact that Trump is currently losing ground with the Republicans and that no one wants to support him publicly speaks against him becoming their candidate for a third time. The duel with Trump as raison d’Être of Biden’s possible candidacy is shaky – and with it his own support. However, should it turn into a Biden-Trump race, younger Democrats who could challenge him would have ventured for nothing, jeopardizing their 2028 chances.

In the end, the more exciting speech of the night will not necessarily be Biden’s. For the usual post-State of the Union response from the opposition, it has been announced that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas and a former confidante of Trump as his press secretary, is strikingly quiet. Is she finally supporting the former presidents? Or does it indicate publicly that Trump cannot count on the full support of the Republicans this time? That will determine not only his chances for 2024, but Biden’s as well.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.