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OPINION | President Biden and his strange calm in the face of adversity

2021-11-05T20:55:00.460Z


The election results in Virginia should be cause for alarm to Democrats, but Biden remains calm in the face of adversity.


President Joe Biden, one day after the Virginia election.

Editor's note:

Jorge Dávila Miguel has a degree in Journalism since 1973 and has maintained a continuous career in his profession to date. He has postgraduate degrees in Social Information Sciences and Social Media, as well as postgraduate studies in International Relations, Political Economy and Latin American History. Currently, Dávila Miguel is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald on the McClatchy network, a columnist for Oncuba News, and a political analyst and columnist for CNN en Español. The comments expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author. See more at cnne.com/opinion

(CNN Spanish) -

The results of the November 2 elections in Virginia should be a cause for alarm for the Democratic Party.

This was what Vice President Kamala Harris had warned on her trip to the state to support Terry McAuliffe: "What happens [in this election] in Virginia, will largely determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and so on."

But there is no alarm.

McAuliffe's challenger, Glenn Youngkin, was six percentage points below McAuliffe in voting intention polls ten days before the election, and on Election Day he had risen 9 percentage points above the Democrat.

Bottom line: Despite being supported by President Biden, former President Obama, and Vice President Harris, McAuliffe lost by four percentage points to Republican Youngkin.

  • ANALYSIS |

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However, the Democrats are convinced that they have not made any mistakes.

Starting with President Biden, who should be more careful since, wanting to downplay the matter, he declared the next day: "No candidate for governor of Virginia has ever won when they belong to the same party as the incumbent president." But it is that McAuliffe himself, a Democrat, won the governorship of Virginia in 2013, while President Barack Obama. Biden shouldn't have goofs like that. In the Baltimore citizen forum, broadcast on CNN, he made - with the strange calm that always characterizes him in public - three mistakes.

But there is another aspect of the Democratic Party's political activity that is already boring: stop mentioning Trump. He lost, don't help keep him alive! Biden mentioned Trump 24 times in a 17-minute speech, and McAuliffe mentioned him throughout the campaign. It is like a complaining litany against a man we cannot forget. Youngkin had a more intelligent demeanor, publicly distancing himself from Trump, without mentioning him, accepting his endorsement without much fuss, while organizing his Trumpist line on matters concerning the state of Virginia.

Polls favored McAuliffe in August and September. But in October there was a commotion on the Democratic side. The heavyweights began to arrive to help him: Biden, Obama, Harris. Nothing could be fixed. The candidate himself had been responsible for ignoring the parents of students in conflict with the school boards, when in a debate he said: "I do not believe that parents should tell schools what to teach." I don't understand how a politician with McAuliffe's experience can make an equal mistake. Later, when he saw the results of his comment, he complained: "When I said it [in the study] everyone applauded me." No comment.

President Biden is trying to drive comprehensive change in the country.

Something that would modify the very social fabric of American society and its self-perception.

He wants to introduce more social justice and less savage capitalism.

And it wants to encompass, according to the conceptions that condition that change, practically all spheres of American life.

It is a structural change that has some of its ideological roots in the progressive left that helped it win the 2020 election, with a large majority.

Senator Manchin Refuses to Support President Biden's Bills 3:54

Biden has tried to uncheck his responsibility for the loss of the state of Virginia. At a press conference the day after the results were released in Virginia, Biden said he was not sure he could have done anything to change "the number of very conservative people who went to vote in Republican districts who were Trump voters. ”.

But that's another one of his "everything is fine" positions, of those who don't want to stress. Because the truth is that all is not well in his presidency. He maintains a conflict on the southern border, he made a big mistake in withdrawing from Afghanistan, his approval rating is the lowest of all presidents, except - - what luck - - Donald Trump's. He is facing an inflation that, according to him, will deflate, but the confidence of the population does not accompany him. And he has his party divided both on the left, with the group of progressive legislators, and on the right, with Senators Manchin and Sinema, who do not support the president's transformative bills, for different reasons. Some because it is not far enough to the left and others because it is too far.

Meanwhile Biden, always happy and calm, trusts that everything will be fixed when these laws are passed.

The question is: if they are not approved, will the future that Harris projected for the 2022 and 2024 elections be true?

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-11-05

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