Joe Biden and the frustration

The current difficulties of Joe Biden contrast with the favorable data that he may exhibit a year after his arrival at the presidency of the United States. In these months, the highest public spending in decades has been approved, the country has grown by 6%, unemployment has been reduced to 3.9% and the 2020 economic slowdown has recovered at an unprecedented speed. Biden entered the presidency as the most voted candidate in history, half out of fear of a second term for Donald Trump and half driven by the leftmost current of the Democratic party, in favor of powerful advances in social policies to reduce the gigantic inequalities in the country. He took office after a coup attempt instigated by the outgoing president and amid false accusations of electoral rigging,while the country was going through a pandemic, a job crisis, demands for racial equality and the demand for urgent action against climate change.

Biden managed to reverse the climate of the first months of his term, but the second half of the year has also brought an unprecedented growth in inflation in 30 years, which poses a new scenario of uncertainty. In the United States, the middle class lives without margin of error, one salary away from poverty, and the most ambitious part of Biden's agenda wanted to respond to this reality. The social spending plan agreed with the progressives of his party could transform the relationship of Americans with the State, but a single centrist Democratic senator has shipwrecked it. Despite the gains, Democrats on Capitol Hill today convey a sense of weakness.

In foreign policy, Washington has returned to the normality of international forums and commitments, but Trump's misgivings in that field left profound changes that Biden cannot reverse with speeches alone. Europe has increased its mistrust of Washington in relation to its defense and China has gained in capacity to set the global agenda. The withdrawal from Afghanistan had been a campaign commitment with broad public support, but its administration left a taste of defeat, and Russia is threatening an open war against Ukraine's territorial integrity. In the Trump years, the West's rivals for global power moved up several squares, and the change in president is failing to slow them down.

“I did not overpromise” was the defense that Biden gave this week when taking stock of this first year, but the expectations that he aroused in his electorate have been curbed.

Democratic dissent and Republican anti-establishment filibuster can only get worse heading into the November legislative elections, and that is possibly the real front open at home: restoring voter confidence in Biden's ability to advance his social agenda. .