“There’s an old expression in Delaware that says, ‘We’re like poor relatives. We show up when invited and stay longer than we should. So be careful, we might not come home,” joked US President Joe Biden during a visit to the royal palace in Madrid, on Tuesday (28).
Biden has reasons to be distant. He completes 18 months in power with little progress in Congress, many adverse decisions in the Supreme Court and without solving the country’s main problem, inflation.
In recent days, two indicators have shown that Americans’ patience is waning. The Democrat’s approval rating dropped to 38.9%, the lowest figure during his term. And projections for the November election, when Congress will be renewed, indicate the chance of a broad Republican victory.
One of the surveys, carried out by the Ipsos institute, points out that 71% of Americans say they believe that the country is in the wrong direction. Among Democratic voters, 49% say they have this perception. For 34% of respondents, the biggest current problem is the economy. “The government has no answer to inflation. And it’s difficult to fight it in the short term,” says Clifford Young, Ipsos director for public affairs in the US.
“He has yet to recover a little. [da aprovação], because problems like the War in Ukraine should not last forever, but within a limit, since we have a scenario of a lot of polarization in the country. Presidents hardly go much further than 50% [de aprovação]But time to get results is short, and in recent months, Biden has failed to pass proposals for the economy, such as a billion-dollar public spending package, in Congress. He also proposed a temporary fuel tax cut, but lawmakers left for the 4th of July recess without voting him.
The rise in prices, in the range of 8.6% per year, is very noticeable at the gas stations. The US is in the summer vacation period when thousands of people travel by car. Gasoline costs, on average, $5 a gallon, according to Energy Department data. In January, the average was US$ 3.40 (R$ 18).
The arrival of summer cools the pace in Washington: lawmakers return from recess in mid-July, work two weeks and then leave for another break in August. When they return in September, there will be just two months left for the so-called midterms, the midterm elections.
An analysis by the statistics website FiveThirtyEight shows that Republicans have an 87% chance of winning a majority and taking control of the House, and a 55% chance of doing the same in the Senate.
In the House, which will be completely renovated, Democrats are favorites to keep 195 seats, but face fierce competition for another 13 seats. Even if there are victories in these 13 disputes, the party would reach 208 deputies, ten less than necessary (218) to obtain a majority. Thus, it will be necessary to reverse the favoritism of Republican candidates in many races.
In the Senate, the renewal will be smaller: 35 of the 100 seats are up for grabs, 21 of which are currently under Republican control. As the division is currently 50 senators for each party, the prediction becomes more difficult: just one victory can change the whole scenario. It is common for presidents to lose majorities in Congress in midterm elections, as happened with Barack Obama in 2010 and Donald Trump in 2018, which makes it much more difficult to pass measures in the last two years of the administration.
Despite having the upper hand in the House and Senate, Democrats have made little headway in recent months, sometimes due to a lack of consensus among party members themselves. This year, there was support from Republicans for a law on firearms restrictions and aid packages for Ukraine. The war, however, has been going on for four months without a clear perspective on when the conflict will end.
​Inflation is also eroding the $1.2 trillion infrastructure investment plan approved in November. With materials prices soaring — the cost of iron and steel has nearly doubled in the last year — projects to expand the country’s roads, railways and other structures are being scaled back.
Biden still faces setbacks in the Supreme Court, which now has a solid Conservative majority. On Thursday, the court ruled that the EPA, the federal environmental protection agency, cannot limit emissions of pollutants from power plants. Thus, the government will have fewer tools to fight the climate crisis.
The court also struck down the country’s constitutional right to abortion, and the president has vowed to act to mitigate the change, but he can’t do much without congressional support. Biden advocated amending Senate rules to pass a federal law guaranteeing access to the procedure, which would require Democrats to loosen the filibuster, a mechanism that allows the minority party to bar proposals.
But there is no consensus, and, with a narrow majority, the divergence of a single party member already bars the idea. And the Democrats manage to have two: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are against changing the filibuster.
Democrats hope that the abortion decision will encourage going to the polls, which could benefit them. Historically, however, midterms have attracted fewer voters. In 2018, only 53% of voters voted, against 66% in the 2020 presidential election. Voting is not mandatory in the US.
The sense of urgency brought by topics such as expensive fuel and the end of the voluntary termination of pregnancy end up leaving aside positive points for Biden, such as low unemployment, in the range of 3.6%, and the control of the coronavirus pandemic, which today has already it is no longer a big problem in the country.
“In politics, it doesn’t really matter what you did yesterday. If I can’t buy food or I’m spending too much on gas, the question comes, ‘What are you doing for me now?'” says Young of Ipsos.
In November, Biden could end up paying the price of returning home without finding those answers.
