TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
After the US midterms, optimism among Democrats
Biden, surprisingly, avoided the large rallies that are normally an integral part of election campaigns and relied entirely on the media coverage of his “accomplishments”.
Change Size
United States President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore at Bowie State University on Nov. 7 in Bowie, Maryland. (AFP/Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
T
wo things have created further ripples in the already turbulent United States politics: the midterm results and Donald Trump’s announcement that he would run for the presidency in 2024.
The unusual results of the midterm polls, with Democrats holding the Senate and control of the House of Representatives soon to be decided for sure, every stakeholder is still in a kind of disbelief – including President Joe Biden, who has not gone into a spiral of ecstasy, but his overflowing exultation is quite visible in his demeanor.
“Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are,” is how Biden characterized his party’s unexpected performance.
In this extended press conference, Biden also boasted of the fact that Democrats had lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in the last 40 years.
He is right. These midterm elections have brought many surprises for the majority of political pundits who had been predicting a red wave would sweep through America. The astounding results indicate one of the best midterm elections for an incumbent president in almost a century – a key reason for President Biden’s psychological and political boost.
The reality is that the White House watchers, as well as senior Democratic leaders, were quite wary of the extremely low-key campaign adopted by Biden, who kept on arguing that his notion of selling his achievements would attract the voters to favor Democrats this time. Biden, despite the resistance of his fellow Democrats who feared a dreadful rout, stuck to his new political experiment of a “low-profile and accomplishment-driven” campaign.
Unlike his archrival Trump, who was spearheading a high-octane campaign with a recycled old presidential theme, Biden, surprisingly, adopted a very different strategy to win voters’ support. He avoided the large rallies that are normally an integral part of election campaigns and relied entirely on the media coverage of his “accomplishments”.
