It will take all the skill of an old fox in political dealmaking to bring the 111 billion dollar package rejected by the Senate last Wednesday back to the chamber and get it approved. Funding for military and economic aid to Ukraine and Israel and allocations for strengthening the anti-immigration wall on the southern border were voted down. The old fox is Joe Biden himself – a long-serving senator before becoming vice president and then president of the USA, and an expert like few others in bi-partisan political maneuvering – who will try to present an amended package when congressional work resumes after the Christmas break. Yet it is the old fox himself who authored the ploy that turned out to be a sensational political flop.
In Biden’s plan, linking three such complicated issues together should have facilitated their approval, especially for the most controversial element, renewing military support for Ukraine, which is opposed by a growing number of Republican senators and representatives linked to Trump, while it is supported above all by senators and representatives from states that are home to a marked presence of the military industrial complex. A high percentage, up to 80 percent, of military investments for aid to allies such as Ukraine and Israel actually remain in America, functioning as the main economic engine of several states. Some of this will be decisive in next year’s presidential and congressional elections.
What caused Biden’s operation to fail was not Ukraine, but partly Israel, with Bernie Sanders’ vote against aid to Netanyahu’s government. The Vermont senator said it was “absolutely irresponsible” to give him billions of dollars for unconditional military assistance. On the Republican front, the section on border “security” was decisive, which they considered too soft towards “illegal” immigration. The moral connection emphasized by the president between the approval of the entire package and the need to support Ukraine at a time when it seems the fate of the war is being decided was of no avail. Biden has drunk the bitter cup of political loneliness in a war that at this point is his administration’s alone, no more than a bipartisan policy.
In one fell swoop, the White House thus found itself vulnerable on three crucial fronts that have a strong impact on the orientations of various sectors of the electorate, overshadowing the areas that the president’s strategists would have liked to put in the foreground, starting with the results in employment and wages, which have grown even faster than expected while the unemployment rate has fallen.
Yet even these positive data are not commensurately reflected in the polls, which continue to be very worrying, not only in a duel with Trump but also in a hypothetical challenge with Nikki Haley, who is continuing to rise in the Republican field. But even more alarming are the latest findings on the approval rate of his presidency: 40 percent approve, compared to 53 percent disapproval.
How will this anxiety affect the race for the big dollars to support what appears set to be the most expensive presidential challenge in history? Yesterday, Joe Biden was in Hollywood as a guest at an event attended by stars of the caliber of Barbra Streisand and Steve Spielberg. The president can count on substantial financial help, currently greater than that available to his main rival, Donald Trump. The thinking is that he can compensate for the now objective gap in the polls in favor of Trump, especially in swing states, with a formidable investment in campaigning and mobilization. But in the meantime, his son Hunter’s legal troubles – who also under investigation in California for serious tax crimes – force him into an exhausting defensive game which concerns himself and his family, and which only aggravates his now stigmatized condition as an elderly man who is too old to lead America in one of its most delicate historical moments.
Not even a well-organized international conspiracy could have created the convergence of various adverse situations that in theory should have favored Biden’s re-election campaign. The evident newfound strength of Vladimir Putin, who is now welcomed with the honors that were once reserved for a US president in countries that were long vassals of the US, such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. And Netanyahu, who is blatantly working to put Biden in a bad light by highlighting the fragility of this presidency, while waiting for his old friend Donald to return to the White House. All this, and a scenario that was unthinkable just a few months ago, when 40 White House interns wrote the president a letter to criticize his unilateral choices in favor of Israel. These are indications of unrest that could translate into the distancing of important segments of progressive voters who, indifferent even to the possible return of Trump, are no longer willing to sign blank checks to Biden.
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