From Wisconsin, Biden calls for the decisive states of the election

Wisconsin on Wednesday, Michigan on Thursday: Joe Biden set course for the Great Lakes region, emblematic of his offensive in the “swing states”, these charred states ;res that he will absolutely have to win against à Donald Trump in November.

From Milwaukee, the American president described the Republican as a “loser”, in the wake of a pugnacious speech on the State of the Union last Thursday.

The 81-year-old Democrat mobilized his supporters from a campaign location, aiming without taking gloves off his opponent, assured since Tuesday like him of winning his party's nomination this summer.

“Many of you helped me in 2020, to make sure he was a loser. And we're going to do the same thing again, aren't we?”, he said – he declared from Milwaukee, where the Republican convention will take place in July which will officially inaugurate Donald Trump, 77 years old.

This is also where Joe Biden has installed its campaign headquarters for this crucial state, in a desire to mobilize the city's large African-American community.

– Cycle paths –

And the Democrat did not arrive empty-handed: he announced investments of more than 3.3 billion dollars to rebuild the infrastructure of neglected neighborhoods.

The American president, who has implemented enormous economic recovery programs, promises to correct the urban planning problems caused by the construction of a highway in the 1960s in a predominantly Hispanic and African-American neighborhood of Milwaukee.

This while, according to a survey carried out in 2023 and published in February, the advance of Democrats over Republicans has declined among these electorates.

Joe Biden at a campaign location in Milwaukee, in the US state of Wisconsin, March 13, 2024 © AFP – Brendan SMIALOWSKI

“Democrats' advantage among Black, Latino and Asian American voters has fallen to its lowest level in more than 60 years, creating considerable vulnerability for President Biden and Democrats in Congress”, Donald Trump's campaign team emphasized on Wednesday.

The project led by the Democrat's administration provides for bike paths, bus lines and vegetation zones to make the neighborhood “safer, greener and more welcoming”, according to the White House.

Very concrete announcements, therefore, for a president who presents himself as a defender of the middle and working classes, and as a guarantor of democracy.

Just the opposite, according to Joe Biden, of Donald Trump, portrayed as a candidate of the rich, with authoritarian inclinations.

The Democrat thus responded to the rhetoric Donald Trump's incendiary on a hot topic of the election. “We are a country of immigration. They are not vermin,” he said, using a word used by the Republican, who accused migrants of “destroying American blood”.

– “Swing states” –

On Thursday, Joe Biden will go to Michigan, another state in the Great Lakes region, more precisely to Saginaw.

This historically working-class constituency Democrat, voted for Donald Trump in 2016, then, by a very slim majority, for Joe Biden in 2020. Bruised by the deindustrialization of the 2000s then by the great financial crisis of 2009, Saginaw is emblematic of the battle between the two candidates for the popular vote.

The Democratic president also recently visited Pennsylvania (east) and Georgia (south).

The common point of these States? They are “swing states”, likely to fall in November both into the hands of the Democrat and into that of his Republican predecessor.

The American electoral system is such that it is not the majority of votes nationally that counts, but the result in each state.

In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, sometimes very narrowly, in the majority of these swing states. In Wisconsin, for example, he was ahead of him by only 20,682 votes.

So far, the polls give the advantage to the former Republican president in almost all swing states.

Joe Biden's age continues to concern voters, and Americans, faced with a high cost of living, do not credit the Democrat with certain economic successes, notably an unemployment rate that has fallen to less by 4%.

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