Biden is barreling toward an election win this fall

Joe Biden

The economy's record figures are beginning to have an effect

Daniel Suhonen

Aftonbladet's editorial page is independent social democratic.

Published at 06:00 

 

Joe Biden believes he is the only one who can defeat Donald Trump. Photo: Darryl Webb/AP

Ter union activist who drives us in an open car across the Manhattan bridge in New York is not gracious when I praise President Joe Biden's economic policies. Unemployment is at a record low. "Isn't that good anyway?"

"Genocide Joe," he just says, gassing up the car. Biden has rightly been criticized for the US's evasion of Israel's bombing and starvation policy against the civilian population of Gaza. He has won young and left-leaning voters against him.

Maybe the Gaza war will decide the US election.

When I and a trade union delegation went on a study trip to the USA two weeks ago to study the USA's ongoing green transition, economy and labor market, invited by the American embassy in Stockholm, it was with a heavy feeling in my body.

For months it has been in Trump's favor. Everyone seemed to be abandoning Biden. His stomping old man steps and frogs have made many wish for a more vital presidential candidate than the 82-year-old Biden.

Election strategist David Axelrod, who worked closely with Barack Obama, already thought last fall that Biden should withdraw. Some have speculated whether he can do it at the party convention this summer, blame health and get an honorable discharge.

Nothing speaks for it.

Joe Biden believes he is the only one who can defeat Donald Trump.

Unlike everyone else, he has also done it once.

Joe Biden is the most pro-union president since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Since the 1960s, the anti-union policy has pushed down the level of organization in the union to around five to six percent. In Sweden, almost 70 percent are in the union.

The unions we meet wholeheartedly praise Joe Biden . 

The problem is that many of their members don't see it. Those inside the right-wing bubble with Fox News and Tucker Carlson are not reachable for union agitation, they admit resignedly.

A lot of people have poorly paid shitty jobs - or rather three jobs - to pay the bills. Inflation hasn't made it any easier, as one union organizer puts it.

Like the socialists in Sweden, the Democrats are finding it increasingly difficult to reach the working class. Trump leads among low-wage earners.

The first Aftonbladet flash that reaches me when we land at Arlanda is that Joe Biden has turned  the tide.

Trump's impending bankruptcy, Biden's relatively strong State of the Union speech and the economy's record figures may be starting to have an effect. The election campaign has barely started.

It is not possible to repair in three years a country that was torn to pieces in fifty. Biden is far from perfect, but an unusually progressive politician.

The United States must take the next step towards greater equality and climate change, and it is an old man, born in 1942, who looks to be the one who must bring it to fruition.

Biden must win this fall. No matter how frail he looks.