The United States will soon experience a case unprecedented in its recent history. In two ways. A dismissal trial against a president candidate for his own succession will indeed open in the Senate in early January. And it will concern a good part of the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination on the eve of the first votes of the primaries, in Iowa, on February 3, thwarting the ordering of battle of a camp still very crumbled.
Three of the favorites, present during the last debate, on December 19, a senator and two senators, will indeed be required to attend because of their jury status: the independent Bernie Sanders (Vermont), his rival on the left Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), as well as the centrist Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota). The procedure hardly lends itself to grandstand effects. If these three elected officials will indeed have the capacity to ask questions of possible witnesses, it will only be in writing; these, in fact, will be read by the President of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who will direct the proceedings.
The lawsuit will not spare the man who has been on the top of national voting intentions since his nomination, former vice president Joe Biden.
The indictment of Donald Trump voted by the House of Representatives on December 18 was indeed provoked by a telephone conversation between the President of the United States and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, on July 25. During their discussions, the White House tenant had requested the initiation of investigations indirectly targeting Joe Biden, through his son Hunter, member of the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company from 2014 to 2019.
Veteran Joe Biden defies predictions
So far, the Ukrainian affair has had no major impact on the former vice-president’s voting intentions measured at the national level. The “invisible campaign”, which in the United States designates the period between the first declarations of candidacies and the start of the votes by state, amounted to the confrontation between the two traditional currents of the Democratic Party already struggling in 2016 : its center and its left wing.
As the first six debates have shown, a consensus prevails in the Democrats on most subjects: the need for better health coverage, fairer and more favorable taxation for the middle class, taking into account the climate emergency, a framework for the firearms market, the defense of the rights of communities and the right of women to dispose of their bodies. The differences lie in the degree of change that the candidates wish to make.
