One is already a candidate, the other is not yet officially in the race: Donald Trump and Joe Biden are nevertheless already launched in a funny campaign, before the presidential election of 2024.
"We can take the path of an economy that leaves no one on the side of the road," proclaimed the American president, passing Monday in Baltimore, a large port city on the east coast, to boast of a railway renovation site.
A speech with campaign accents, even if the Democrat has so far not officially said that he is seeking re-election in 2024.
Joe Biden will go to New York on Tuesday and Philadelphia on Friday, for economic and social themed trips, to which will be added receptions organized by the Democratic Party to raise funds.
This renewed activity, concentrated in areas won over to the Democrats, coincides with Donald Trump's attempt to relaunch his campaign, which has more or less stalled since his official declaration of candidacy in November.
The former Republican president, meeting in South Carolina and New Hampshire this weekend, presented himself as a providential man, the only one capable of "saving the country" from a series of dangers.
Saying to himself "angrier than ever", he slammed "gender theory" or "critical race theory", terms that serve as foils for the radical right.
Conservatives use them when they criticize progressive reforms or proposals regarding school sex education or teaching about racism and slavery.
The businessman also reiterated that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Faced with this theory of decline and this "anger", Joe Biden has already begun to portray a completely different character: that of an "optimist" convinced that the best days of the United States are ahead of them, and that of a president concerned with reconciliation.
In a speech last week that was akin to a strategic roadmap, Joe Biden criticized the "sedan-riding progressives" ("limousine liberals"), the American equivalent of the "caviar left": those Democrats who have, in his view, forgotten to take an interest in popular and working America, throwing it into the arms of the Republicans.
Tuesday, this fervent defender of the rail, who traveled by train between Washington and his stronghold of Wilmington (Delaware), for years, was almost lyrical to support his argument as an attentive president at the end of the difficult months of the middle class .
He recounted how, seeing from his wagon the "lights in the windows", he wondered "what the conversations were around the dinner table".
"Too many people have been neglected in the past, treated as if they were invisible," he lamented, he who regularly paints the Republican opposition as the party of the rich and multinationals.
The Democrat should, according to experts, officially launch the race in February, after delivering his “State of the Union address” to Congress, a policy address that is a highlight of American political life.
Joe Biden, 80, who will face constant questions about his age if he declares himself, knows that it is against Donald Trump, 76, that he has the best chance.
The most recent polls - to be taken with great hindsight, as the November 2024 election is still a long way off - show that the Democratic president distances his predecessor, but is evenly matched when pollsters oppose him to the Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis , 44 years.
30/01/2023 22:00:28 - Washington (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
