From Trump to Biden: a year of change and simmering tension in the US
The United States began 2021 on the brink of one of the most serious events in its history, an assault on Capitol Hill that ended Donald Trump's legacy, and closes it with the tensions that marked that episode still simmering, but diluted in the complicated agenda of President Joe Biden.
The year began in a climate of sharp division over Trump's doubts about the US voting system after the 2020 election, and ends with that issue still in place, but overshadowed by concerns about the pandemic and the economy.
"Biden promised to heal the wounds that divided the country (...) and he has tried, but the divisions are too great for any president to resolve," Mark Peterson, a professor of politics at the University of California at Los Angeles, told EFE news agency.
68% of Republican voters still think Trump was robbed of the election, and therefore that Biden is exercising his power illegitimately, according to a November poll by the PRRI polling firm.
The discourse of distrust in the electoral system is sounding ever louder in conservative ranks, and promises to have consequences in the 2022 congressional and 2024 presidential elections, whether Trump runs for the White House again or not.
"Even high-ranking Republican elected officials have acquiesced to pretty blatant attacks on democratic norms and institutions," Peterson said.
For the expert, the assault on the Capitol on 6 January was not an isolated milestone in US democratic history, but "a particularly terrible event in a continuing process to delegitimise the electoral process" in the country.
The seed sown by Trump with his unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud has borne fruit this year in at least 33 laws in 19 states that effectively hinder access to the ballot box, particularly for African-American and Hispanic minorities.
In a speech in July, Biden described the trend as "the most significant test of (American) democracy since the Civil War" of the mid-19th century, but in recent months, his attention has shifted to other, more tangible challenges, as a federal bill to strengthen voting rights languished in Congress.
Those who follow electoral politics closely warn that Republican leaders in several key states have taken note of what did not work in Trump's attempt to flip the election result in 2020, and are now devising ways to do so in 2024 if they deem it necessary, thanks to their power in state legislatures.
This political climate has also hindered the agenda of Biden, who came to power at the end of January and has governed in a context in which "bipartisan cooperation seems almost impossible on all issues", Lori Cox Han, director of the presidential studies programme at Chapman University in California, told the EFE news agency.
Many Americans voted for Biden with the sole aim of getting Trump out of the White House, without feeling particularly strong enthusiasm for a president who, at 79, "is not always perceived as energetic and inspiring", Han recalled.
Although Biden has managed to get a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan through Congress, he has not yet managed to push through his social spending bill, and these measures are not enough to counter "the forces of division" in the country, according to Peterson.
This partly explains - the expert continued - why, after a six-month honeymoon, Biden's popularity began to fall in the polls, to 42% at the beginning of December, according to an average of polls on the FiveThirtyEight website.
That approval rating began to wane in mid-August, coinciding with the chaotic implementation of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a factor that has been compounded by pandemic fatigue and his attempt to force most US workers to be vaccinated, which has been stalled in the courts.
Supply chain problems and inflation levels unseen in three decades, which have driven up food and gasoline prices, have multiplied the headaches for Biden, along with his party's fears that this will take its toll in the November 2022 congressional elections.
"Biden has tried to push a particularly ambitious agenda by relying on the narrowest majorities in Congress (...) of any new Democratic president since before Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945)," Peterson summarised.
Historical precedent points to the Democrats losing their majority at least in the House of Representatives next year, meaning Biden has less than a year to define his legacy in legislative terms.
"Whatever Congress passes by October 2022 will likely be the last thing for Democrats for years, given how effective Republican strategies to consolidate power are proving to be," Peterson predicted.