Under Pressure - Joe Biden’s First Year in Office
January 14, 2022
"America is Back!" was Biden´s rallying cry - directed at his compatriots and the rest of the world alike.
A year later the question arises: What has Joe Biden achieved so far? After favorable approval ratings in the early days, even among independent and moderate voters, his popularity in the polls has plunged. Trump, his predecessor, successfully continues to spread rumors about election fraud, with the aim of driving Joe Biden out of the Oval Office, no holds barred. Meanwhile, the Democrats are bogged down in the trenches of eternal party infighting, thus preventing their president from being able to implement his election promises.
What do Americans think of Joe Biden? What is the State of the Union a year into his presidential term? This documentary is an unsparing report on the atmosphere in a country that is still deeply divided and burdened by its past. The Corona pandemic is one such contentious topic, where attitudes toward vaccination remain a matter of political conviction. The filmmakers met vaccination opponents like steelworker Joe Kilduff, who sees Biden's Corona policies as a threat to his personal freedom - and Stephanie Rimel, who had a scathing message to all anti-vaxxers chiseled onto the tombstone of her brother, who died from the virus.
Another such example concerns the rights of USA´s minorities: In many states, Republicans are using the lie of an allegedly rigged presidential election as a pretext to manipulate voting rights. As a young woman, singer Rutha Mae Harris lent her voice to Martin Luther King's civil rights movement with the Freedom Singers. Now, the outspoken 80-year-old once again finds herself singing against restrictions on the voting rights of minorities - and she desperately hopes that Biden will finally create a more just society for black Americans.
The situation on the Mexican border is yet another polarizing issue. Joe Frank Martinez is a sheriff in Texas - and a Democrat. Nevertheless, he is disappointed with Biden's policies on the border and publicly criticizes them, so much so that conservative media outlets have turned his statements into promotional sound bites for their cause. He was in charge when his community of Del Rio had to deal with an onslaught of Haitian refugees. It wasn´t the easiest of tasks in the conservative-leaning region, where self-appointed vigilantes patrol the Mexican borderland and Republicans like Beau Nettleton keep filing lawsuits against Biden's immigration policies. Nettleton´s rationale: the president is allowing an invasion to take place.
On top of everything: With rising inflation, disillusionment with USA´s foreign policy, the faltering transformation towards a more socially just America, and an ongoing culture war over issues like abortion, Joe Biden is looking more and more like a haunted president. He doesn't have much time left to implement his own agenda: The upcoming congressional elections in the fall will determine how much political power Biden will hold for the second half of his term.
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