The slow-rolling US election results continue to hang over President Joe Biden’s summits in Asia, where world leaders – including some who govern without concern for popular approval – are watching the outcome.
Biden left the US in control of Congress and only learned his party would retain the Senate when he went to his final day of sessions in Phnom Penh, where he held meetings and had brief engagements with a number of world leaders.
“There was a lot of interest in the room about the results of the US midterm,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters en route to Bali, where Biden will do more diplomacy.
He said there were “a lot of comments from different quarters” about Democrats maintaining control of the Senate. Depending on the outcome of a runoff election in Georgia, you will lead the chamber with 50 or 51 votes.
“So it’s interesting to see how closely all the leaders from these different countries, including leaders from countries that aren’t themselves democracies, are following American politics very closely, down to the state races with which they are surprisingly all are quite familiar. ‘ Sullivan remarked.
Even world leaders from “countries that are not themselves democracies” have been following state races closely as US election results come in while President Joe Biden is abroad, the White House said. The event was hosted by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for 37 years
He declined to go further, but said, “Many leaders took note of the results of the midterm elections, came to the president to engage him and say they were following them closely.”
He said one emerging theme was “the strength of American democracy and what this election says about American democracy.”
That was an issue picked up by another senior government here with the President in Bali saying Biden had received praise for expressing democracy. That comes two years after people around the world saw chaos in the longest-standing democracy amid the riots in the Capitol.
This year, even losing candidates seem to be accepting the results.
President Joe Biden was treated to a Balinese cultural performance on Sunday evening for the G20 summit
“In every single meeting we’ve had, the first thing countries would comment on was our democracy,” a senior administration official told reports
Democrats secured a 50-seat majority with victories in Arizona and Nevada
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) held a lead of about 5 percent early in the summit, but it took some time before he secured victory
Endangered Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) put Democratic control at the helm. Her party could hold 51 seats if Senator Raphael Warnock is re-elected in Georgia, which has a runoff
Who will carry Washington’s third district? One official said every official who has met with Biden (he sat down with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday) raised the US election. Some even track results at the state level
Democratic allies have noticed, too. The senior administration official said: “I just want to emphasize that in every single meeting that we have held, the first thing that countries commented on was our democracy and completed the President on that outcome, but not just one party against another, but the conduct of the elections and the general acceptance of the expression of democracy,” he said.
“I think the President was rightly proud. I think it allows us to compete in a lot of ways with the way our back is.’
That could help him as Chinese President Xi Jinping, who emerged from the Third Party Congress and could rule for longer, sits down with Biden later today.
In the huge lobby of Hotel Sokha in Phnom Penh, where leaders met for the ASEAN summit and where seven delegations from across the region were stationed, talk of the US elections buzzed.
“I’ve heard people interested in our elections; Of course, as US-Asia relations generally heat up, ASEAN people worry about US policy volatility,” said Allen Dodgson Tan, former president of the American-Cambodian Chamber of Commerce.
“I would imagine it was the most!” Leaders who brought it up, he said.
Biden himself said that having the Senate under Democratic control helped him when he went to Xi Jinping.
It came on a day when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thinks Biden should seek re-election after House results were much better than expected.
“I know I’m coming in stronger,” Biden said.
One final matter remained to be resolved: control of the house. If Republicans assume command, they have vowed to relentlessly investigate the government, but would also have to fight to control factions with a tiny majority if they manage to gain control.