The First Part Of Joe Biden’s Speech Was SO Important
...and other thoughts on the State of the Union address
The theme of the week here has been the importance of looking backward.
Not that Democrats need to give themselves over to slagging Donald Trump and the GOP 100 percent of the time. Democrats without a policy agenda would be doomed. But as it happens, this is one aspect of campaigning Democrats don’t struggle with. Whether or not you believe their policies are wise or far-reaching enough, they are popular. Democrats know how to talk about them, and they’ve enacted many, many over the past decade.
But with Trump unvanquished, and hook-or-crook desperate to return to office, it’s essential that the public not forget his disastrous presidency or the danger he poses to freedom in the U.S. and around the world. And to the extent voters have forgotten they need to be reminded.
That’s why the first 15 minutes of Biden’s third State of the Union address were so, so important—both as an answer to the discourse of the moment, and for setting the tone of the campaign to come.
It’s been interesting over the past year or so to see Democrats slink away from the lesson of the 2022 midterms: Voters hate MAGA, they hate the insurrection and lies about 2020, they hate Dobbs and all its inhumane consequences. As Biden’s poll numbers have slipped, the party has tried to revive them by lurching rightward, into issue spaces that Republicans dominate. And Republicans have been all too eager to troll Democrats into doing just that.
Judged by his Thursday address (and his most recent January 6 speech before that, and his campaign launch before that) Biden has not taken the bait.
At the top of the speech, when viewership is highest and reporters form first impressions, he delivered a damning recitation of Trump’s record, the Republican agenda, their joint assault on reproductive rights, and their ongoing effort to sabotage the U.S. and the world order.
He lambasted Trump for egging on Vladimir Putin as he attempts to conquer Ukraine and threatens the rest of Europe. “My predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.”
He confronted Trump, and Republicans in the room, with their own betrayals of the United States. “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6. I will not do that…. Remember your oath of office to defend against all threats foreign and domestic.”
He challenged Republicans to stop lying about their views on IVF and pass actual legislation to protect it, and warned the country about what’s coming. “Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom. My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”
Looking backward, he reminded the country, “my predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned. He’s the reason it was overturned. In fact, he brags about it,” and juxtaposed that with a promise I’ve been encouraging Democrats to make since the oral argument in Dobbs over two years ago. “If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land!”
Again looking backward, he refreshed public memory of Trump’s most unforgivable governing failure. “Remember the fear. Record job losses. Remember the spike in crime. And the murder rate. A raging virus that would take more than 1 million American lives and leave millions of loved ones behind. A mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness. A president, my predecessor, who failed the most basic duty any president owes the American people: the duty to care. That is unforgivable.”
Every night can’t be State of the Union night, but this has to be the timbre of the campaign, or people won’t remember, and Trump will likely win.
That’s not to say Biden stuck every landing or nailed the orchestration.
He mentioned inflation three times, always to talk about how far it’s fallen. If it were up to me he’d either not mention it at all—relegate it to the past—or fold it into his reminder that Trump’s COVID response brought the country to its knees. He said “I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!” True, and good to note, but if he can’t leave it at that—if he must acknowledge inflation—he should explain it as part of the the long and difficult task of rescuing the economy that Trump wrecked.
One of Biden’s guests was Kate Cox, the Texas mother who had to flee her home state to terminate a non-viable pregnancy after state Republicans forbid her from receiving one in her community, placing her life and her fertility at risk. It was an important gesture and, for him, a second bite at the apple. (Democrats were strangely muddled about Cox’s circumstances when they were unfolding publicly several weeks ago.)
But the guest of my dreams would’ve been E. Jean Carroll—assuming she’d have been willing to attend. It’s not Biden’s style. I imagine his lawyers would fret about the Hatch Act and his advisers would fret about decorum. But (for instance) he could have welcomed her as a reminder that not all women have the resources to fight back like Carroll does, and they need the Violence Against Women Act to be reauthorized without interruption. Or he could have let her presence speak for itself. Trump raped her, and now wants to tell other victims of rape whether they’ll be allowed to terminate their unwanted pregnancies. It’s not going low to underline this nauseating fact—it’s going high.
The Democratic Party’s mantra, “look forward, not backward,” has been the death knell of accountability since 2008, but it’s a genuinely insane lodestar when their main opponent in the November election was president for one term just three years ago.
The advocacy group Climate Power surveyed the public to see how much they’ve forgotten in this void of retrospection. The results are jarring, but also bracing.
According to FiveThirtyEight tracker on January 20, 2021, Trump’s last day in office, his average approval was at 38.6 percent. There are important reasons why Trump left office with such low support, including, but not limited to, his incitement of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and his failed handling of COVID. Voters disapproved of Trump’s climate denial and his refusal to act on the climate crisis. They disliked his tax giveaway that gave 70 percent of the benefits to the top one percent. They opposed his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no plan to replace it.
Climate Power’s polling shows likely voters giving Trump’s presidency a 52 percent approval rate. Our polling also indicates that many voters do not remember the variety of ways that Trump failed them, but that reminding voters of why they disliked Trump in the first place has a major impact on their willingness to elect him again.
Some mainstream horserace journalists will tsk tsk Biden for delivering such a partisan, backward looking speech, but that was his obligation, and he rose to it. He had to.
I didn’t prewrite this newsletter based on briefings and embargoed text the way I might have prior to Donald Trump’s presidency (please excuse the typos). Before Trump, State of the Union addresses went more or less exactly as prepared for delivery. But Trump’s such an antic schemer and disordered person that prewriting carried intolerable risk. What if he tried to use a fog machine for dramatic flair? What if he free associated something extremely racist off script?
Biden has different liabilities. He’s just marble-mouthed enough that it’s easy to imagine him losing his place in the text and wasting the earned-media value of the whole event in a single awkward moment.
As it happens he delivered the speech energetically and stingingly enough that Republicans have been reduced to whining about his volume (too high)—or floating slanderous allegations of drug use.
That’s what it looks like when Biden’s winning.
Biden made me giddy with his enthusiasm, expert delivery for a former stuttered and his Truman "gives them hell" attitude. I think I see far in the political ocean the wave that will evolve into a blue tsunami come November
The "too old" MSM meme dissolved in Biden's irrepressible energy, the power of his thoughts and emotions and his successful needling of the MAGITES. I think I even saw Mike Johnson crack a smile, Senator Lankford was courageous and MTG played the ignorant buffoon flawlessly. Finally and perhaps most reassuringly was the handshake and touching as Biden came and left. Unlike the previous guy, it is clear Biden relishes politics at all levels. Speech grade = 95/100, a veritable homeowner into the people's bleschers.
The way to win big is to hammer on Dobbs all day every day. Starting now. Ignore everything else and thereby get 100 million women to vote for Democrats.