Joe Biden showed up for his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives March 7, facing low expectations after years of Republicans depicting the elderly president as in decline.
But the President effectively jump-started his re-election campaign with a supposedly nonpolitical speech that kicked MAGA Republicans’ asses for more than an hour, taking shots at his unnamed predecessor, whom he accused of “bowing down to a Russian leader” in encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to do “whatever the hell you want” in Europe. Biden called the former guy’s remarks “outrageous, dangerous” and “unacceptable.”
Biden talked about how “my predecessor” tried to “bury the truth” of the attempted insurrection on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He noted that his predecessor failed to take care as the pandemic began to rage across the nation four years ago, how his predecessor had done little to oppose China and how his predecessor had not acted to curb gun violence.
Biden listed his accomplishments in the past three years, but he also teased Republicans who were heckling his speech.
Biden departed from his prepared text to urge the former president to join him in reviving the bipartisan border reform bill that Trump had ordered Republicans to abandon after the deal was reached in the Senate. Instead, Trump hopes to keep the alleged border “chaos” issue alive in the campaign.
Biden also talked about codifying reproductive freedom, taxing billionaires and corporations, cutting health care costs and banning assault weapons in the hands of civilians. Biden gave Democrats in the chamber and progressives watching on TV plenty to cheer about, and restored confidence that there’s fight in the old man, after all.
Conservative commentators had to scramble for new talking points. Sean Hannity on Fox “News” said Biden was “frightening” and called him “Jacked-Up Joe.” Erick Erickson complained, “This whole speech is about rallying Democrats. Not persuading independents.” But Never Trumper and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, quoting Erickson, observed, “The substance is about rallying Democrats. But the delivery is about showing hesitant swing voters he’s still up for the job. And I think it’s working.”
Taking credit for the economic recovery since the COVID pandemic, Biden boasted that “consumer confidence is soaring” and inflation was dropping. But he also called on voters to “remember” the depths of 2020, before he took over, and compare that to where the nation is now, with more than two years of record low unemployment. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” he said. “Now our economy is the envy of the world.”
He took a swipe at lazy reporting by media that have focused on his age and occasional stumbles instead of his successes, as he noted the economy is “the greatest comeback story never told,” but with the nation tuned in to the State of the Union speech, he was determined to tell it.
Biden also predicted that the “power of women” would show itself in the 2024 election, as it did in 2022 and 2023, when Democratic candidates won elections the polls said they’d lose. “We’ll win again in 2024,” he said, as women are responding to Republican threats to their reproductive rights, including birth control, after Trump’s three appointees to the Supreme Court furnished the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“My God, what freedoms will you take away next?” Biden asked the Republicans.
Biden promised to “restore” the abortion rights Roe v. Wade had guaranteed if voters re-elect him, as well as a Congress that could pass such legislation.
The centrality of “reproductive freedom” was clear in the speech, as well as guests in the White House’s box, who included a woman who had to leave Texas to get an abortion to save her own life and an Alabama woman whose fertility treatments were suspended when the Alabama Supreme Court shut down in vitro fertilization treatments in that state.
He sparred with Republicans in the chamber several times, departing from his prepared text to ad-lib responses to hecklers. And as he neared the end of his speech, the president joked about his age.
“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” the 81-year-old commander in chief said, to chuckles in the audience. “And when you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever. … The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”
Republicans in the House Chamber were unmoved, but an instant poll CNN conducted that night showed 65% of viewers had a positive review of Biden’s speech. Viewers shifted 17 points toward believing the country is headed in the right direction — from 45% before the speech to 62% afterward.
And that was before Alabama Sen. Katie Britt delivered a cringeworthy performance as the Republican responder. The “highlight” was her story about a Mexican a woman who had been a victim of sex trafficking by cartels, which the senator implied had happened in the US under President Biden’s watch. “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it,” Britt said. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”
In fact, Britt’s story was based on abuse suffered by Karla Jacinto Romero in Mexico between 2004 and 2008 — while George W. Bush happened to be president. Romero, who has become an activist for victims of sex trafficking in Latin America, told her story to Congress in 2015 and later to three senators, including Britt, on the border in Texas in 2023. But among Republicans, facts are fungible and are twisted to suit their prejudices.
So we’re heading into a presidential campaign matching two old men. One of them has a long career in public service and has surrounded himself with capable aides, and his accomplishments during his first three years invite comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. His SOTU speech showed Old Joe may be channeling “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry Truman as he outpaces his detractors.
The opponent is a disgraced real estate developer, con man, rapist, fraudster and aspiring dictator whose running commentary on “Truth Social” framed Biden as “angry” and “shouting,” which he said “is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!” The predecessor raged overnight with more than 75 posts in various stages of derangement. He has surrounded himself with dodgy aides, five of whom needed pardons for crimes before Trump was run out of office, and he has feverishly sought to delay his criminal trials until he can get back into the White House and fire special prosecutor Jack Smith. And now his team has brought the Republican National Committee into his racketeer influenced corrupt organization.
Thus, we propose a slogan for President Biden’s re-election campaign: “81 years is better than 91 felony indictments.” — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024
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