Keller @ Large: Biden's State of the Union address sounded like a campaign speech
BOSTON - "The story of America is a story of progress and resilience," said President Biden as he began his State of the Union address Tuesday night. "Of always moving forward. Of never giving up."
The polls show solid majorities of Americans don't see that story in the Biden presidency so far. They see mediocrity, manifested most potently in their perception that we are not making progress on many of the issues that concern them most.
For the vast majority in the TV audience, a bit too busy navigating these trying times to pore over the details of what Washington is up to, Biden's litany of accomplishments - including "over 300 bipartisan laws" - might have come as a surprise. And for the many who drink from the firehose of anti-Biden vitriol spewing from right-wing media, the vigor with which the speech was delivered was probably a surprise as well. Who was that imposter standing in for the enfeebled Jello mold my local radio talk-show troll's been screaming about?
But for all the references to working together, there were plenty of sharp elbows thrown the GOP's way.
Touting the long-overdue funding of projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Biden said "I sincerely thank my Republican friends who voted for the law. And to my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don't worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans. We'll fund your projects. And I'll see you at the ground-breaking."
And when Biden went after members of the Republican caucus who've been dancing on the third-rail of "entitlement reform" (i.e. messing with Social Security and Medicare), the right-wingers in the chamber got restless, so much so that even the shrieking of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was lost in the hubbub. Usually Biden's ad-libs are risky bordering on disastrous, but when they tried to shout down his claims, Biden artfully engaged the hecklers, concluding sarcastically that he had negotiated "unanimity" on protecting the big safety-net programs on the spot.
For the far-right critics who oxymoronically claim Biden is some kind of communist, he offered a lesson in populism: "Capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It is exploitation." He went on to lay out the rationale behind the Junk Fee Protection Act, a new bill aimed at curbing the rip-off culture gripping many airlines, banks, hotels, cable and cellphone companies and, of course, Ticketmaster. "Americans are tired of being played for suckers," concluded Biden. "Pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act so companies stop ripping us off. For too long, workers have been getting stiffed. Not anymore."
Good luck to the critics who want to disparage that one as wokeness run amok.
Biden frequently appeared to address his remarks to the Republican side of the chamber. His tone was not always conciliatory. And as the speech wound down, he saved a final rebuke for the Supreme Court justices sitting in the front row, noting that since the Court "took away" abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade "already, more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans. Make no mistake; if Congress passes a national abortion ban, I will veto it."
And if you had the extremism and denialism symbolized by the January 6 mob as a closing theme prop bet, you cashed in. "We must give hate and extremism in any form no safe harbor. Democracy must not be a partisan issue. It must be an American issue."
Some context: State of the Union addresses come and go, usually without causing a ripple in the polls. In our hyper-partisan culture with disinformation running wild, Biden will surely continue to struggle with underwater approval ratings.
But the numbers were bad for Biden heading into last fall's midterm elections, real bad. Yet somehow, in the voting booth, enough independents troubled by the Republican alternatives (and Democrats motivated less by Biden than by horror at his enemies) voted D to make fools of the pundits.
If this speech was a preview of the Biden 2024 campaign - bipartisanship when possible, aggressive populism when not, and plenty of vetoes to highlight the overreach of the radical right - there's a decent chance history might repeat.
