Biden's barn burner
And what was up with Katie Britt?
I don’t always watch the State of the Union and I wasn’t sure that I would last night. I was the victim of television inertia, however, as the speech followed on the heels of “Ghosts,” the only show that I try to watch regularly. If you haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious. I also had a bit of curiosity about how Biden would perform given the “Sleepy Joe” memes and dementia allegations.
The answer was that he performed extremely well. This was a barnburner of a speech and the president was energetic, vibrant, engaging, personable, [insert your own adjective here]. Biden’s performance last night was everything that Republicans said he couldn’t be.
In fact, Biden’s stamina in delivering the speech outlasted my stamina in listening to it. One reason that I often skip political speeches like the State of the Union is that they go on way too long and become partisan wish lists of programs that will never become reality. No matter who the president is, I usually end up thinking that we’re probably better off if a lot of these ideas are never implemented. That was definitely the case last night.
But before that, Biden did capture my interest. One of the strongest parts of the speech was at the beginning when Biden drew a comparison between himself and the Republicans on Ukraine, invoking President Reagan in the process:
What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the very same time. Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not.
But Ukraine, Ukraine can stop Putin. Ukraine can stop Putin, if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons they need to defend itself. That is all — that is all Ukraine is asking. They’re not asking for American soldiers. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine, and I’m determined to keep it that way.
But now, assistance to Ukraine is being blocked by those who want to walk away from our world leadership. Wasn’t long ago when a Republican president named Ronald Reagan thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Now, now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want. That’s a quote. [Biden is accurate on this quote. Here’s the context.] A former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous, and it’s unacceptable.
Biden has two very strong arguments for re-election. One is Donald Trump and the other is foreign policy. He laid out both arguments in these four paragraphs in what was an obvious appeal to Nikki Haley voters, national security conservatives who are skeptical of Trump.
Losing Ukraine would be far more impactful than losing Afghanistan, and the contrast between Reagan and Trump is stark. It’s truly a bizarro world when a Democratic president quotes Reagan approvingly and Republicans increasingly reject Reagan and his policies, which include a strong foreign policy with alliances.
But what about Afghanistan, you might ask? I’ll acknowledge that the buck stops with Biden on Afghanistan since he was president, but Republicans don’t get the full benefit of his errors there. Don’t forget that the Trump Administration negotiated the US withdrawal and Trump’s timeline would have included a quicker exit. The fact is that both sides had decided that Afghanistan wasn’t worth fighting for in a rare moment of partisan unity.
But Ukraine is different. Rather than being a backwater, Ukraine is a vibrant, advanced nation with a population that is willing to fight and die for their freedom and independence. One of the most shameful moments of the night was when Speaker Mike Johnson and most Republicans sat on their hands when Biden spoke about NATO and standing up to Vladimir Putin.
There were a few interesting and unscripted exchanges as well. In one, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who never feels bound by good taste and showed up dressed for a Trump rally in a red hat and message shirt, heckled Biden as he discussed immigration. Biden seems to have gotten the better of the exchange as he turned the moment into a lecture on how the current immigration system is broken and needs reform, even mentioning Laken Riley although he did slightly mangle the murder victim’s name.
The immigration section of the speech was effective because the issue is a hot topic, but one that could have been solved. Republicans negotiated a strong border bill and then killed it on Trump’s orders. That fact needs to be put before the voters repeatedly.
When Biden claimed that the immigration compromise was “a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen” and listed provisions of the bill, cameras cut to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), one of the Republican authors of the bill who nodded in agreement and mouthed the words, “That’s true.”
Another heckler was removed from the House chamber after heckling Biden later in the speech. NBC reports that Steve Nikoui, the father of a US Marine killed in the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate airport in Kabul in the closing days of the Afghanistan withdrawal was removed by security after yelling, “Abbey Gate” during the speech.
Let me just interject here that I don’t like such theatrics at serious speeches, whether it is from the right or the left. Some, like Nikoui, may be emotional and authentically angry. Others, like MTG, are just looking for a soundbite to get them on Fox News so they can send out fundraising appeals to their supporters. In either case, the hecklers look bad, like protesters who block roads, especially when the speaker handles their heckling smoothly.
If there was stuff in the speech that I liked, there was also stuff that I didn’t. I can’t get behind a lot of Biden’s agenda, from gun control to abortion to transgender equality, but for things that are bad ideas and controversial, there is always the filibuster. If the past four years have proved anything, it’s that Biden isn’t a lawless authoritarian eager to bypass Congress and impose a progressive agenda. Even with student loan forgiveness, where he stretched the law, he accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling.
As an aside, I’ll point out that despite Biden’s rhetoric, the last major piece of gun control was enacted by Donald Trump, acting without Congress, to reinterpret existing law to unilaterally ban bump stocks. Politics really isn’t as simple as picking a side and saying everything my team does is good and your team is always bad. That’s especially true in these days of realigning political interests. The only people who always agree with either party are the partisans, and if “hypocrite” isn’t a synonym for “partisan,” it should be.
One of the most intriguing proposals in the speech was that after offering strong support for Israel, Biden directed the US military to “establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.” I’m not sure how this will work since “no U.S. boots will be on the ground,” but I’ll be looking for further details.
Even though the war in Gaza is justified, it is also a humanitarian crisis. There are legitimate questions about how the US and the rest of the world can offer humanitarian aid without unintentionally aiding Hamas or getting caught in the crossfire. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, however.
There will be a lot of discussion about how much Biden referred to Donald Trump as well. It is unusual for a president to deliver so many direct attacks on his opponent, but Donald Trump is an unusual person and these are unusual times. Personally, I think it’s important to keep reminding people how badly - how unlawfully - Trump acted both while he was in office and since.
I hate the perennial comparisons of elections to Flight 93, but Donald Trump is the only president to ever send his supporters to attack Congress to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power and the only major party candidate that I know of who has ever run on a platform of revenge and retribution. Voters shouldn’t be allowed to forget these facts.
And that’s where I disagree with Biden. In his closing remarks, Biden was optimistic, saying, “The state of our union is strong and getting stronger.”
Our union is not strong. We are deeply divided and a large part of the country favors a “national divorce.” I’m not optimistic that we can get past this election without worse violence than we saw after Trump’s 2020 loss.
I disagree with a heckuva lot of Biden’s agenda, but I disagree with the Trumpist Republican vision even more. The best way to strengthen the union is to defeat and discredit MAGA so that we can start building a new conservative alternative to the progressives. We need two parties who will work together for the good of the country.
In the end, Biden did what he needed to do. He showed vim and vigor without embarrassing gaffes that would cause more questions about his mental acuity. What he said is less important than how he said it, and he said it well. (And without, as Steve suggested yesterday, turning off his microphone.)
REPUBLICAN RESPONSE: If I seldom watch the State of the Union, I even seldomer watch the opposition response. Last night, Rep. Katie Britt (R-Al.) delivered the Republican remarks. I didn’t watch it, but the clips I’ve seen this morning are… interesting. Even many Republicans are panning the speech and Britt’s delivery, which was simultaneously cheerful and teary. One internet wag compared Britt’s speech to the old ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan, and adding the music absolutely nails it. Look for a sendup of Britt on “Saturday Night Live” soon.
Thank you David for this thoughtful objective analysis. Perhaps no one better than you Steve and Jay have come to understand the challenges of monetizing the internet. Virtually everyone with any credibility has compromised themselves by finding a way to make a buck off what they write or say.
I've stayed with you all these years because what you (all three) write isn't based on making subscribers happy (and selling subscriptions), but with sharing your thoughts irrespective of how readers take them. That's impressive to me. I often told people i write more for myself than anyone who may read it. It helps me better understand who and what i am.
I was surprised when i awoke and one of you hadn't pounded out your thoughts so i posted in yesterday's thread my take. I'll cut and paste it here in a bit. Nothing earth shattering, but after the watch last night one significant chord was struck and i loved it.
I also saw a comment on the Bulwark this morning on irony of the Republican response coming from the state of Alabama (think IVF) and more significantly from a young woman sitting in her kitchen. That immediately struck a note as i just saw a film clip of Lt Gov Mark Robinson (SC) telling women that they belonged at home in the kitchen. Irony indeed.
Again, thanks for the purity of a site where it isn't driven by appeasing readers, but better understanding what matters to the three of you.
I am really and sincerely struggling to understand your take and defense of Biden. Sure there was Afghanistan that it appears we can all agree was horrendous and would have been handled differently by anyone else. But what about the border? What about the growing and extreme level of homelessness and drug addiction happening in our country? Why is he and his government encouraging and supporting it? Don’t these people—these fellow citizens—deserve a chance at personal dignity and success, rather than being enabled to live destructive and hopeless lives as we are doing now? What about the climate crap that is being exaggerated and forced upon us by those looking for more control, more power and more money? What about the mandates and the shutdowns that had people of conscience loosing there jobs and/or businesses, while also ostracizing them and undermining the middle class? What about the break down of law and order and the resulting shortage of police officers overall and across the country? What about the undermining of our Justice system? What about the double standard he and his administration have demonstrated between the BLM protestors and the Jan 6 protestors? We did not get the truth about Jan 6 and as a journalist that has had the integrity to go underground here on Substack, I am shocked that you seem to believe that we have. What about the growing censorship and threat to free speech democrats are clearly in support of and actively pursuing? You no doubt saw what was discovered with the Twitter files, as well as what happened to Michael Shellenburger and Matt Taibbi—the reason I subscribed to Racket News—when they went before Congress about it. What about the clear bias and interference the media plays in support of Biden and his agenda? How is that the way of democracy or more accurately, the way of our Constitutional Republic? What about all the DEI/CRT garbage creating evermore national division, not to mention wrecking havoc with everyday American lives, while also compromising our military enrollment AND our already compromised educational system? What about the trans issue that he and his cohorts have made front and center, while willingly using and putting children at risk and denying a platform for or the truth about detransitioners?
And no, I don’t care what adults do in that regard in the least. But I do care that it is being perpetrated onto children, often times despite and with disregard to their parents and the truth! What about the breakdown of meritocracy supposedly for the sake of diversity? You don’t think that that is going to set us back or have disastrous effects on all our education, science, the medical profession, our government, our law and so on? What about his sanctioning of reverse racism—racism against white people? What about his blatant disregard for the Constitution in that regard? What about the sexualization of our children in school and the sexual books being presented to young children there? What about the “use” of the FBI AND CIA? What about all the unrest he has helped to create across the globe? There are sources--to include RFK Jr, who I trust way more than Biden OR Trump, that say that in the beginning Zelensky was set to talk peace with Putin. Then Biden spoke to Boris Johnson who then spoke to Zelensky and told him no. If true--along with Seymour’s Hersh’s claim that Biden ordered the destruction of Nord Steam 2 and so much else—Biden and his administration is both creating and escalating the uncertainty here and abroad. All of this—and no doubt more—is happening under and/or being sanctioned by this man and his administration. And no matter how I look at it, I fail to see Ukraine ever winning. I cannot rationalize in my mind or heart the amount of taxpayer money being used to fund that war or the amount of taxpayer money being expended on and being given to illegals at the expense of our own citizenry, our own country, our infrastructure and our American values. In short, I cannot conceive of anyone—save perhaps Bernie Sanders—doing worse overall than Biden on both foreign and domestic issues! I am no fan of Trump, but I don’t think even he could have made the mess of things that Biden and his administration have made. And I simply cannot figure out what you are seeing or not seeing or what I could possibly be missing? 🤷♀️