Biden Didn't Seem Too Old At The State Of The Union Address
He actually seemed pretty with it. More liberal than progressive? Sure. But he was with it.
Hello, friends,
First things first, I want to offer my deepest condolences to the friends and family of Akira Toriyama, author of Dragon Ball (among others) and a huge influence on my life. May his themes of self-improvement be a blessing to us all.
With that said:
Last week, we talked about how the primaries are more-or-less over. With Super Tuesday’s results and the dropping out of Dean Philips and Nikki Haley, the only things honestly left are to see how many Republicans still vote for someone other than Trump (thus signaling Trump’s weakness within his own party), and how many Democrats vote Uncommitted (thus signaling Biden’s weakness).
I meant to write this article Thursday Night, but when news of Toriyama’s passing hit me, it just…Wasn’t happening. But it is now! Sort of. This is gonna be a quick one.
How Biden’s State Of The Union (SOTU) Address Felt
Let’s be honest, as important as factual circumstances are to a speech ostensibly about how the nation is faring overall, the truth is that this was a very political act in an election year where a known Fascist and coup-attempter is trying to regain power.
In other words, it’s hard to talk about the state of the Union if one doesn’t address the people working against that Union.
Because the SOTU was political in nature, we’re basically doing a vibe check, here. What I mean is that I’m basically talking about how it made me feel, because it was largely an appeal to ethics and emotionality as much as it was about the statistical facts of the country’s prosperity (or lack thereof).
So, overall, how would I grade it? Honestly? You’re not gonna believe this:
A-.
In fact, it was treading into A or even A+ territory until one word brought him down about half a letter grade, but we’ll get into that.
He opened talking about the state of Democracy worldwide, appealing to an FDR SOTU address in 1941 and talking about Ukraine. Brilliant.
He talked about the losses in civil rights experienced by women and others who can become pregnant - important, because a huge contingent of House Democrats were wearing white outfits to silently speak about women’s issues.
He even had mostly good things to say on the Israel-Palestine front. He’s still not doing enough, but at least he’s finally kinda-sorta got a plan that might save some lives. Will it be enough? I have my doubts. Will he get the ceasefire he’s asking for, let alone the enduring peace he talked about? I dunno. But it seems like he’s heard the Uncommitted vote and is taking a little more action. Now, maybe he’ll cut Israel off from further arms shipments? One can dream. Apparently, Biden wants to have a “Come to Jesus” conversation with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, but that’s…For starters, a weird phrase to use given that Netanyahu is Jewish and all that.
But overall he had useful and positive stuff to say.
His Weakest Moment.
His weakest moment came when he was talking about the border. He did a good job of pinning Republicans down for having voted against their own bill, which is fine - I guess - but then he did something I didn’t like. Marjorie Taylor Greene was screaming at him to say the name of Laken Riley, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. He said her name with a bit of a stutter so it sounded like “Lincoln Riley,” but then he said something really bad.
He said she was killed by “an illegal.”
That kinda stung, considering that’s a term that fell out of political favor a long time ago. Hell, the Democrats’ Twitter account was saying a variant of “No Human is Illegal” since 2017. That kind of language simply deHumanizes other undocumented people.
Now.
The next thing he did was to talk about how many people were killed by “legals.” Meaning, from what I gathered, how many people were killed by U.S. Citizens - sayyyy, maybe something to do with our epidemic of gun violence? Maybe!
It’s one of those things where you can see what he was trying to do, but it didn’t quite work out according to plan. That was probably because it was a bad plan. I also don’t know if it was planned out in advance or a spur-of-the-moment thing.
But overall it gives me more vibes of “An old man used an outdated, now-unacceptable phrase” as opposed to a “Biden is going to evict millions of people from the country” vibe that, I dunno, Trump gives.
Since the original publication of this article, Biden has expressed regret for his use of the term.
So. Vibes?
Overall, very good. Biden came out not with a stage whisper, but with a forceful tone. He stuttered a couple of times, but ultimately he was pretty well spoken and he didn’t seem like some old man being wheeled around by political handlers.
He seemed like a vibrant President.
He was pointed, talking directly about problems instead of talking around them. He assigned blame where it was due, and called on both sides to work together - something which one side patently refused to stand up and cheer for.
A narrative theme that just struck my mind was that Biden was aiming to put on a public display of how not bipartisan the Republicans have become. “Oh, we had a bipartisan immigration bill you guys subverted. Wanna work on that?” he basically asked. They said no. Same on issues like education, women’s’ rights, and pretty much anything else.
In the most public setting imaginable, he shot down the mantra that both parties can or should work together, all while laying out something along the lines of a vision for what he’d do if re-elected with control of Congress.
I think watching one half of our elected Representation, both in the House and Senate, turn around and fuck off all year is an effective vote-getter, and I think Biden did a good job of setting that narrative up. Now, it’s up to him to build upon that narrative and spread it out to the rest of the country.
Thanks for reading.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.
I liked the "look at the facts, I'm sure you know how to read" moment. He did really well. I liked his taking no crap attitude.