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The United States Constitution, in Article II, section III, demands that "from time to time" the President make an address to the Congress to give them "Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient[.]" The tradition of such an address has evolved into a once-yearly speech during an administration, although a newly-elected president may skip the speech for the first opportunity they traditionally would have, as they have usually been in office for two months at most when this opportunity appears.
Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior delivered the State of the Union Address on 7 March 02024. I will be using The Associated Press transcript of the speech, including audience interactions and corrections from the speech as delivered in commentary.
( And here we go. )
The commentators favorable to the President on the speech have mostly mentioned that the President's speech was pretty sharp, aggressive, at a quick clip, and that he was able to communicate that even though he's older, he's still pretty on top of things, compared to his opponent and his opponent's clear issues with speech and documented inability to keep names straight.
As is customary, the opposition party tapped one of their own to deliver an official response to the material in the State of the Union address. The opposition selected Katie Britt, the junior senator from Alabama, to deliver the response, and this link is to the AP Transcript of the speech.
( The opposition's response. )
For someone who was willing to wield a "bless his heart" against the President because in her alternate reality, things are much more "Demolition Man" than what things are like on Earth-1, the Senator finds herself lacking the ability to sprinkle even a gesture at statistics or other proof, but instead hopes that the voter will go by feelings rather than facts. (Which, to be fair, is a valid approach, given how well it worked to elect the opposition's candidate the last time he ran.) (Memo From Your Future Self: After having had time to digest both the content and the delivery form, the Slacktivist explains why everyone who wasn't already firmly in the world the Senator comes from was off-put by that speech: the poor acting, the lie sufficiently bold as to be not only easily found to be a lie, but a decades-old lie, and the tone and delivery of the speech that sounded the alarm bells for anyone who knows that cadence that Senator Britt is almost certainly in the same circles as Michelle Duggar and has been taught that the way to appeal to men and her husband is to portray herself as a submissive and meek, but sexualized, woman-child who needs a big strong man to protect her.
It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting Presidential race, where one of the major parties' candidate is multiply-indicted, seems to be having cognitive difficulties, and has already said repeatedly that he intends to be a dictator and disregard the democratic process, even if he claims to only want to do so for a day. The other one is the President. In most other years, the party putting up the multiply-indicted, cognitiviely-addled, dictator-friendly candidate would be an embarrassment to the party, but this is also the party that yanked a Speaker for the crime of working with the other party, who had one of their members expelled for being a serial fabulist, who had other members of their party defy Congressional subpoenas while expecting others to respect theirs, and whose party members in the states have busily been trying to criminalize reproductive care, send migrants to other places through trickery and deceit, and outlaw any mention of not-straight, not-cis people, as well as their existence. There are still eight months before the election in the United States, and while the major candidates have been set (now that Nikki Haley has exited as a challenger to the previous administrator), all that means is that we now have the "privilege" of eight months of campaign advertisements, and perhaps the small hope that some of those indictments will be able to go to trial and have a conclusion before the election comes to pass.
Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior delivered the State of the Union Address on 7 March 02024. I will be using The Associated Press transcript of the speech, including audience interactions and corrections from the speech as delivered in commentary.
( And here we go. )
The commentators favorable to the President on the speech have mostly mentioned that the President's speech was pretty sharp, aggressive, at a quick clip, and that he was able to communicate that even though he's older, he's still pretty on top of things, compared to his opponent and his opponent's clear issues with speech and documented inability to keep names straight.
As is customary, the opposition party tapped one of their own to deliver an official response to the material in the State of the Union address. The opposition selected Katie Britt, the junior senator from Alabama, to deliver the response, and this link is to the AP Transcript of the speech.
( The opposition's response. )
For someone who was willing to wield a "bless his heart" against the President because in her alternate reality, things are much more "Demolition Man" than what things are like on Earth-1, the Senator finds herself lacking the ability to sprinkle even a gesture at statistics or other proof, but instead hopes that the voter will go by feelings rather than facts. (Which, to be fair, is a valid approach, given how well it worked to elect the opposition's candidate the last time he ran.) (Memo From Your Future Self: After having had time to digest both the content and the delivery form, the Slacktivist explains why everyone who wasn't already firmly in the world the Senator comes from was off-put by that speech: the poor acting, the lie sufficiently bold as to be not only easily found to be a lie, but a decades-old lie, and the tone and delivery of the speech that sounded the alarm bells for anyone who knows that cadence that Senator Britt is almost certainly in the same circles as Michelle Duggar and has been taught that the way to appeal to men and her husband is to portray herself as a submissive and meek, but sexualized, woman-child who needs a big strong man to protect her.
It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting Presidential race, where one of the major parties' candidate is multiply-indicted, seems to be having cognitive difficulties, and has already said repeatedly that he intends to be a dictator and disregard the democratic process, even if he claims to only want to do so for a day. The other one is the President. In most other years, the party putting up the multiply-indicted, cognitiviely-addled, dictator-friendly candidate would be an embarrassment to the party, but this is also the party that yanked a Speaker for the crime of working with the other party, who had one of their members expelled for being a serial fabulist, who had other members of their party defy Congressional subpoenas while expecting others to respect theirs, and whose party members in the states have busily been trying to criminalize reproductive care, send migrants to other places through trickery and deceit, and outlaw any mention of not-straight, not-cis people, as well as their existence. There are still eight months before the election in the United States, and while the major candidates have been set (now that Nikki Haley has exited as a challenger to the previous administrator), all that means is that we now have the "privilege" of eight months of campaign advertisements, and perhaps the small hope that some of those indictments will be able to go to trial and have a conclusion before the election comes to pass.
