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silveradeptJoseph R. Biden, Jr fulfilled the constitutional requirement of the U.S. President to deliver a speech about the state of the Union on February 7, 2023. The speech also has, by custom, become a speech to lay out priorities and policy objectives for the President. Facing a divided legislative branch and an opposition that routinely touts how far away from mainstream political beliefs it is, the President chose to both push for places to work together and to highlight places where his party attempted to govern, rather than message.
The opening remarks acknowledge the new Speaker (the one who required multiple votes and likely making compromises that allow the fringe members to sit in positions of power) as well as the new minority leader being the first black person to get to that position, and the two old foes, Schumer and McConnell, who have been at each other in the Senate the a very long time. (McConnell, at least, has mastered the way of doing extreme and unprecedented things while sounding and looking like they're not.) And a hat to to Nancy Pelosi, who didn't bring things to a cute until she was sure she could win it.
Then the actual speech begins. A hooray for new jobs, which could be blamed on what he says next, that COVID-19 "no longer controls our lives," by which he means that capital successfully forced us back into situations where our lives mean less than rich people's yacht money. So jobs that were lost awhile capital couldn't exploit us are back now and probably even more exploitative than they were before, regardless of what you hear about how people "don't want to work anymore" or trot or the idea that somehow we've all been living off a single stimulus check for years.
The that to democracy posed by the mob of January 6, 2021 gets a mention, but not the continued threat from authoritarians at both the federal and state levels, as well as the justices sitting in the highest court waiting for an excuse to overturn what they don't like. Because one of the throughlines for this speech is that bipartisanship is not only possible, it's been achieved repeatedly. The infrastructure bill (a bill greatly reduced and spun out from the original package), a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, the Electoral Count Reform Act (meant to specifically prevent the public vector of attack that tried to prevent Mike Pence from doing his duty to certify the election) and the Respect For Marriage Act, meant to specifically forestall the possibility of the rogue court deciding to reverse their precedent and declare certain marriages no longer legal or recognized. (As well as compensation and care for those members of the military exposed to toxins.) So there are at least some in the opposition party who still believe that existential threats are bipartisan issues, but they are, as many fear, a dying breed.
The message about taking pride in being part of the United States, in work, and believing in and building an economy that has a large and prosperous middle class comes with statistics about how well things are going, and ideas about building and creating more manufacturing capacity, including semiconductors, and more private investment in businesses. Including infrastructure investments, with a well-deserved "taking the high road" shot at those of the opposition who have opposed all of that investment and infrastructure but still happily try to get funding to their own districts when it passed over their vociferous objections. The President highlights the jobs and investment happening in the blue collar world and the people who feel ignored by the interests of capital and the places that believe they're the heartland where all the good jobs have been fleeing. (Because the populist rhetoric from the authoritarians wants people to believe they've been ignored or destroyed by "elites," by which they mean "women and minorities and workers in liberal places." Highlighting blue-collar things is meant to take the wind out of the sails of that argument.)
On the health care front, the President asks for incremental tiny changes, like capping the price of insulin for everyone at 3.5 times the cost of a vial monthly, and promoting that Medicare has some new powers to negotiate costs or get refunds if drug prices increase more than inflation. And that the Obama-era Affordable Care Act has more people with insurance than before, and with lower premiums. Nothing there about taking more aggressive stances against profiteering, monopsony behavior, and the reality that many insurance companies make money by denying care and that many hospitals and other cats places charge arbitrary prices. Just a promise to veto attempts to repeal progress.
On climate, the President again turns to the infrastructure argument toward clean energy and infrastructure toward electrification and a more robust grid and more resilient structures as the way to make progress on the climate front.
Who pays for this? The President believes that the biggest corporations can afford it out of their profits, so now they have a minimum income tax to pay as part of "their fair share," even though the 15% minimum is several tens of percentage points less than top tax rates for individuals or corporations of the past. Even the President recognizes the inadequacy, saying that no corporation should pay an income tax rate less than a worker. And then he says it's time to go after the wealthy that cheat on their taxes, and I hope that's the case and the IRS can successfully both audit and then reclaim the money owed the government. It would be even nicer, though, if the tax code lost those exemptions and carve-outs that allow the wealthy to avoid paying anything near what their statutory rate is. Or even more that the figuring of taxes becomes something the government can and does do so that the temptation to cheat fades away.
The President then makes a point that during Republican administrations, nobody has to care about whether the debt ceiling will be raised, even if it's for a lot of new spending, but then when Democrats ask for it, suddenly there's a need for fiscal responsibility. More specifically, we can always spend for war, but we never seem to have that same willingness when it comes to peace and making these lives of the people better. The President then accurately calls out his opposition for their positions on wanting to privatize and/or destroy the social programs of Social Security and Medicare. They protest this characterization mightily, first because it's accurate and second because it's unpopular. The President is even generous in saying he doesn't believe it's a majority of the opposition, but he still gets booed for speaking the truth about the party that wants us all as corporate slaves with no rights or protections or retirement. They protest now, but we shall see what they actually do.
In the middle of an extended space about saving people money by stopping those who overcharge or apply "fees" that are basically pure profit, the President articulated a truism of our times: "Capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It is extortion. It is exploitation." Of course, the President said he was a capitalist earlier in the speech, so we can't necessarily expect any kind of transition to a functioning social democracy, but he tries hard in the speech to frame things as a matter of fair play in the system, which is better than those who believe the system is perfect as it is and if you aren't succeeding, then you're a loser. The President also asks for laws to allow workers to join a union.
Then comes the family segment, about getting families good jobs, child care, tax credits, paid family and medical leave, benefits for seniors and people with disabilities to get proper home care, affordable education, preschool, and higher education, including community college.
Talking about the virus is as much about prosecuting people who defrauded pandemic relief efforts as much as it is about recognizing the more than one million deaths from the pandemic and its related issues. The President talks about the need to keep public trust and uses it as a shift into talking about the death of Tyre Nichols and "the talk" that parents of color have to give their children about how to improve their odds the most toward avoiding being killed by racist cops. Because he can't be seen as supporting a position like ACAB, the President then talks about how he believes most police officers are decent people, but they need to be relieved of the duties of being a social worker, mental health counselor, and all the other roles that have fallen to them as the social safety net has been destroyed to feed their budgets. He is correct in that were need more alternatives than cops, he's correct that when cops break the public trust, they have to be held accountable, but he couldn't go so far as to say that perhaps a significant amount of the money for more social programs could be taken from the budgets of the police, since we'd be trying very hard to relieve them of any other duties than being the State's agent of violence. Along with police reform, the President called for the permanent banning of assault weapons, using the example of Brandon Tsay wrestling a gun from a mass shooter who had already killed several as an act of heroism and as something that no person should ever have to do in their lives.
The President was uninspiring about immigration, asking mostly for tools for border enforcement along with a pathway to citizenship for those who were brought here as children. He was much better on rights and freedoms, calling in the Congress to codify the privileges that had been extended to women regarding abortion until the rogue Court decided they would please Christofascists rather than protect women and to pass a law that would make it easier for teams people to live lives unharrassed by their governments.
His foreign policy statements were essentially "we're standing with Ukraine against Russia and we're not letting China take over as the dominant power in the world." Which is good for the people who want American exceptionalism and chant "U.S.A." in the chamber and less good for those who would like some reality checks about the same. Going back to the bipartisanship well, the President talked about needing to defeat fentanyl, to protect children and teens from the predatory data practices of technology companies, and to take care of veterans of the military. The President exhorted the Congress to provide funds and programs to make cancer less of a death sentence and more of a treatable disease.
For the final point of the speech, the President returned to the attack on democracy, both in the chamber on January 6, 2021, but also on the attack perpetuated against Paul Pelosi as a way of trying to intimidate and eventually do violence to Nancy Pelosi. He wants us to be our best selves, holding things together rather than fracturing apart or giving in to those who would take us away from the ideal that all people are created equal. He proclaims
It wasn't, in my opinion, full of ambition and far-reaching material, nor did it do a lot of condemnation where it could have. It seems likely to be a speech where the most notable parts weren't in the speech, but in the ad-libs and in the various reactions and breaches of order that happened during the speech. The spots where you could tell points had been scored. For a President who seems just as determined to get bipartisanship where he can, the speech trying to focus on the things he think will get him bipartisanship makes sense, and since he has a hostile House now, we can probably expect a clown show in what is actually passed by the House for the next two years. Biden is not the orator Obama was, but he does know how to throw a verbal punch when warranted. It remains to be seen how much he can back up his rhetoric with action, and how much his desire for bipartisanship will be overriding and possibly lead him into making possibly unwise deals for the sake of being seen to do something.
After the official speech, as is tradition, the opposition chooses someone they wish to give a national spotlight to and charges them with delivering an official response. Unfortunately for those still hoping the opposition could paint itself as Loyal but with an increasingly large fringe problem, the chosen speaker, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Governor of Arkansas, did nothing at all to present the opposition as reasonable or interested in governance and bipartisanship. Instead, she attacked the President with familiar accusations of "big government" intending to "rule" rather than "serve." (A hollow accusation in the face of the various "Don't Say X" bills, the abortion bans, the demands of censorship of both schools and libraries so they cannot ever say, show, or even acknowledge the existence of anything more than white straight Christian hagiography.) Her complaints that the country is run by a "woke mob who can't even tell you what a woman is," that "our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country," and positioning the divide as a "choice [...] between normal or crazy," all echo the mainstream positions of the opposition party. The governor then lists her shibboleths, banning critical race theory (she sees it as racism and indoctrination), removing the use of "Latinx" (which she charges is derogatory, but doesn't elaborate, presumably because Fox News has already done that work well before this point. Latinx is not particularly adept on the tongue, but derogatory? Citation requested.) and repealing any protections citizens of her state had against COVID.
On the economy, drugs, and foreign policy, there's nothing really new, just the usual "Democrats are weak on the border, on standing up to enemies, on drugs and crime, and they want to teach and spend every dollar you have." There is the new wrinkle of including "defund the police" as a reason why criminals are everywhere and those who follow the law are scared, but it's new phrasing for a very old argument.
In the usual manner of accusing your opposition of what you are most guilty of, the governor asserts the administration is more interested in "woke fantasies" rather than relieving the suffering of those under attack from "a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight," because, as good fascists know, the mere existence of a person who didn't conform is an attack on the fascist's away of life. The governor continues to indicate she is in Bizarro World:
The rest of the speech is an anecdote about a secret Christmas trip taken with the previous administrator to a military base, where the troops who were there erupted into cheers at the appearance of the civilian head of the military. And how she supported the troops so much and turned it back to them when they told her she had a difficult job.
Thus, the official response passes without any kind of advancement of a platform, the idea that they have ideas and will advocate for them, or anything more than strong projection about the state of her own party onto the President's party. It didn't have a call for the previous administrator to come back and save them all, but it certainly seems to be an appeal to the most extreme elements to continue doing what they are doing, and to justify it through the fantasy that the other side has also been taken over by their own fringe.
The pair of speeches are accurate reflections of the state of the two parties in this year: one desperately is looking for ways to collaborate and communicate so they don't get painted as "culture warriors," while the other fully leans into the culture wars, declaring their superiority sand demanding that all others fall in line with their beliefs. One has their hands full just trying to govern and hold together what exists, flawed as it is, and possibly make some incremental changes if the opportunity presents itself, while the other wants to take it all apart and rebuild in the image of an authoritarian in lockstep with WASP supremacy and corporate domination, such that there will never be the opportunity to think differently ever again, because all other points of view will be officially forbidden. Those looking for a rallying point to fight back against the encroachment will mostly have to look elsewhere, to their states, to their localities, and to each other. Schools and libraries are probably going to be a good place to start.
The opening remarks acknowledge the new Speaker (the one who required multiple votes and likely making compromises that allow the fringe members to sit in positions of power) as well as the new minority leader being the first black person to get to that position, and the two old foes, Schumer and McConnell, who have been at each other in the Senate the a very long time. (McConnell, at least, has mastered the way of doing extreme and unprecedented things while sounding and looking like they're not.) And a hat to to Nancy Pelosi, who didn't bring things to a cute until she was sure she could win it.
Then the actual speech begins. A hooray for new jobs, which could be blamed on what he says next, that COVID-19 "no longer controls our lives," by which he means that capital successfully forced us back into situations where our lives mean less than rich people's yacht money. So jobs that were lost awhile capital couldn't exploit us are back now and probably even more exploitative than they were before, regardless of what you hear about how people "don't want to work anymore" or trot or the idea that somehow we've all been living off a single stimulus check for years.
The that to democracy posed by the mob of January 6, 2021 gets a mention, but not the continued threat from authoritarians at both the federal and state levels, as well as the justices sitting in the highest court waiting for an excuse to overturn what they don't like. Because one of the throughlines for this speech is that bipartisanship is not only possible, it's been achieved repeatedly. The infrastructure bill (a bill greatly reduced and spun out from the original package), a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, the Electoral Count Reform Act (meant to specifically prevent the public vector of attack that tried to prevent Mike Pence from doing his duty to certify the election) and the Respect For Marriage Act, meant to specifically forestall the possibility of the rogue court deciding to reverse their precedent and declare certain marriages no longer legal or recognized. (As well as compensation and care for those members of the military exposed to toxins.) So there are at least some in the opposition party who still believe that existential threats are bipartisan issues, but they are, as many fear, a dying breed.
The message about taking pride in being part of the United States, in work, and believing in and building an economy that has a large and prosperous middle class comes with statistics about how well things are going, and ideas about building and creating more manufacturing capacity, including semiconductors, and more private investment in businesses. Including infrastructure investments, with a well-deserved "taking the high road" shot at those of the opposition who have opposed all of that investment and infrastructure but still happily try to get funding to their own districts when it passed over their vociferous objections. The President highlights the jobs and investment happening in the blue collar world and the people who feel ignored by the interests of capital and the places that believe they're the heartland where all the good jobs have been fleeing. (Because the populist rhetoric from the authoritarians wants people to believe they've been ignored or destroyed by "elites," by which they mean "women and minorities and workers in liberal places." Highlighting blue-collar things is meant to take the wind out of the sails of that argument.)
On the health care front, the President asks for incremental tiny changes, like capping the price of insulin for everyone at 3.5 times the cost of a vial monthly, and promoting that Medicare has some new powers to negotiate costs or get refunds if drug prices increase more than inflation. And that the Obama-era Affordable Care Act has more people with insurance than before, and with lower premiums. Nothing there about taking more aggressive stances against profiteering, monopsony behavior, and the reality that many insurance companies make money by denying care and that many hospitals and other cats places charge arbitrary prices. Just a promise to veto attempts to repeal progress.
On climate, the President again turns to the infrastructure argument toward clean energy and infrastructure toward electrification and a more robust grid and more resilient structures as the way to make progress on the climate front.
Who pays for this? The President believes that the biggest corporations can afford it out of their profits, so now they have a minimum income tax to pay as part of "their fair share," even though the 15% minimum is several tens of percentage points less than top tax rates for individuals or corporations of the past. Even the President recognizes the inadequacy, saying that no corporation should pay an income tax rate less than a worker. And then he says it's time to go after the wealthy that cheat on their taxes, and I hope that's the case and the IRS can successfully both audit and then reclaim the money owed the government. It would be even nicer, though, if the tax code lost those exemptions and carve-outs that allow the wealthy to avoid paying anything near what their statutory rate is. Or even more that the figuring of taxes becomes something the government can and does do so that the temptation to cheat fades away.
The President then makes a point that during Republican administrations, nobody has to care about whether the debt ceiling will be raised, even if it's for a lot of new spending, but then when Democrats ask for it, suddenly there's a need for fiscal responsibility. More specifically, we can always spend for war, but we never seem to have that same willingness when it comes to peace and making these lives of the people better. The President then accurately calls out his opposition for their positions on wanting to privatize and/or destroy the social programs of Social Security and Medicare. They protest this characterization mightily, first because it's accurate and second because it's unpopular. The President is even generous in saying he doesn't believe it's a majority of the opposition, but he still gets booed for speaking the truth about the party that wants us all as corporate slaves with no rights or protections or retirement. They protest now, but we shall see what they actually do.
In the middle of an extended space about saving people money by stopping those who overcharge or apply "fees" that are basically pure profit, the President articulated a truism of our times: "Capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It is extortion. It is exploitation." Of course, the President said he was a capitalist earlier in the speech, so we can't necessarily expect any kind of transition to a functioning social democracy, but he tries hard in the speech to frame things as a matter of fair play in the system, which is better than those who believe the system is perfect as it is and if you aren't succeeding, then you're a loser. The President also asks for laws to allow workers to join a union.
Then comes the family segment, about getting families good jobs, child care, tax credits, paid family and medical leave, benefits for seniors and people with disabilities to get proper home care, affordable education, preschool, and higher education, including community college.
Talking about the virus is as much about prosecuting people who defrauded pandemic relief efforts as much as it is about recognizing the more than one million deaths from the pandemic and its related issues. The President talks about the need to keep public trust and uses it as a shift into talking about the death of Tyre Nichols and "the talk" that parents of color have to give their children about how to improve their odds the most toward avoiding being killed by racist cops. Because he can't be seen as supporting a position like ACAB, the President then talks about how he believes most police officers are decent people, but they need to be relieved of the duties of being a social worker, mental health counselor, and all the other roles that have fallen to them as the social safety net has been destroyed to feed their budgets. He is correct in that were need more alternatives than cops, he's correct that when cops break the public trust, they have to be held accountable, but he couldn't go so far as to say that perhaps a significant amount of the money for more social programs could be taken from the budgets of the police, since we'd be trying very hard to relieve them of any other duties than being the State's agent of violence. Along with police reform, the President called for the permanent banning of assault weapons, using the example of Brandon Tsay wrestling a gun from a mass shooter who had already killed several as an act of heroism and as something that no person should ever have to do in their lives.
The President was uninspiring about immigration, asking mostly for tools for border enforcement along with a pathway to citizenship for those who were brought here as children. He was much better on rights and freedoms, calling in the Congress to codify the privileges that had been extended to women regarding abortion until the rogue Court decided they would please Christofascists rather than protect women and to pass a law that would make it easier for teams people to live lives unharrassed by their governments.
His foreign policy statements were essentially "we're standing with Ukraine against Russia and we're not letting China take over as the dominant power in the world." Which is good for the people who want American exceptionalism and chant "U.S.A." in the chamber and less good for those who would like some reality checks about the same. Going back to the bipartisanship well, the President talked about needing to defeat fentanyl, to protect children and teens from the predatory data practices of technology companies, and to take care of veterans of the military. The President exhorted the Congress to provide funds and programs to make cancer less of a death sentence and more of a treatable disease.
For the final point of the speech, the President returned to the attack on democracy, both in the chamber on January 6, 2021, but also on the attack perpetuated against Paul Pelosi as a way of trying to intimidate and eventually do violence to Nancy Pelosi. He wants us to be our best selves, holding things together rather than fracturing apart or giving in to those who would take us away from the ideal that all people are created equal. He proclaims
Because the soul of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong, because the people of this nation are strong, the State of the Union is strong.I do not share his optimism, even though I can appreciate it, because I can see the cruel and the petty and the venal ascending to and retaining positions of power and using that authority to persecute rather than govern, and others who use their clout and pressure to attack anything that might be different than their specific worldview. As much as it would be fantastic to believe that we are all fellows and that reason can prevail if given sufficient time and logic, it seems increasingly likely there are fewer people interested in minding their own business when confronted with something they don't agree with and doesn't affect them.
As I stand here tonight, I have never been more optimistic about the future of America. We just have to remember who we are.
We are the United States of America and there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.
It wasn't, in my opinion, full of ambition and far-reaching material, nor did it do a lot of condemnation where it could have. It seems likely to be a speech where the most notable parts weren't in the speech, but in the ad-libs and in the various reactions and breaches of order that happened during the speech. The spots where you could tell points had been scored. For a President who seems just as determined to get bipartisanship where he can, the speech trying to focus on the things he think will get him bipartisanship makes sense, and since he has a hostile House now, we can probably expect a clown show in what is actually passed by the House for the next two years. Biden is not the orator Obama was, but he does know how to throw a verbal punch when warranted. It remains to be seen how much he can back up his rhetoric with action, and how much his desire for bipartisanship will be overriding and possibly lead him into making possibly unwise deals for the sake of being seen to do something.
After the official speech, as is tradition, the opposition chooses someone they wish to give a national spotlight to and charges them with delivering an official response. Unfortunately for those still hoping the opposition could paint itself as Loyal but with an increasingly large fringe problem, the chosen speaker, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Governor of Arkansas, did nothing at all to present the opposition as reasonable or interested in governance and bipartisanship. Instead, she attacked the President with familiar accusations of "big government" intending to "rule" rather than "serve." (A hollow accusation in the face of the various "Don't Say X" bills, the abortion bans, the demands of censorship of both schools and libraries so they cannot ever say, show, or even acknowledge the existence of anything more than white straight Christian hagiography.) Her complaints that the country is run by a "woke mob who can't even tell you what a woman is," that "our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country," and positioning the divide as a "choice [...] between normal or crazy," all echo the mainstream positions of the opposition party. The governor then lists her shibboleths, banning critical race theory (she sees it as racism and indoctrination), removing the use of "Latinx" (which she charges is derogatory, but doesn't elaborate, presumably because Fox News has already done that work well before this point. Latinx is not particularly adept on the tongue, but derogatory? Citation requested.) and repealing any protections citizens of her state had against COVID.
On the economy, drugs, and foreign policy, there's nothing really new, just the usual "Democrats are weak on the border, on standing up to enemies, on drugs and crime, and they want to teach and spend every dollar you have." There is the new wrinkle of including "defund the police" as a reason why criminals are everywhere and those who follow the law are scared, but it's new phrasing for a very old argument.
In the usual manner of accusing your opposition of what you are most guilty of, the governor asserts the administration is more interested in "woke fantasies" rather than relieving the suffering of those under attack from "a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight," because, as good fascists know, the mere existence of a person who didn't conform is an attack on the fascist's away of life. The governor continues to indicate she is in Bizarro World:
Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your Freedom of speech.Ah, yes, the requirements to pledge allegiance to the trans flag, to nonconsensually change your gender and worship Eddie Izzard as a god among humans, all while Twitter, Tumblr, Microsoft, Apple, and Google prevent you from saying bigoted things in their platforms at the direction of the government. Sure you don't want to add a "schools with litter boxes" or "secret George Soros/Jewish cabals" in there, Governor? Your BinQo card is still looking mighty empty.
The rest of the speech is an anecdote about a secret Christmas trip taken with the previous administrator to a military base, where the troops who were there erupted into cheers at the appearance of the civilian head of the military. And how she supported the troops so much and turned it back to them when they told her she had a difficult job.
Thus, the official response passes without any kind of advancement of a platform, the idea that they have ideas and will advocate for them, or anything more than strong projection about the state of her own party onto the President's party. It didn't have a call for the previous administrator to come back and save them all, but it certainly seems to be an appeal to the most extreme elements to continue doing what they are doing, and to justify it through the fantasy that the other side has also been taken over by their own fringe.
The pair of speeches are accurate reflections of the state of the two parties in this year: one desperately is looking for ways to collaborate and communicate so they don't get painted as "culture warriors," while the other fully leans into the culture wars, declaring their superiority sand demanding that all others fall in line with their beliefs. One has their hands full just trying to govern and hold together what exists, flawed as it is, and possibly make some incremental changes if the opportunity presents itself, while the other wants to take it all apart and rebuild in the image of an authoritarian in lockstep with WASP supremacy and corporate domination, such that there will never be the opportunity to think differently ever again, because all other points of view will be officially forbidden. Those looking for a rallying point to fight back against the encroachment will mostly have to look elsewhere, to their states, to their localities, and to each other. Schools and libraries are probably going to be a good place to start.
