Some rolling observations I made while watching the Big Speech.
“Freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” We start off with a few bold statements praising Ukraine and sharply criticizing Russia. “When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause chaos.” Biden makes a good solid speech and case here, discussing work on alliances, sharing and analysis of intelligence data, and the deliberate choices to speak clearly about these things as they were happening.
It’s a good case made, and I’m hard-pressed to think of a time there’s been this clear, sharp, and immediate response from the international community to provocative events.
Talking about going after the oligarchs. Wish our leaders in the Democratic Party were as enthusiastic about mitigating the power of oligarchs here in the US.
Biden reinforces that they’re not moving US forces “to fight Russia in Ukraine,” right before listing off all the countries where US forces are being moved and readied for conflict the minute one of those borders is crossed by Russians fighting in Ukraine.
Announcement of release of some oil reserves, 60Mbbl total.
“Iranian” instead of “Ukrainian,” and someone shouted something. We’ll see how the right-wing punditry handles that in this new era of anti-Russian sentiment.
LOL boos from the right as Biden mentions “unlike the two trillion from the previous administration that went to the top one percent.”
Economics. Lots of slogans and so forth, will there be any kind of solid announcements for any kind of relief? Applause line for infrastructure plan. Hearing more details on how that money’s being spent specifically, all of which is cool or cool-ish at least.
Passing econ bill with sales pitch including promise from Intel to drop $100Bn on manufacturing growth. Lots of revitalizing manufacturing talk and so forth. I think it’s short-sighted to continue focusing on “creating jobs,” but most of the world isn’t on that page yet.
Inflation and price conversation, lots of nativism in this conversation, but it is what it is. “USA” chant like we’re at a wrestling match. Validating the economic plan. Reducing prescription drugs, arguments in favor of reducing prices, political rhetoric but not ineffective, shout out to the kid in the audience, lots of well-used crowd-pleasing techniques here. Proposes capping cost of insulin at $35 a month. Let medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. Next up cutting energy cost & climate change. Tax credit for weatherization. Hints of subsidies for EVs and similar tech, but no specifics. Cutting child care costs, which is very popular and not a bad thing, but it’s not an issue super close to me as a single adult.
Not hearing anything to strongly disagree with here or be terribly cynical about so far, other than continued bleating about “back to work” and “continued economic growth.”
Discussions of fixing tax code and so forth, as well as a shot about confirming his fed nominations.
Watchdogs are back, the Justice Department “will soon be naming a chief investigator for pandemic fraud.”
“I’m a capitalist.” I’m not impressed, but that’s the frame we’re in. He’s not wrong about anything so far, staying within that framework.
Lots of pitching for some leftist favorite ideas, and some discussion of Covid impact.
Eh. Fund the police. Blugh. They’ve got funding; we need funding for everything else that feeds in to criminality.
Right to vote. Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the DISCLOSE act, etc. All good things, nothing particularly new here though.
Shoutout to Justice Stephen Breyer, which naturally goes to a pitch for nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Border security and immigration reform, some idiot – probably Boebert or Greene – trying to get a “built that wall” chant going that died quickly. More generally well-known talking points on that issue.
“Preserve a woman’s right to choose,” Equality Act and addressing the LGBTQ+ population with supportive statements that appear to be aimed not so subtly at some state-level oppression that’s been happening there.
“Unity agenda”
- beat opioid epidemic, including the usual details
- mental health, particular for kids
- “hold social media companies accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.”
- support veterans
- end cancer as we know it
This section of the whole thing seemed pretty cookie-cutter and not holding any gigantic announcements or headlines, but also nothing terribly objectionable or obnoxious.
Ah, here we go, ARPA-H, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. I like this.
“The state of the union is strong because you the American people are strong. This is our moment to overcome the challenges of our time, and we will.”
Overall a solid performance, nothing to give progressives any huge enthusiasm, but some support for those priorities with a much heavier dose of status-quo dogwhistling…which isn’t unexpected. As a speech I’ll give it a B+. As a matter of hearing what I wanted to from a standpoint of advancing progressive priorities, C+.
