President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday night, setting the tone for the second half of his term and launching an opening salvo in his likely bid for a second one.
Biden painted a picture of a country he delivered from the depths of the pandemic through his leadership and old-fashioned Washington deal-making, leading to a few conclusions about his future intentions.
BIDEN DELIVERS SPEECH AMID DOCUMENTS SCANDAL
Biden is running for reelection
If the speech to the Democratic National Committee in which he asked the adoring crowd if they were with him as they changed “four more years” didn’t convince you, the State of the Union should: Barring a major health setback, Biden, 80, will seek a second term.
This was a campaign speech. It made the case that Biden has been a successful president, despite fair to poor job approval ratings. It mounted a defense of Biden’s economic record, which has been one of his weak points. It made the argument that voters are better off than they were two years ago.
"Two years ago, our economy was reeling," he said. "As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years."
Biden also picked a set of policy initiatives that liberals would like but were for the most part not red meat. Republicans can work with him in a bipartisan fashion or be positioned on the wrong side of cancer research, mental health, fentanyl, and Big Tobacco.
Finally, the phrase "finish the job" appeared a dozen times in the speech.
Biden is betting on an economic soft landing
The president can cite positive numbers on unemployment and gross domestic product growth, but these metrics have not been sufficient to convince the public that either the economy or Biden’s stewardship of it is good. His job approval rating on the economy is 38%, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, and numerous other surveys reflect general economic pessimism, with some modest recent improvements.
"Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much," Biden declared. "Today, COVID no longer controls our lives." Note the absence of the word "government."
"We have more to do, but here at home, inflation is coming down," he said. "Here at home, gas prices are down $1.50 a gallon since their peak. Food inflation is coming down. Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months while take-home pay has gone up."
Biden is hoping inflation will continue to improve without the Federal Reserve’s tightening, causing a recession or slowing growth to a crawl. If that continues, he will claim his policies have been vindicated ahead of the 2024 election. If growth stalls or the job market cools, the economic happy talk could backfire, and his already meager numbers on the issue would likely deteriorate.
Biden waiting for Republican House majority to stumble
Hours before Biden spoke, the White House contrasted “the manufacturing and jobs boom his agenda is fueling” with the GOP agenda spokesman Andrew Bates claimed was “selling out working people with tax welfare for rich special interests that would heap $3 trillion onto the deficit, including with the biggest Medicare benefits cut in decades.” Biden’s team said he has been “protecting a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions” while “House Republicans have acted repeatedly to force politicians into those decisions, proposing multiple extreme national abortion bans in just their first month controlling the chamber.”
Biden anticipates Republicans will fumble the debt ceiling standoff, try to enact unpopular policies, get sidetracked with investigations of his administration, and alienate swing voters. Just as surely as avoiding a recession, this has been the path to reelection for the previous two Democratic presidents. And Biden already used much of this message, capitalizing on Republican overreach in swing states, to limit GOP gains in the midterm elections to far less than what Bill Clinton or Barack Obama endured.
The president did extend an olive branch to Republicans in his “unity” speech, but it did presuppose supporting parts of his agenda on a bipartisan basis.
"I don’t want to ruin your reputation, but I look forward to working with you," Biden said.
"To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress," he added later. "The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere."
But Biden also tweaked Republicans who voted no and took the dough on infrastructure.
"And to my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry," he said. "We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking."
Biden is making a pitch to blue-collar voters ahead of a potential rematch with former President Donald Trump
In 2016 and 2020, the path to the White House ran through Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in all three states and was competitive in defeat four years later.
Biden wants to reclaim the pro-manufacturing jobs, America First mantle from the Trump Republicans.
"My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten," Biden said. "Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible. Maybe that’s you watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away."
The president's closing argument in this section: "Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years," he said. "This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives."
This may signal that Biden expects to run against Trump in 2024 — or someone like him.
It is difficult to be unifying and partisan at the same time
Biden used his State of the Union to outline his “unity agenda.” He has made unity a major theme of his speeches dating all the way back to his inaugural address. But as was the case with Obama, Biden’s former boss, it is hard to be unifying during a period of political polarization while representing only one side of the ideological divide.
Biden’s focus on the cancer moonshot and mental health was designed to avoid some of these tensions and speak directly to the independent voters who helped Democrats retain the Senate last year.
But it is clear that Biden is getting ready for confrontation with House Republicans in the coming weeks and the GOP presidential nominee soon after that.
And after months of framing the opposition as semifascist threats to democracy, the small-d democratic rhetoric is less unifying.
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When Biden says, "Two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken," many Republicans who had no part in Jan. 6 see themselves as targets.
This was the first speech to a joint session of Congress Biden has made as president with a Republican House speaker sitting behind him.