A Quick Response To The State Of The Union
If you like political theater, Biden's speech was what you wanted. If you care about substance, you come away from this State of the Union in just as much despair as you came into it with.
The State of the Union Address tonight was an opportunity for Joe Biden to shore up his flagging support. The results were a decidedly mixed bag.
There’s a good reason that substantive criticisms of Biden’s performance in office focus on his policies, his actions as opposed to his rhetoric, and not his age. It’s easy enough to take some shots at Biden for the obvious lapses that happen with sometimes alarming frequency. But frankly, if his policies were better, that wouldn’t bother me much.
But that is the issue that has dogged him more than any other, and he did address it in his speech tonight. He was present and appeared sharp, sometimes even witty, which is unusual for him. He handled hecklers with composure. And whoever wrote his speech did an excellent job of hitting many of the right notes.
So, for Democratic pundits and the talking heads on MSNBC, the performance was what they wanted. But for those of us with more substantive criticisms of Biden’s performance, it was more of the discouraging same.
On domestic issues, Biden takes credit for a lot of things that he had very little to do with, chiefly the economy. He also engaged in some outright deception. For example, at one point, he said that “consumer confidence is soaring.” I quickly pointed out that, in fact, consumer confidence dropped in February.
As usual, and unsurprisingly especially with United Auto Workers chief Shawn Fain in attendance, Biden pointed to being the first president to walk a picket line. This is typical of Biden and democrats, substituting performative nonsense for actual policy and action. In fact, union membership as a percentage of the workforce has hit a new all-time low under Biden.
Biden also lied when he said that the gap between rich and poor was closing. As federal statistics show, it has reached an all time high in his administration.
There’s more there, but it really doesn’t amount to all that much in terms of domestic policy. What president hasn’t lied, exaggerated, and embellished heavily in their State of the Union addresses, especially on the economy?
On foreign policy, that’s a different matter. The attempt to frighten people with Vladimir Putin (who is, without a doubt, a dangerous figure to be taken with the utmost seriousness) was par for the course. So was his false contention that he wants competition not confrontation with China, something his aggressive rhetoric toward Beijing has belied since he was on the campaign trail in 2020.
But it was on Gaza where he really failed. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was also the part of his speech where he stumbled the most, having difficulty getting the words out. Judging by his history on the subject, he might well have been worried about getting carried away in his Zionist zeal and intense hatred for Palestinians.
Whatever was behind that, Biden did nothing to assuage voters who are finding difficult to vote for a man who is not just a supporter of genocide but an active participant in it. Worse, as president he puts blood on the hands of every taxpayer in the United States, including many who have lost innumerable family members to Israel’s murderous campaign.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee summed it up well, and it’s worth copying their brief statement in full:
“Peddling disinformation and Israeli talking points, the President refused to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire during this evening’s State of the Union Address. Instead, the President continues to run interference for the Israeli genocide in Gaza by blaming the Palestinian people for Israel’s collective punishment. He attempted to save his political future with hollow and demeaning assurances of humanitarian aid, while continuing to provide unprecedented numbers of weapons to be rained down on Palestinian children. His administration funds and supplies the genocide, disregards U.S. and international law, and provides the Israeli regime political and diplomatic protection.
“To be clear, the President did not call for a ceasefire, he called for a six (6) week pause in the Israeli genocidal campaign. President Biden needs to do more to stop the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians and hold Israel accountable to the rules that apply to every other country in the world. He must halt the sales of weapons to Israel, reinstate funding to UNRWA, ensure the necessary amount of humanitarian aid gets to Gaza, an end to the occupation of Gaza, and call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. The President must also apologize and retract his harmful peddling and repetition of misinformation about Palestinians that continues to dehumanize our community, and serves to further inflame the genocidal aims of the Zionist state and its supporters.
“The Arab American community, and indeed all Americans of conscience, expected more from the President this evening.”
Just so. Biden’s decision to double down on exonerating both himself and Israel for the deliberate mass slaughter of civilians; the use of starvation as a weapon; the denial of water, basic medical supplies, and shelter to the people of Gaza; the killing of over 12,000 Palestinian children in Gaza; and the abominably long list of war crimes that have been committed in Gaza was repulsive, even if it was predictable.
The pathetic announcement of a dock to be built for humanitarian aid to enter northern Gaza is just another performative step that Israel can easily thwart whenever it pleases, knowing it will suffer no consequences.
If anything, ADC went easy on Biden. They could have focused more on the fact that Israel would not have been able to do all of this without Biden’s passionate help. And Biden’s ongoing fantasy about a two-state solution that passed out of viability years ago only shows that the real agenda is a return to an endless “peace process” to nowhere and permanent, deepening apartheid.
It wasn’t only Gaza. Nina Turner, former co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, was rightly appalled by Biden’s talk about how we “all came from somewhere else” and patronizingly adding “some came in chains.” The insult to Native Americans with the glib reference to slavery in the midst of pride about how “we” built this country without really acknowledging that it was done by genocide and slavery was the perfect image of the privileged “moderate” white racist.
Biden’s referring to immigrants as “illegals” was another moment of the mask slipping from his racist face.
Ultimately, Biden gave conservative Democrats what they wanted in this speech: he stood up there for over an hour and for the most part was steady and spoke powerfully. But on substance, it was the same deceptions about the economy, empty talking points about reproductive rights with no plan of action (and no mention at all of LGBTQIA rights), and a poor pretense of hiding his role as a full partner in genocide.
If you like political theater, it was what you wanted. If you care about substance, you come away from this State of the Union in just as much despair as you came into it with.
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