If a house divided against itself can’t stand, I don’t know what happens to a house divided against itself and then divided again into warring factions.
Does that kind of house spontaneously combust? Or maybe it gets overrun by rioters.
On Tuesday evening in the US, Joe Biden addressed a fractious body of lawmakers, flanked by Kamala Harris and Kevin McCarthy who, by all accounts, sold out the speakership to secure it. Were it not for a laundry list of concessions made to the GOP’s irascible far-right flank, the House might still be voting to decide who gets to sit in the seat behind the president’s left shoulder during the State of the Union.
Early on in this year’s SOTU, Biden made loud appeals to working across the aisle, touting “over 300 bipartisan pieces of legislation” signed during his presidency. “If we can work together in the last Congress, there’s no reason we can’t work together again,” he said.
Count me skeptical. Republicans can’t even find common ground among themselves, and although Democrats have done a better job recently of keeping intra-party quarrels out of the news, suffice to say the ideological ravine between, on one side, Joe Manchin and, on the other, hard-left progressives, is wide enough and deep enough to lose a republic in.
Biden made repeated use of “my Republican friends,” a phrase which used to be a genuine expression of affection for GOPers, many of whom he’s known for decades. Since taking office, though, Biden has engaged in an ongoing mark-to-market exercise vis-à-vis his expectations for bipartisanship in the post-Trump era. During Tuesday’s address, Biden alternated between using “my Republican friends” as an olive branch and using it as an oblique reference to what he views as a lack of initiative and seriousness among the GOP and particularly among House Republicans.
Frankly, Biden’s speech was pretty much exactly what you’d expect: There were few surprises, quite a few attempts at folksy humor, scattered political barbs, flashes of a wiliness Father Time has mostly reclaimed and the same misplaced faith in the redeemability of the American soul that’s become his calling card.
Biden’s pretensions to blue collar appeal often manifest in stories of middle-class decline which, while undeniably accurate, can’t help but sound like Donald Trump’s infamous “American carnage” inaugural address. “For decades, the middle-class has been hollowed out,” Biden lamented on Tuesday, bewailing closed factories and jobs shipped overseas. “We lost our pride, our sense of self-worth,” he said.
That led into a lengthy pitch for domestic production, with an emphasis on semiconductors. America “can never let” a chip shortage happen again, he declared, adding that, “We’re going to make sure the supply chain begins in America.”
Most of what was new(s) in Biden’s speech was leaked ahead of time. He wants all construction materials for federal infrastructure projects made in America, from lumber to glass to drywall to fiber optic cable. “We used to be number one in the world in infrastructure. We slumped to 13th,” he said.
He railed against inequality of income and opportunity, and what he derided as tax-dodging corporates and billionaires. “No billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter,” he insisted.
Biden addressed Big Oil directly. “They made $200 billion during the middle of a global energy crisis,” he seethed. The White House has for months engaged in a mostly one-sided war of words with Exxon and Chevron, which just reported another quarter of blockbuster profits.
Chevron was singled out by the administration last month for a $75 billion buyback plan. Biden used the Big Oil talking point on Tuesday to segue into a pitch for a quadrupled corporate buyback tax aimed at “encouraging” long-term investment.
He addressed the debt ceiling. “Let’s commit here tonight that the full faith and credit of the United States will never be questioned,” he exhorted Republicans. He also accused some unnamed GOPers of threatening Social Security and Medicare, to loud jeers and cries of “Liar!” from Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The idea, apparently, was to force Republicans to commit, on national television, to protecting the programs. If that was the goal, it worked. Biden asked everyone to “stand up for seniors,” and he meant it literally — he solicited a standing ovation for the country’s retirees. It’s pretty difficult to stay seated for that when the cameras are rolling, no matter how much you might despise the idea of being co-opted into a political stunt. “Apparently it’s not gonna be a problem,” he quipped, referencing protection for benefits.
Biden was heckled repeatedly throughout that part of the speech, and at other intervals too.
He went on to champion the plight of organized labor and said Congress should codify Roe. “If Congress passes a national abortion ban I will veto it,” he said.
Biden devoted a few minutes to China, and alluded to the balloon incident. “Make no mistake about it: If China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country and we did,” he said. “Winning a competition should unite all of us.”
He closed with a familiar rallying cry. “Democracy must not be a partisan issue,” he pressed, in the course of describing an “inflection point.” What America does now will have an outsized impact on the fate of the country.
“We’re not bystanders,” he said, insisting that Americans are an inherently “optimistic, hopeful, forward-looking” people, who favor “stability over chaos.”
It’s a nice sentiment, but if Biden really believes it, I’m afraid he has, in fact, lost touch with everyday people.
Re: Your last sentence. Which part do you doubt, that American’s are “inherently optimistic, hopeful and forward looking people” or that they “favor stability over chaos”? (Sorry if I’m violating punctuation rules)
I certainly think the preference for stability is true and that the minority favoring chaos is a significant (but not the only) factor in the growth of pessimism.
I certainly don’t think a politician of his experience is naïve.
Not sure to whom to ascribe the quote, but ” You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.”
Even if you don’t like his policies (I personally don’t like all of them), how about giving the guy some points for trying?
I don’t know about your last assertion. He is speaking about “inherently”, American’s may or may not be optimistic these days, but inherently yes they are. Same goes for hopeful, forward looking, and preferring stability over chaos. In fact preferring stability over chaos has never left the vast majority of American’s desire without any qualifications needed.
How can Biden “make sure the supply chain begins in America” if there is no slack in the US job market? Who’s gonna do it???