A lesson from the State of the Union address.

March 9, 2024

President Biden’s commanding address to Congress on Thursday delivered an important lesson for his supporters. The inordinate sense of relief at Biden’s strong performance betrayed the degree to which many Biden supporters had succumbed to the disinformation about his mental fitness and acuity.

Even supporters who did not believe the lies were infected with a measure of doubt because major media incessantly promoted the disinformation campaign. In the face of such an onslaught, it was difficult to inoculate oneself against the twin viruses of deceit and doubt.

We must internalize the lesson of the 2024 State of the Union address: Trust the facts, trust our instincts, and ignore the spin.

The most relevant data point heading into Thursday’s speech was Biden’s 2023 State of the Union (SOTU)—a masterful performance in which he not only dominated Republicans but also outsmarted them in a spirited give-and-take unprecedented in this history of SOTU addresses.

And if anyone wondered whether President Biden had “slipped” since the 2023 SOTU, they needed only to look at his speech after the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023 (see President Biden Speech | October 20, 2023). Or they could have reviewed his extensive sit-down interviews with multiple interviewers to confirm that Joe Biden remained sharp, joyful, and determined.

The facts clearly suggested that Biden would repeat his strong 2023 performance. In candor, he did not repeat his 2023 performance—he exceeded it by a large margin. On Friday, the press and pundits begrudgingly—even admiringly—acknowledged Biden’s success on Thursday.  

But the backsliding has already started.

Articles and commentaries that concede Biden delivered a strong performance are beginning to add strains of doubt. See, e.g., analysis by Adam Nagourney of NYTimes On Politics Newsletter, A Big Night — but Will It Matter? (Accessible to all.)

Adam Nagourney (adamnag@nytimes.com) of the NYTimes acknowledged Biden’s success but attempted to downplay its significance by interviewing political insiders and pundits who are paid to create negative narratives. Nagourney includes the following trenchant analysis:

Still, such moments [like the SOTU] are often forgotten by the time Election Day comes around.

Viral moments — to use one unkind example, when the president stumbled walking up the steps to Air Force One — tend to have much more staying power.

Sigh. Got it? An address prescribed by the Constitution that is the most important speech of the year for a president “is often forgotten,” but a “stumble on a plane ramp” is remembered. Well, that will remain the case so long as Adam Nagourney tells us so. Or he could use his privileged station to ensure that the substance of the 2024 SOTU is remembered by his readers instead of an irrelevant stumble on a plane ramp.

The point is not to again criticize the Times’s biased coverage of Biden. It is to urge you not to backslide into the doubt that the major media is already seeking to re-introduce after Biden’s triumph.

Let me repeat: Do not backslide into the doubt that the major media is already seeking to re-introduce after Biden’s triumph.

Trust the facts, trust your instincts, and ignore the spin.

Joe Biden is a great president who works every day to advance the interests of the American people. He is sharp, experienced, and wise. Democrats have every reason to be confident and proud of Joe Biden as they continue the 2024 campaign. Do not surrender to doubt again. It is their secret weapon. Knowing that fact should allow us to disarm it.

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Additional thoughts on the State of the Union.

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President Biden received favorable ratings from a large audience.

President Biden’s address to Congress drew an audience of 28 million—an increase of 5 million viewers over 2023. Importantly, Fox delivered the largest share of the audience with 5.64 million viewers! About 60% of viewers had a positive reaction to the speech: CNN Poll: More than 6 in 10 SOTU viewers had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech.

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Republicans embarrassed themselves in front of a large audience.

As President Biden was delivering a commanding performance, Republicans were being embarrassed in multiple ways. Biden repeatedly outwitted the jeering GOP caucus—and clearly enjoyed himself as he was doing so!

Other Republican stunts also backfired. The crass and disrespectful outfit worn by Marjorie Taylor Greene was an insult to every member of Congress and the American people. The Sargent at Arms of the House asked Greene to remove her MAGA hat. (The hat violated House rules against campaign paraphernalia.) Of course, Greene refused the request by the Sargent at Arms—thereby defying Speaker Mike Johnson.

President Biden’s look of feigned horror at Greene’s hat was priceless—because it mocked Greene’s outfit. (Video clip here.)

Of course, the biggest debacle for Republicans was the GOP rebuttal delivered by Senator Katie Britt—a performance so bad it was panned by Republicans mid-way through the speech. There are thousands of sources that critique Britt’s speech, but the op-ed by Kyle Whitmire in Britt’s hometown newspaper sums up the criticisms:

[Whitmire] explained that there is no single quote from Britt's disastrous speech that "can convey the strangeness of it" but said that "the mismatched emotions, the smiles in the wrong places, the jaw clenched when it shouldn’t have been" came together to create an "indescribable weirdness."

Whitmire went on to say that that it felt like "postmodernism, avant-garde performance art" or even "an involuntary behavioral science experiment."

"Katie Britt glitched out on national television and left millions of Americans asking what the heck they just watched.”

See also Lucian K. Truscott IV, The Pentagon lied.

Writes Truscott,

The Department of Defense released a report this morning saying that it had found no evidence of alien life on earth.

They lied. All three broadcast networks and CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox broadcast images of an obvious alien lifeform seated in what looked to be the command module of a fleet commander’s spaceship disguised as a suburban kitchen.

The lifeform was identified as an alleged Republican senator from Alabama named “Katie Britt,” who proceeded to speak an alien tongue in a whispery voice that had apparently been recreated from daytime soap operas.

So, as Biden was conquering Congress, the GOP was “weirding out” viewers with a creepy, out-of-touch surrogate who lied in almost every sentence she spoke.

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Katie Britt’s fabrications.

A centerpiece of Britt’s speech was her (alleged) encounter with a woman at the border who was (allegedly) sex-trafficked by drug smugglers at the US border. Britt blamed Biden for allowing the victim to be sex-trafficked at the border. Although the woman was indeed sex trafficked when she was 12 years old, that crime happened in Mexico (not at the border) between 2006 and 2008—when George W. Bush was president. Moreover, Britt never met the victim at the border, as claimed; instead, Britt repeated the testimony the victim gave to Congress.

(See the excellent investigative reporting by Jonathan M. Katz on Britt’s misrepresentations and fabrications on this subject here.)

So, while Biden re-energized his campaign, it appears that Katie Britt may have ended her career. It’s only a matter of time before Trump throws her under the bus.

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Share a Spanish-language translation of the State of the Union.

Our friends at Democracy Labs have created a Spanish-language translation of Biden’s State of the Union Speech. See Democracy Labs, You thought President Biden's State Of The Union was good? It's even better in Spanish! Please bear in mind that the translation was created by AI, so there may be glitches. Still, it is a sincere outreach effort to the Spanish speaking community. Share it widely!

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Opportunities for reader engagement.

Join me at the Field Team 6 “Register Democrats” Summit.

Field Team 6 is holding its second annual Register Democrats Summit on Thursday, March 14, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific. The summit will focus on registering Democrats across the country and will bring together the best and brightest minds, from elected officials to tech leaders to grassroots organizers and so much more.

The day-long summit will include dozens of terrific speakers. I am honored to be included on the list (I will be speaking shortly after the start of the summit at 8:15 a.m.) Other speakers include Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Jessica Craven, Simon Rosenberg, Amanda Litman (Run for Something), Leigh McGowan (Politics Girl), Paula Poundstone (Comedian) and many more.

This will be a terrific summit. Join for as much or little as you would like!  Register Here

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Concluding Thoughts.

President Biden hit the campaign trail the day after his State of the Union address. He exhibited the same fiery enthusiasm demonstrated before Congress. See ABC News, Biden takes his State of the Union message to 2024 battlegrounds, starting in Philly - ABC News.

Biden will travel to Georgia over the weekend and then move to Wisconsin and Michigan. The Biden campaign is making a $30 million investment in advertising and is hiring hundreds of new state-level staffers. Meanwhile, Trump is having difficulty posting bonds for his various civil judgments.

The point is that the State of the Union speech is the beginning of the campaign, not the end. We should put our fears and doubts behind us and support Joe Biden without reservation. That is what it will take to defeat Trump and MAGA extremists up and down the ballot.

Enjoy the weekend, and try to take a deep breath after a consequential week. We will all need to be rested and primed for the battle to come!

Talk to you on Monday!