Come late January, when President Biden can deliver his State of the Union address, he will have access to the largest audience of the American electorate he’s like to have all year. He will at that point likely be facing political challenges so important that even as cautious and moderate a politician as Joe Biden should be ready to use the opportunity boldly.
Here’s one bold approach I’d propose for consideration:
The situation will likely be this:
- The heart of Biden’s agenda — the Build Back Better act — will have been brought up for a vote in the Senate, and will have failed to pass, thanks to the despicable Joe Manchin’s exploiting the Democrats’ need for complete unity to get anything accomplished.
- The obstructionist Republicans will have gotten a pretty free pass for frustrating Biden’s efforts to achieve important constructive things for the American people and the nation, with all the attention having been focused on the Democrats’ conflicts and failure.
- The American people will have only a very dim notion of the major opportunity that has been — thus far — squandered, i.e. of the important and even popular measures that Biden has been seeking to get enacted by Congress.
In that situation, Biden can give a SOTU address whose aims would be to:
- Describe the components of Build Back Better in a way that makes the American people salivate for its enactment (to get lower prescription prices, to lift children out of poverty, etc.)
- Convey what the polls show about how much the American people favor various components of the bill;
- Indicate that these measures are all reasonable and well-thought-out attempts to deal with real needs of the American people;
- Show how downright wrong the criticisms have been (wrong about not being paid for, wrong about being inflationary);
- Tell about how much of the BBB is about America catching up with its competitors;
- Indicate how BBB is a response to the major crises the nation now faces.
- And shine a spotlight on how the Republicans have just as much responsibility to do what they nation needs as the Democrats, and call out to the Republicans in the Senate — considered individually — to get this measure over the goal line.
The point of that last aim — pressuring the Republicans — is NOT so much to get Republicans to defect from their obstructionist party, as to shift the attention of the nation away from the failure of the Democrats to win over the execrable Joe Manchin to the role of the Republicans, whose obstructionism at a time of multiple crises reflects that Party’s indefensible priority on making the other party fail rather than helping America to succeed.
The prolonged drama with Manchin and Sinema has let the Republicans get away with their obstructionism way too long. An “appeal” to the Republicans, in the context of a set of popular measures that have been blocked, should be an effective way to end that free-pass for the GOP, and to help move public opinion as we move toward a critical Midterm election in November.
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Speaking of that Midterm, a reasonable case can be made that if the Republicans win control of both houses of Congress in the 2022 elections, it could prove to be game over for American democracy. And the futures markets are saying now such a Republican victory looks likely. So public opinion must be moved.
But, even if the biggest political challenge of our times involves saving American democracy, I would propose holding off on that part of the campaign — except for some passing pitch for legislation to protect Voting Rights — in this State of the Union address.
It is when the House Commission investigating the Insurrection presents to the American people a powerful picture of a Republican Party that has become an authoritarian movement that the President of the United States should accentuate THAT essential dimension of choice facing the American electorate in the upcoming 2022 Midterm Elections, in an attempt to move public opinion.