Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

Let there be no doubt. The 2024 State of the Union address kicked off the 2024 campaign for president. And it promises to be a raucous race.

I’ve watched many a state of the union in my day. But I’ve never seen one like the third state of the union of President Joe Biden. This was without a doubt a campaign speech. An in-your-face speech directed at the Republicans in Congress, the Republicans at home, and the Republican’s all-but-anointed candidate for president, Donnie Trump. Yes, my friends, it’s deja vu all over again.

The speech was also directed at Democrats, particularly those who have been wavering in the last few months under a constant barrage of anti-Biden rhetoric from Trump and his MAGA acolytates in government and throughout the conservative media. If you paid any attention to the MAGA house organs of 91-tear old Rupert Murdoch, like the New York Post and the Fox Channel, you’d think the 81-year-old Biden was ready for the grave and the only hope for the nation was the 77-year-old Trump.

I can report that Mr. Biden made it through about an hour and a half of fiery and combative engagement with his critics. It is recommended viewing, and you can find it here. Clearly frustrated by the criticism, he used his platform, throwing out the conventions of the traditional speech to defend his record and attack Trump, who will be his opponent in this 2024 rerun of 2020. He never used Trump’s name, choosing instead to repeatedly refer to “my predecessor” and to denounce Trump’s record and plans for a second term. And he made sure the Republicans in the chamber were equal targets of his rage. He even saved some for the Supreme Court.

• On the border, which undocumented migrants have been breeching in search of asylum, Biden was able to report that bipartisan legislation which would greatly tighten border security was on the brink of passage when Trump torpedoed it. Why? Because Trump would rather the border crisis remain a campaign issue than see it alleviated giving Biden a “win”.
• On Trump’s continuing desire to repeal the popular Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, Biden promised, “We stopped you fifty times before and we will stop you again.”
• On a women’s right to choose, Biden contrasted his policy with Trump’s gleefully taking credit for the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, denying women the right to choose that had been recognized as law for fifty laws. With many members of the Court scowling from the front row, Biden criticized their 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. That decision had led to Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, now pending before the Supreme Court. Alliance, seeks to invalidate the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the drug mifepristone, also known as RU 486. This is a pill which can be used to end a pregnancy during its first ten weeks. It is also widely used in treating miscarriages which occur in about 15% of pregnancies. Dobbs also led to a federal court decision in Alabama making in vitro fertilization (IVF) illegal in that state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports about four million births per year in the U.S., meaning 1 to 2 percent of all U.S. births annually, are via IVF. With the Supremes looking on in distress Biden said, “Here are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need,” said Biden. “Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024.”
• On foreign policy Biden pushed hard for continued aid to Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel. And he attacked Russia’s Putin, who Trump has frequently praised. Trump said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO-member countries he views as not spending enough on their own defense.
• On Social Security and Medicare Biden accused the Republicans of planning to cut payments. Trump talked about that again two days after Biden’s speech. Biden promised to defend them. And Biden defended his plans to increase taxes on profitable corporations and the top wage earners in the nation, while pledging people earning less than $400,000 a year will not see an increase.
• And Biden attacked Trump over topics including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his leadership, or lack thereof, during the Covid pandemic.

The Republican response was made at first by the usual gang of idiots. Members of Congress heckled Biden from the cheap seats. Then the party of Lincoln, who was turning over in his grave, turned to unknown Senator Katie Britt of Alabama. Britt’s major contribution to the argument was to tell a story of a sex trafficker, with the clear implication that the case was a typical result of Biden border policy. The problem was that fact checkers quickly discovered the incident occurred between 2004 and 2008, when Biden was not in the White House in any capacity.

What the Republicans should have done is just have Trump himself give the response. The Republican party is already a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. Instead, Donnie was limited to making mean comments from the sidelines, also known as his own social media platform, Truth Social. Truth Social crashed at the start of Biden’s speech and didn’t recover until near the end. Trump posted a couple of new conspiracy theories about the Bidens and a chart attacking the bipartisan immigration bill which only revealed Trump’s lies and proved that the bill would have promoted border security and efficiency.

Trump let us know exactly what kind of a campaign we can expect from him at his first campaign appearance post State-of-the-Union. At one point, Mr. Trump slurred his words and pretended to stutter in a mocking imitation of President Biden, who has dealt with a stutter since childhood.

That’s the work of a backyard bully. a pathetic and small man. Not a man fit for public office.

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