President Biden yelled his way through a State of the Union address aimed almost exclusively at shoring up his base. Swing voters are not going to be persuaded that the economy is just great — not with these prices and these interest rates — or that it’s the Democrats who are tough on the border, or that he has fought for lower deficits, or that a party that just tried to take the leading presidential candidate off the ballot is making a brave stand for democracy.
Nowhere was Biden’s focus on the Left clearer than when he talked about Gaza. He spent more time chastising Israel than he did the terrorist organization that began this conflict and could, as he himself noted, end it at any time. He announced an ill-considered initiative that seems motivated mostly by the desire to say something in this speech that sounds appealing: namely, that we will provide aid to Gazans without “boots on the ground” (just very near it). He relied on Hamas’s claims about civilian deaths, even as his own administration — and he himself — has questioned them in the past. He made no mention of the historic rise in antisemitism that has followed the October 7 attacks.
Biden may prove more successful in persuading Americans of his deceptions about abortion and IVF, not least because the press is on his side and Republicans are easily scared. The Alabama Supreme Court was not “unleashed” by Dobbs — most states and the federal government had long recognized embryonic life outside the abortion context — and there can be no need for a federal law protecting IVF when no states, including Alabama, are trying to restrict it. The abortion law Biden urged Congress to enact, meanwhile, would prevent restrictions on abortion even in the latest stages of pregnancy.
President Biden is one of the few presidents whose age is more than twice his job-approval rating. This speech will not change that.