Biden speech looks ahead to 2024
GOP rants from the House floor aside, President Biden’s State of the Union speech and the official Republican response by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas cast a bright light on the stark differences between the two parties, as the nation, ready or not, takes a turn toward what promises to be a raucous 2024 presidential election.
The Sanders speech, immediately following Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, was a curious mix. On one hand, Sanders gave voice, briefly, to an inner John Kennedy.
Echoing Kennedy’s appeal in 1960 for the nation to turn to a “new generation” of leaders, Sanders went on to a rephrasing of JFK’s cadenced inauguration language, hailing the emergence of leaders “born in the waning days of the last century, shaped by economic booms and Wall Street busts….”
It’s too bad Donald Trump’s former press secretary didn’t keep it up; at the age of 40, she was on to something.
Sanders’ canny rhetoric came crashing down under the weight of Republican grievance politics.
Owning the libs, it seems, is its own reward.
Joe Biden, Sanders declared, is “the first man to surrender the presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
She then went on to excoriate “the radical left” whose goals include “higher gas prices, empty grocery shelves,” and teaching America’s children to “hate one another.”
In Joe Biden’s America, Sanders said, criminals are allowed to “run free,” the border with Mexico is a toll-free super highway, and “big tech” is stripping Americans “of the most American thing there is – your freedom of speech.”
(The governor of Arkansas, the daughter of former Fox News host and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, somehow failed to mention that the socialists in charge at the White House want to confiscate guns and make abortions available right up to up to the day of delivery.)
“Every day,” Sanders proclaimed, “we are told we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols….”
While Sanders was stoking nightmares of regimentation, Joe Biden was laser focused on jobs – manufacturing and blue-collar jobs in particular.
Biden’s own Kennedy moment was torn straight from the Democratic playbook pioneered by Franklin Roosevelt.
A headline in Thursday’s New York Times put a neat bow on the president’s message, “Biden Aims To Win Back White Working Class Voters Through Their Wallets.”
“We’ve already created 800,000 good paying manufacturing jobs,” Biden said Tuesday, “the fastest growth in 40 years…. Thanks to all we’ve done, we’re … creating American jobs…. We’re making sure the supply chain for America begins in America…. We will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the country… And it’s just getting started.”
Touting the bipartisan infrastructure bill he fought for and signed into law, the president said, “These projects will put hundreds of thousands of people to work rebuilding highways, bridges, railroads, tunnels, and airports, [and ensuring] clean water and high speed internet across America. Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal.”
Biden took the occasion to announce “new standards” required for all construction materials on federal infrastructure projects. “On my watch,” he said, “American roads [and] American bridges … will be made with American products.”
“Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back,” he concluded. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and” – addressing the TV audience at home – “[will] make a real difference in your lives.”
Of course, all of this is subject to proof, and Biden still has an inflation problem, but the direction is clear.
It’s Biden jobs vs. Republican resentment-mongering. Gig vs. grudge. Making a living vs. making people mad.
Anger works in politics, as both Trump and Richard Nixon demonstrated. But once upon a time, so did jobs.
About those GOP rants, which included a cry of “liar” flung at Biden by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Sanders has the last word. “The choice,” she said, “is between normal or crazy.” She’s right.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.