In a fiery stump speech masquerading as a State of the Union, Joe Biden won back his party, but might have lost America.
Failing to back bold solutions to his broken border and taking no blame for #inflation, Biden doubled down on a Christmas list of new spending, likely leaving inflation-socked swing voters verklempt.
To quote our President, “Let me tell it to you straight.” Joe Biden delivered the best, most important State of the Union of his three-year Presidency, likely arresting the lowest job approval number of any President in modern memory.
The media set the bar extraordinarily low, as they invariably do with Democratic presidents. The hope was that Joe wouldn’t trip, fall, or get so balled up in doddering confusion that he confirmed the assessment of over 73% of Americans in a Wall Street Journal poll that he’s too old to run for a second term.
Though Biden mangled some words, indecorously called out the Supreme Court, grossly mischaracterized GOP positions, confused Laken Riley (the young female nursing student brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant) with Lincoln Riley (USC football coach), seemed at times to be shouting rather than speaking, and delivered a weird invitation to hop aboard Air Force One with him to compare drug prices in Moscow, he kept his cool. Had the visibly enfeebled President threatened to take hecklers “out behind the barn,” the calls to replace him would have risen to an AOC “tippy-top” screech.
Though tired, trite, and schmaltzy, Biden’s Scranton kitchen table shtick still delivers. His resounding heartfelt conclusion was vintage Joe. It is why, because of his age not despite it, he is still the one Democrat who can unite the AARP set with his party’s Socialist base to defeat Trump.
On policy, the President hit all the marks that specific consituencies within his party wanted: climate change, Trump is a “threat to democracy” (we live in a republic, but never mind), Israel should be nicer to Hamas (which seeks Israel’s extinction), a laundry list of new federal spending at a time of still-high inflation, and the requisite demonizing of “billionaires,” i.e. job creators.
But therein lay the rub. Biden spoke mainly to Democrats at a time when three issues remain top of mind for swing voters: 1. The broken border and concomitant fentanyl crisis; 2. Crime, homelessness, and dysfunction in Dem-run cities; 3. Inflation. Wages are up, but purchasing power is way down. Ask almost any working-class or middle-class voter in America: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?” The answer would be a resounding “No!”
On the border, whether by design or Democrat inability to conceive of a solution that does not involve spending, Biden wants to spend more on asylum officers and judges. Then he had the unwarranted chutzpah to chide Republicans, “That’s what you want, right?” No, it is most certainly not!
Spending is not the problem with the border. It’s the ninety-some executive orders that Biden shamelessly unleashed at the start of his administration to undo all the successful Trump-era border policies—from Remain in Mexico to ending Catch-and-Release to the wall. Studies repeatedly show that over 85% of asylum claims are bogus. The solution is not more asylum officers, but an end to magnets––like free hotel rooms, food, medical care, and even representation on key councils––that draw illegal immigrants to Democrat sanctuary cities.
Republicans have done a customarily horrible job explaining this, but Democrats have no interest in stopping the flood of illegals into America. First, for the party’s biggest donors, illegals clean their pools, mow their lawns, trim their hedges, nanny their kids, and cook their meals. Biden’s Woke plutocrats––who are unphased and untouched by his “tax the rich” nostrums––like that the help is “illegal,” so they have leverage over them. Secondly, the border gives Democrats an endless talking point with Hispanics, who are drifting Republican on social issues and the economy.
Finally, and most practically, illegal immigration mints new voters. Preposterously, illegal aliens are counted in the census, padding the number of residents in Dem-dominated sanctuary states like California and New York. It’s not about illegals directly voting––though that will surely come in time––it’s about dramatically increasing the representation of sanctuary states in Congress. Since those states lean heavily Democratic, the higher the census numbers from illegals, the higher the Democratic representation.
On guns, Biden said Trump did “nothing.” That’s a lie. The Trump Administration worked to improve the background check database, ban bump stocks, and increase penalties for crimes committed with a gun. On crime, Biden misled again, saying it’s going down. In truth, violent crime was 18% higher in 2023 than it was in 2019, and much higher in select Dem-run cities. Biden talked in vague triumphant terms about an issue that cuts deep. How about calling out the Defund the Police movement? How about saying you will fully prosecute the BLM/Antifa rioters who brought this country to its knees? How about calling for the trial and imprisonment of the former intel chiefs who lied about your son Hunter’s laptop, thereby ensuring your election in 2020? How about mandating nationwide broken windows policing? How about closing the border until all illegal immigrant felons are deported and E-verify mandated nationwide?
The Joe Biden of today doesn’t care about crime, let alone the politicization of justice. And neither does his base. But swing voters do. His blithe sidestepping of an issue that directly affects their well-being should, in any fair universe, cost him the election.
Inflation. True, its birth was a byproduct of a bipartisan push to help Americans during the pandemic. But in the final year of Trump’s term, we realized in Congress that if we did not end COVID-era payments to Americans and nudge them back into the full-time W-2 workforce, a horrible cycle of inflation and outsized wages—that would be lethal to small businesses––would ensue. Sure enough, Joe Biden’s gratuitous American Rescue Plan doubled down on unnecessary COVID welfare, creating the inflationary nightmare of the last three years, and exploding the deficit far beyond anything during Trump’s tenure. If tonight’s speech is any indication, he plans to spend much more.
Joe Biden said last night that “wages keep going up,” neglecting to mention that wages are actually going down when adjusted for inflation. One cannot support a party so cussedly ignorant of basic economics. Joe Biden won back his party last night, but he might have lost America.