President Biden delivered his final State of the Union before the 2024 election Thursday evening.
It was a pivotal moment — a rare opportunity to speak unmediated to an American public that, right now, holds the president in low esteem.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s job performance, with just 40 percent approving, according to the polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
Biden is a slight underdog in November against former President Trump, who for all practical purposes wrapped up the GOP nomination with overwhelming victories on Super Tuesday earlier this week.
Biden cleared the modest bar of expectations Thursday, delivering his 67-minute speech with vigor and passion.
Here are the main takeaways.
Biden, taking aim at Trump, makes a campaign speech
For good or for ill, this was one of the most ostentatiously political speeches of recent years.
Biden grabbed the opportunity to set out his case for an election that is just eight months away.
No sooner had the speech begun than he assailed Trump — without using his name — for “bowing down to a Russian leader” in his recent comments on NATO.
Biden segued from there into pressing the case over Jan. 6, 2021, saying that Trump and other Republicans had sought to “bury the truth” of what happened that day. “I will not do that,” Biden said.
He sought to paint the GOP as in thrall to the super-rich on taxation; antagonistic toward women’s reproductive rights, from abortion to in vitro fertilization treatment; and a threat to Social Security and Medicare.
Biden and his speechwriters wove in some deft moments, like his reminder that the Affordable Care Act is “still a very big deal” — an allusion to his famously profane remark to then-President Obama about the law.
Republicans protested that it was an overly partisan speech. But that point is harder to make when their ranks include figures such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who donned a MAGA hat for the occasion and heckled the president.
The bottom line is Biden used the pomp of the occasion better than many expected to begin his general election campaign in earnest.
81-year-old president tries to neutralize the age issue
Age is the president’s most serious vulnerability as he seeks a second term.
Polling consistently shows roughly 75 percent of the American public are concerned about the 81-year-old Biden’s ability to serve a second term effectively.
In the closing stages of Thursday’s speech, Biden took the issue on directly and tried to turn it to his advantage — or at least reduce the scale of his liability.
Beginning by joking, “I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” Biden made the argument that his age gives him a broad and true view of American history and values.
He cited attributes including dignity and honesty, adding “other people my age see it differently” in a clear jab at Trump. His predecessor, Biden implied, was focused on “resentment, revenge and retribution.”
The age issue is not going away. And Biden did garble several lines Thursday, even while avoiding any truly disastrous gaffes.
But he at least did his best to weave a positive narrative around his big weakness.
A new move on Gaza, amid rising progressive outrage
The political stakes over Gaza have risen along with the horrific death toll in recent months.
Dissatisfaction with Biden’s vigorous support of Israel is especially strong among progressives and younger voters. But more mainstream Democrats have begun to voice unease too.
Biden duly announced a new development that the White House had flagged earlier in the day — a quest to use the U.S. military to build an emergency pier on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.
The pier is intended to get desperately needed aid into Gaza, where the United Nations has said that more than a half-million people are facing “catastrophic” deprivation and near-starvation.
Biden was at pains to emphasize that “no U.S. boots will be on the ground.” Instead, the plan is to construct the pier from offshore.
It remains to be seen whether the announcement will alleviate any of the political pressure that has built up on Biden from his left.
He must also contend with the fact that, so far, the cease-fire he says he is seeking in the Middle East has proven elusive.
An attempt to flip the script on immigration
The huge numbers of migrants crossing the southern border have been a big weight on Biden’s political fortunes.
Policy-wise, immigration is generally one of two issues — the other being inflation — where the president scores worst.
But Biden and the Democrats believe they were handed a political gift when Trump’s opposition sank a recent bipartisan border deal that had been months in the making.
On Thursday, Biden lambasted the Republicans for opposing the deal, which he noted would have boosted the numbers of immigration judges, asylum officers and drug detection machines.
Biden also emphasized that the deal had been endorsed by the Border Patrol union.
When Republicans vocally dissented, Biden shot back, “Look at the facts. I know you know how to read,” as Democrats cheered him on.
Biden did slip up moments later, when he mangled the name of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old who was killed in Athens, Ga., last month, as “Lincoln” Riley. The man charged with murdering Riley entered the United States illegally.
Immigration, like age, will remain a liability for Biden. The error in Riley’s name could also undercut the case he was trying to make Thursday.
GOP rising star stumbles in response
Delivering a response to the State of the Union is a thankless task.
The response, typically delivered alone to camera, automatically looks less impressive than a president speaking amid the grandeur of the Capitol.
No one has pulled the feat off brilliantly. But Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) fared especially poorly Thursday.
Substantively, Britt’s remarks were standard GOP rhetoric.
But her peculiar, overly theatrical delivery made her response stand out in all the wrong ways.
She was presumably intending to communicate emotion. Instead, social media lit up with mocking claims of inauthenticity.
That was a setback for a young senator seen as a Republican rising star.
On CNN, former Trump White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin also complained about the decision to film the response in Britt’s kitchen — a setting that seemed to play to sexist stereotypes.