Biden’s Speech for the Ages Eases Concerns About Age

President’s Optimism Sharply Contrasts with GOP’s Depressing Message

Joe Biden went a long way towards securing reelection last night with his feisty and energetic State of the Union speech. With the economy humming and abortion dragging down Republicans, the main issue dogging Biden was his advanced age. Republicans and their partisan media outlets have relentlessly reinforced the image of Biden as a senile old coot incapable of coherently completing a sentence.

It seems the GOP badly overplayed their hand and damaged their credibility. Instead of a doddering geezer, Biden had pep in his step. He shredded their false portrayal of him as comatose by appearing caffeinated. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer wrote in a post on X, "No one is going to remember a single thing Biden says tonight. Everyone is going to remember how weirdly amped up he is and how bizarrely fast he's speaking."

The President had a phenomenal performance with several memorable lines. If Fleisher is correct, however, and voters’ only lasting impression is Speedy Joe, rather than Sleepy Joe, Biden succeeded in expediting his path to reelection.

The age issue won’t entirely go away, but its parameters have changed post State of the Union. No honest person can now credibly claim that Biden is mentally unfit to lead America. They can only say that he might die while in office – which is also true of the hamburger-inhaling 77-year-old Donald Trump, whose mortality can’t be helped by his enormously stressful legal and financial woes.

Biden’s speech was so deft, that he went beyond easing the GOP advantage on age, to reversing the spotlight to focus on Trump. The MAGA King serially confuses Biden with Obama during stump speeches and regularly slurs words, as if he’s having micro-strokes. It’s time the media focuses more on Trump’s health problems, low energy, and noticeable mental decline.

Biden’s vigor could not be denied. Even conservative Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan’s column was titled, “State of the Union Shows There’s Life in the Old Boy Yet.”

The performance was a huge relief for Democrats. They fretted that Biden was “long in the tooth.” Indeed, he was, like a pouncing saber-tooth tiger making mincemeat out of rude, heckling Republicans like they were cheap stage props.

“Just when you think Joe Biden can’t top himself, he dramatically exceeds expectations in ways that are awe-inspiring and riveting. And that’s what happened last night in the State of the Union address,” remarked progressive SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile in his Substack column.

Biden’s triumph was in sharp contrast to the bizarre GOP response given by Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. In an election where the Republican Party’s greatest vulnerability is women upset about losing access to abortion, the geniuses in the GOP reinforced stereotypes by plopping Britt in her kitchen, wearing a Handmaid’s Tale-style dress.

Britt tried to come across as the voice of struggling moms. Instead of representing the middle class, her fancy kitchen looked like an HGTV remodel that was ready for Martha Stewart to bake puffy souffles. While she feigned concern about struggling families, her kitchen suggested Joe Biden’s economy was treating her family just fine.

Britt alternated between melodramatic whispers, dry tears, and overwrought concern about America’s supposed demise. In her weird, creepy performance, she came across as mentally unstable and emotionally disturbed, undergoing wild, vacillating mood swings in real time. Her inaccurate portrait of America as a faltering dystopia was in sharp contrast to Biden’s upbeat message highlighting a booming economy with low unemployment and decreasing inflation.

Biden wasn’t bragging, with more stellar economic news coming the morning after his speech: “If the economy is slowing down, nobody told the labor market. Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations,” wrote the New York Times.

Britt’s eulogy for America was such a downer that networks should have flashed a suicide hotline on the screen. Instead of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”, she could have called her kitchen kvetch, “Mourning America.” To paraphrase Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the GOP’s message can be boiled down to “America Sucks.”

Britt looked absurd when she said, “Our commander in chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader.”

Was Britt talking about Trump?

Her obsolete speech was crafted around the performance she expected Biden to give rather than the one he gave. The extreme juxtaposition between what America saw and what Britt described was jarring. She must be in a State of Delusion because Biden’s State of the Union showed a commanding leader ready for a second term.

Reality wasn’t on the table, however, with the New York Times reporting:

Earlier on Thursday, Ms. Britt’s team distributed talking points that promoted her speech by comparing it to some of the most famous oratory in the nation’s history and urging fellow Republicans to praise the Alabama senator for coming across “like America’s mom.”

“His speech was tone deaf,” the talking points declared, before either Mr. Biden or Ms. Britt had spoken. “Hers was the perfect pitch.”

Not even hardcore conservatives, who deny elections and float conspiracies, could be in the tank for Britt’s dirge.

"I'm sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need," Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk wrote on X. "Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she's hosting a cooking show whispering about how Democrats 'don’t get it’.”

Britt gave the official rebuttal, but the unofficial GOP response was even more troubling. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, sat behind Biden, eye-rolling and making faces while his buttocks were firmly glued to his seat, rising only twice to tepidly applaud. Most of the time he smirked, coming across like a smarmy, petulant middle school class clown.

Johnson’s Republican colleagues followed his immature lead. No matter how popular the issue they refused to stand and sat stone-faced, at least when they weren’t engaged in disgracing Congress with peevish outbursts designed to get Trump’s attention or secure a gig on Newsmax. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene had no decorum, wearing a tacky red MAGA hat with stickers and buttons, as if she had just come from a sweaty Trump stadium rally. 

Republicans skulked, scowled, and stubbornly refused to rise, whether it was defeating Putin, standing up for democracy, making billionaires pay their fair share of taxes or protecting women’s reproductive freedom. They couldn’t even bother to support no-brainers, like being against lead water pipes to protect children, eliminating junk fees from credit card companies, opposing political violence, and creating manufacturing jobs in America.

The State of the Union provided a stark contrast of what Democrats literally stand for, while the sorry image of Republicans squatting in their seats will surely be used in ads defining the differences between the two political parties.

It's not even spring, but the renewed spring in Biden’s step has energized Democrats and provided renewed hope that America can avoid the apocalypse of a second Trump presidency.