You can love the unborn without challenging your wealth or privilege

Biden gave his State of the Union speech last night. I didn’t watch. The discussion about it today is that it was quite good. It also served as a major speech of his campaign. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos discussed the speech.

If President Joe Biden's feisty performance at the State of the Union on Thursday was representative of a man in decline, some viewers walked away thinking old age might not be that bad after all. "I hope I get this kind of dementia," comedic writer Alex Baze quipped.

Some complained it was all red meat for Democrats but nothing for independents.

Never Trumper and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell quote tweeted Erickson, observing, "The substance is about rallying Democrats. But the delivery is about showing hesitant swing voters he's still up for the job. And I think it's working."

As for nothing for independents... A good chunk of this post is about the reaction to the speech in real time by 30 soft partisans and independents in the Phoenix area hosted by Navigator Research. The participants are given a dial they crank up or down in reaction to what Biden said. And many of his good lines got dials twisting strongly in the positive direction. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that Biden’s performance defied all of the stereotypes Republicans have been trying to hang him with. He certainly wasn’t Sleepy Joe. Many pundits complained he was too energetic, fiery, feisty, and loud. He didn’t act old and with the way he sparred with hecklers he didn’t act like he had dementia.

Republicans were left sputtering over Biden’s display of vigor and command. Much of the press was left scrambling to find more synonyms for “energetic.” And viewers were largely left convinced that Biden had the right plan for America. It’s hard to describe a more successful combination.

Walter Einenkel of Kos posted his favorite dozen excerpts of the speech. Joan McCarter commented on Biden reminding the Supreme Court – most of whom were sitting right there – of their decision to overturn the right to abortion, giving it to the states. In that decision the majority wrote “women are not without electoral or political power.” Biden said:

Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women, but they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and we will win again in 2024.

That prompted Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC to describe that “attack” as “astonishing.” Kos posted the script of the address. It does not include the unscripted sparring with hecklers. While I like what I read I made it about halfway through. It’s long! In a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin started with a few headlines from media. The word “fiery” was used a couple times. Dworkin included a few tweets with praise for the speech. The media narrative about Biden being too old may have to change (nah, they’re too stuck on it). Dworkin included a tweet from Bryan Metzger:

will be genuinely interesting to see if Republicans keep doing the “are you better off today than 4 years ago” thing as we move deeper into March

Dworkin added: “Four years ago in March, COVID-19 hit the United States—hard.” In the comments Captain Frogbert included this quote:

“The Unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; the are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor, they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.” -- Dave Barnhart, June 25, 2018

On to something I didn’t have time to write about last week. Hunter Biden gave testimony before the House Oversight Committee. He did it behind closed doors, though he said he wouldn’t do that. He agreed to it because the Republicans agreed to release the transcript promptly, which they did. Sumner quoted excerpts and discussed them. In his introduction Sumner wrote:

What it shows is by turns hilarious and infuriating. Republicans clearly have no evidence that President Joe Biden has ever done anything wrong in connection to his son or his son’s business. Hunter’s testimony only showed the tragedy of his experience with drugs, how far Republicans were willing to go to indulge conspiracy theories, and how trivial all Hunter’s business dealings were in comparison to something that really does deserve investigation: the $2 billion reward lavished on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

The transcript quotes show that Hunter handled himself well and got his digs in against Republicans along the way. Some of the Democrats helped him out by asking questions that allowed Hunter to compare himself to the nasty guy and his children. No he hadn’t been installed as the chair of the party, no his father hadn’t been fined for fraudulent business, no he had not been given a multibillion dollar deal by the Saudi government. And there is this statement, the important one:

Hunter: During my battle with addiction, my father was there for me. He helped save my life. His love and support made it possible for me to get sober, stay sober, and rebuild my life as a father, a son, a husband, and a brother. What he got in return for being a loving, supportive parent is a barrage of hate-filled conspiracy theories that hatched this sham impeachment inquiry and continue to fuel unrelenting personal attacks against him and me.

About the same time some Republicans were grilling Hunter Biden others were saying it was inappropriate to discuss the pandemic prince and princess. Alas, I didn’t keep the link. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the fascination media has with nasty guy voters. The New York Times seems to be doing this a lot, though it isn’t the only one. It’s time to also look at Biden voters. Dartagnan begins by quoting Jonathan Last, writing for The Bulwark on why the focus is on nasty guy voters:

Because we must understand why all of these people support a man who wrecked the American economy, attempted a violent insurrection, is under 91 felony indictments, and has been disavowed as a threat to the country by a large number of the high-level Republicans who worked directly for him. ... There’s also another group of voters the NYT seems oblivious to: Biden voters. You may recall that in 2020 Joe Biden received more votes than anyone in American history. No one is terribly interested in what makes those people—who comprise a flat majority of the population—tick.

The narrative around nasty guy supporters started as economic anxiety. Then it was pointed out Hillary Clinton voters had more economic distress. Then the story shifted to status resentment before being acknowledged as plain old racism. But in not studying Biden supporters the media made bad predictions about what was happening. Remember all the hype of the “red wave” that never happened? Leaving out one side of the story reinforces a bogus narrative. If Democrats are the party of “elites” it’s a mighty strange definition of the word. And of the 81 million people who voted for Biden the vast majority are not “elite.” Also, “elite” does not equal “lives in a major city” – there are more working class people in Queens than in many red states. Another bogus idea:

Those salt-of-the-earth values, we were assured, were common to most Trump supporters, be they rural, suburban, or urban. Conversely, the rest of the country—actually the majority of citizens, including the vast majority of people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and college-educated voters of all backgrounds (especially those in major population centers)—by default had to be somehow deficient in these same patriotic values. ... Just try to imagine a New York Times article, for instance, conducting a focus group or on-the-ground interviews with people who think trans kids are kids who deserve to exist! People who abhor book bans and don’t want religion to dictate how their schools (and lives) are run! People who aren’t convinced that a person’s skin color is a threat to them or their futures. People who actually believe in democracy and find the very idea that someone who’s facing 91 felony counts is even considered to be a viable candidate for president to be preposterous. Or people who believe that the reproductive rights of everyone should be protected. People who won’t pretend that the biggest threat to our country is immigration. Can you imagine the headlines?

Talk to Biden voters and the media might reach a different conclusion about the heart of America.