A real president gives a real speech

Depressing, wasn't it, Mitch?

A real call for subscriptions from a real writer: Don’t be depressed. Subscribe!

Did you see the look on Mitch McConnell’s face during Biden’s speech to the joint session of congress last night?  One word describes him:  depressed.  Same on the faces of other Republicans the cameras picked up.  Romney:  depressed.  Cruz:  when he wasn’t slumbering, depressed.  McCarthy:  depressed.  Even Bazooka Barbie Boebert:  depressed.

Especially Mitch.  He’s a contemptible Kentucky cowpie, of course, but he’s not a stupid man.  He was sitting there last night and he knew he was listening to a real president giving a real speech.  After four years of reflexive applause and demonstrations of adulation for the mutterings of a monotonal buffoon, McConnell was at last confronted with a serious man serving as president serving up serious proposals.  He may be opposed to everything Biden presented last night, but as he sat there, old Cowpie Mitch knew 1) how popular Biden’s proposals are and 2) how much sense they make.

The popularity of Biden’s plans alone was cause enough for the depression seen on the Republican side of the aisle last night.  By a two-to-one margin, Americans support Biden’s infrastructure plan, which he is calling the American Jobs Plan, and his American Families Plan, which will provide long-needed money for early childhood education, child care, and free community college.  Sixty-eight percent support the infrastructure plan, according to a recent Monmouth poll, with only 29 percent opposing it.  And 64 percent support the families plan, with only 34 percent in opposition.  This on top of Biden’s 69 percent approval for the way he has handled response to the COVID pandemic, with only 27 percent disapproving.

Those numbers hung over the Republican side of the House chamber last night like a gigantic black cloud.  You want to talk about an uphill battle?  McConnell and McCarthy and the rest of them know that opposing Biden’s plans will be seriously unpopular, even if their own base is behind them.  And things didn’t look much better when they woke up this morning to reports that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, including news of the third straight week in improvement in jobless claims, according to the Department of Labor.

They know that a good portion of all that economic growth is due to Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package passed on largely party-line votes and signed into law last month.  Stimulus checks for $1400 started going out almost immediately, and people started spending them.  Along with the almost unbelievable success of Biden’s COVID vaccination drive, putting needles in the arms of more than 220 million Americans in his first 100 days in office, the stimulus plan has hit the economy with a massive tailwind.  New York City announced that it will be fully reopened for business with 100 percent capacity allowed across a broad spectrum of businesses and public accommodations by July 1, and many other states and cities are already either partially or fully open.

The other source of the depression evident among the Republicans last night was this:  they know Joe Biden.  Many of them, like McConnell, have known him in the senate for decades.  Biden has been around Washington for nearly his entire adult lifetime.  This is a silly thing to be saying, but given the most recent occupant of the White House, it’s necessary:  Republicans know Biden is a real person.  He’s not some fake construct of television fame and tweets and bellicosity.  He’s a guy with a strong record of which he can be proud.  When he called upon the congress to renew the Violence Against Women Act last night, he was able to add that he wrote it, and they all knew it was true.  Hell, most of them voted for it back when Biden wrote it, which Biden realized will make it that much harder for them to come out in opposition to it now.

McConnell and the rest of them know they must oppose Biden and everything he proposes if only to give themselves something to run on in the 2022 midterms, but they also know they’re not going up against some goofball who had to be given lessons on how a bill becomes a law the way Trump did when he was attempting to pass his tax cuts in 2017.  Biden has been writing and passing legislation since he first became a senator in 1973.  He was vice president when Barak Obama passed the first major healthcare legislation since Medicare and Medicaid against wall-to-wall Republican opposition.  In short, he knows what he’s doing in Washington D.C., and no matter what happens with his most recent trillion-dollar proposals to jump-start jobs and the economy, he’s going to be a hard man to beat.

That’s what was so refreshing about watching Biden’s speech last night.  Everyone in that chamber knew that whether they liked it or not, they were witnessing a return to sanity in Washington.  For Democrats, it was cause for celebration.  For Republicans, Biden’s appearance before the joint session of congress was a reminder that they are playing politics against a pro.