President Joe Biden addressed Congress for his State of the Union on Tuesday at a time when many in his own party are beginning to question whether he’s their man for 2024.
The president’s speech to a joint session of Congress was his first since the 2022 midterms, when the Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives but gained a small amount of ground in the Senate. It was a result that confounded the GOP, which went into November expecting a red-wave blowout, and bolstered a president facing sagging approval ratings and questions about his stamina.
Now, coming off that half victory, Mr Biden attemped to make the case to his own party and the progressive left that he’s still the best choice to lead Democrats against a resurgent Donald Trump, the ambitious Ron DeSantis, or another Republican seeking to retake the Executive Branch.
Representatives of two progressive groups who spoke to The Independent ahead of Tuesday night’s prime-time event agreed that it was Mr Biden’s first opportunity — and test — to appear like his party’s standard-bearer ahead of the next presidential election cycle.
And they said the president met at least some of the expectations that they had for him. Joseph Geevarghese of Our Revolution, the Bernie Sanders spinoff group, commented to The Independent that the graying Mr Biden had come off as energetic and ready to go toe-to-toe with Republicans.
“He was both scripted and then was able to handle himself off-script,” Mr Geevarghese said, reviewing Mr Biden’s performance. “There were no more verbal fumbles than you would expect...He conveyed to me vigor and passion.”
“You can tell he felt pretty good about what he has accomplished,” Mr Geevarghese added. “And that, you know, in some ways, he was ready to take on Republicans.”
Ahead of the speech, he and Natalia Salgado, director of federal affairs for the Working Families Party (which hosted a response to Mr Biden’s remarks delivered by Congresswoman Delia Ramirez), outlined what a successful night for the president would look like.
Mr Biden “needs to be able to stand on what he has been able to accomplish”, said Ms Salgado.
On that note, she continued, Mr Biden needs to tout his legislative victories so far — the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — while also charting a path forward for the next two years of his presidency (and potential second term). Democrats, she argued, were not necessarily successful in completely articulating that message ahead of November, leading to the narrow Republican takeover of the House.
“We’re going to need him to be able to articulate what has been done in his first term and how, when we were in charge…what we were able to accomplish,” she said.
Mr Geevarghese agreed. Advising Mr Biden to appear that “he is in command, that he has a plan to win and a vision” for his second term, he said: “[T]here’s both the substance message of, ‘I’m going to fight like hell to improve your life over the next two years,’ and, and then conveying that he has the strength and the energy and the passion to carry that out.”
Both also urged Mr Biden to speak about tangible action his administration could take in the wake of the brutal police beating death of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man who was killed after he was pulled over for a reason that officials in Memphis say can’t even be substantiated. Mr Nichols’s death and the release of bodycam footage of the scene has reignited calls for reform of America’s law enforcement systems and reopened old wounds which last surfaced in the summer of 2020 after video of the shocking murder of George Floyd came out.
“I believe that the President understands the moment that America and especially Black America is in right now,” said Ms Salgado. “[H]e will recognize the pain and suffering that has occurred, that has trickled through the community due to the death of Tyre Nichols.”
“I hope that he will be able to speak with deep empathy and compassion,” she added.
They added that Mr Biden should make a promise to take concrete action at the executive level, including calling on the Justice Department to double down on its oversight of local law enforcement agencies.
“At least some subset of the police are out of control and abusing power and you know, [he needs to say] ‘I’m gonna make sure my Justice Department cracks down on this.’ Again, there’s got to be something that just like, is real and tangible, beyond the legislation that I think we all know won’t go anywhere,” said Mr Geevarghese.
Ms Salgado added that there was room for Mr Biden to use the bully pulpit to pressure Republicans to take the issue seriously, but said that alone was insufficient. The Executive Branch, she argued, must be ready to act on its own.
“I think I think that there are there’s a whole a whole arsenal of tools that are tools that are available to the President through executive action. I think, yes, he needs to push Republicans on this issue. But also he needs to be able to look at his own ability and what he’s able to do from his seat in the executive branch.”
That didn’t happen on Tuesday evening; there was little to no mention of executive actions by the president and no firm committments to take police reform beyond what has already been proposed (and fought over, and abandoned) in Congress.
Ms Salgado spoke to The Independent after Mr Biden’s remarks and commended him for his compassionate tone about the killing of Mr Nichols, but said that she regretted that the president had not spoken more about his own efforts to tackle police violence. Not mentioning qualified immunity, or the process by which police are often protected from civil lawsuits stemming from their actions on duty, was another missed opportunity, said Ms Salgado.
“I do wish there had been much more precision and detail about how we're going to fix this problem,” she said.
