How Biden's SOTU will Take the Fight to Trump

Biden will never mention Trump's name, but his speech will be all about his opponent

The primaries are over. Nikki Haley and Dean Phillips dropped out yesterday. Trump and Biden are on the cusp of securing the requisite delegates. Despite the sturm and drang, the outcome was never in doubt. It was always going to be Joe Biden against Donald Trump. The rematch for all of the marbles is tonight. 

The general election kicks off tonight with President Biden delivering his third State of the Union address. This speech before a joining session of Congress is always politically important. It’s often the largest audience to see the President each year. In 2023, 27 million people watched Biden’s address. In 2024, tonight’s expected audience will likely only be surpassed by the President’s convention speech and the debates.

In an incredibly close race (polls suggest Biden is trailing by a few points) the State of the Union address is a critical opportunity. Presidents typically use the State of the Union to tout their accomplishments, announce new policy plans, and pressure Congress to take action on their priorities. Biden will undoubtedly do that tonight — particularly on the bipartisan border security and Ukraine aid bills being blocked by MAGA extremists in the House.

However, an election year State of the Union is inherently more political — and consequential. While it’s verboten to talk politics, incumbent Presidents begin to frame the choice before voters. In 2012, we thought about every word of Obama’s State of the Union address through the prism of a near-certain campaign against Mitt Romney — a private equity executive who had spent the last year endorsing a series of Right Wing tax policies to benefit rich people like himself. Obama unveiled a policy initiative called the “Buffet Rule,” which instituted a minimum tax rate for people making more than a million dollars a year. The policy was named after Warren Buffet, a supporter of raising taxes on the wealthy, who claimed that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did. We even invited Buffets’s secretary to sit in the First Lady’s box for the speech. This was a direct shot at Romney, who wanted to cut Buffet’s taxes (and his own) and presaged the sort of campaign Obama would run.

The President won’t mention Trump’s name but this speech will be given with Trump in mind. For those reasons, I will be watching Biden’s State of the Union through a political lens, and I want to help you do the same.

Here are some recent poll findings and trends that will influence what the President says and whether he can successfully persuade voters.

1. Voters Love Biden’s Agenda, But Know Nothing About It

Tonight, you will likely hear President Biden run through his impressive list of accomplishments — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and so forth. If you read this newsletter, you have heard Biden talk about these things countless times. You know all about it. Well good for you, but you are in the minority.

According to the polling, most voters cannot name a single Biden accomplishment, let alone run through the litany. That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news. People love them when they hear about them. Navigator Research tested Biden’s accomplishments last fall and found that most had over 60% support.