President Joe Biden has delivered his second State of the Union Address to both chambers of the United States Congress on Tuesday (February 8 morning in India), the first with the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives since their narrower-than-expected victory in the midterms of November 2022 and, as POLITICO put it, on the “cusp of his expected (2024) re-election (campaign) launch.
American media analyses of his speech underlined his thrust on bipartisanship and the focus on domestic concerns, rather than the world and US foreign policy, which has long been the President’s strong suit. Here are a few takeaways from Biden’s 73 minute long Address.
Biden focused on his Made in America thrust to ensure manufacturing jobs return to the US. He spoke of his plan to spend $52 billion in subsidies and additional tax credits to companies that make semiconductor chips in the US, declaring, We are going to make sure the supply chain for America begins in America.
He used the phrase finish the job while talking about the task of repairing the US economy a dozen times in his speech, a report in The New York Times noted.
An analysis by David E Sanger in The New York Times noted that the President chose to downplay his formidable achievements of reunifying NATO and rallying allies against Russia and China. The reason was probably the awareness that “America’s re engagement in the world is both expensive and, at the opening of an election cycle, a tough political sell”, Sanger wrote.
The President mentioned Ukraine only briefly, and although the Ukrainian Ambassador to the US had been invited to the Address, he did not refer to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Even with the inevitably acrimonious presidential campaign for 2024 ahead, Biden peached the mantra of bipartisanship. Analysts noted that he began his speech by congratulating the new Republican Speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy, and his appeal.
To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there’s no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well.
The American people had given their representatives a clear message, he said Fighting for the sake of the fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere. We’ve been sent here to finish the job, in my view.
The Washington Post report also flagged several indicators of his likely campaign in the race for re-election to the White House. He geared his speech extensively to blue-collar voters, the report said, and went after “Big Oil”, “Big Pharma”, and “Big Tech”.
He reached out to economically-left out citizens, saying: “Here’s my message to all of you out there: I have your back.” Both The Washington Post and The New York Times noted his mention of several relatively modest populist ideas focused on commonly relatable issues like credit card fees, airline fees, and overdraft fees.
Biden has touched on many of these issues before, but you begin to see the beginnings of a 2024 stump speech, The Washington Post analysis said.