On the State of the Union Speech: What Biden Left Out

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

This can be a submit about nothing; or fairly the nothing that’s the place one would count on a one thing to look. Many of the protection of the Biden speech — leaving apart, mercifully, the partisan rancor over whether or not Biden is shouting (strategically, no much less) or merely being (in the end) “fiery” slash “feisty” — focuses on coverage implications (for good, or ailing). All this protection is so instrumental as to be ineffective. The worst of it’s that it won’t be hypocritical; perhaps they actually consider what they’re saying. Anyhow, chances are you’ll assume our democracy works one thing like this well-known Industrial Employees of the World (IWW) poster, which I’ve helpfully annotated:

<img src=”https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/iww.png” alt=”” width=”763″ peak=”990″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-268139″ />

In the event you do[1], then the result of no matter proposals Biden may make will probably be decided by the correlation of forces within the governing and ruling courses, and may have little to do with the needs or opinions of voters. So why hassle with coverage, handled as something aside from a speaking level engineered to enchantment to 3 of the six fundamental feelings? (happiness, unhappiness, disgust, concern, shock, and anger)[2]. In any case, why ought to I waste my stunning thoughts on Biden’s coverage coverage proposals after how he stiffed us all on Covid:

Anyhow, the dude owes me 600 bucks.

So, analyzing what Biden says is ineffective (except for the pointillist method of in search of tells to the correlation of forces within the language, which I do not need the power to do, the [family blogging] time change having thrown me for a loop. I can by no means keep in mind whether or not it’s “Fall ahead and spring again, or fall again, and spring ahead.” For a similar motive, this submit won’t be as link-rich as I wish to be). Nonetheless, I feel will probably be helpful to look at what Biden does not say. Moderately than placing on my yellow waders and splashing about within the shadows, I’m going to, because it had been, choose up my birding binoculars and scan the empty horizon for what I’d count on to be there, however isn’t.

I’ll look a 3 lacunae in Biden’s speech: Antitrust Enforcement, Shared Air, and Democrat Complicity. I’ll use AP’s transcript of Biden’s textual content, as delivered. There are different annotated variations right here, right here, and right here.

Antitrust Enforcement

Many readers view the FTC’s revivified software of antitrust regulation as one of many few really vivid spots of the Biden administration. From the Guardian, “‘She’s going to prevail’: FTC head Lina Khan is combating for an anti-monopoly America“:

Throughout 96 pages of the Yale Legislation Journal in 2017, Lina Khan set out why she believed the US’s policing of massive enterprise was failing. The paper – which focused Amazon – shook the Silicon Valley institution and catapulted Khan into the center of a battle over America’s enterprise orthodoxy and, in the end, into a task during which she might overhaul it.

Khan’s appointment to guide the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) simply 4 years later angered large tech, however it has turn into more and more clear that Khan, and the Biden administration have an excellent larger agenda: resetting the federal authorities’s decades-old stance on competitors in a way unseen in a long time.

Charged with imposing antitrust regulation and selling client safety, the FTC is nominally the regulator charged with stopping offers that can hurt customers. However beneath successive administrations – Republican and Democratic – some critics cost the FTC stood by as business after business consolidated energy within the fingers of fewer and fewer corporations.

All that modified beneath Joe Biden, who has constantly attacked the monopolization of US enterprise.

For instance:

Final week the FTC sued to dam Kroger’s $24.6bn takeover of rival grocer Albertsons. If authorized, the company warned, the U’s largest-ever grocery store merger would increase costs for tens of millions of buyers.

Stoller remarks:

Khan is “most likely the most effective chief the FTC’s ever had”, argued Matt Stoller, director of analysis on the American Financial Liberties Mission, and a former colleague. “That doesn’t imply she is going to succeed, or fail. However she’s actually stretching all of their sources and making an attempt to make use of the authority they’ve been granted to meet the mission they’ve been charged with.”

And the politics of all of it:

With Washington tormented by partisan warring, Khan has additionally turn into the topic of intense Republican criticism.

(To be honest, not by Matt Gaetz or J.D. Vance, curiously.) So right here, within the State of the Union speech, is newly self-discovered populist Joe Biden’s full-throated protection of Lina Khan (sound and artwork by way of):

Biden does say this:

Look, I’m additionally eliminating junk charges — these hidden charges — on the finish of your invoice which might be there with out your data. My administration introduced we’re chopping bank card late charges from $32 to $8.

So who’s doing that? That’s proper, the FTC. From a WhiteHouse.gov FAQ on March 5:

The FTC has proposed a rule that, if finalized as proposed, would ban corporations from charging hidden and shock junk charges and require that costs are listed upfront when customers make purchases.

However within the SOTU, Biden says nothing concerning the FTC, not even after they’re doing this Dick Morris-level tiny repair. Biden additionally says nothing about the 11 antitrust fits the FTC has introduced beneath Lina Khan, together with the one towards Amazon. If I had been Khan, I’d be listening for footsteps behind me.

Shared Air

Here’s what Biden has to say on shared air, the medium by which an asymptomatic, airborne Degree Three Biohazard unfold, infects us, and has taken over one million lives (extra beneath Biden than beneath his “predecessor”):

Right here is Biden on Covid:

The pandemic not controls our lives. The vaccine that saved us from COVID is — at the moment are getting used to beat most cancers.

Readers, you most likely know [pounds head on desk] what I’m about to say right here, and may say it higher than I’m about to. Biden has nothing to say about airborne transmission (and by no means has stated something; “Physician Biden,” for instance, has by no means gone on Good Morning America to construct a Corsi-Rosenthal field with some cute youngsters). As a result of the hegemonic factions of our governing class haven’t any permission construction to speak about shared air, they can not speak about cleansing shared air (or spending the cash and creating the rules to take action). The one thing BIden does say is sort of as dangerous, and definitely as silly. Covid “controls your life” when you’re contaminated with it, whether or not you’re contaminated or not. It most definitely “controls your life” if someone who breathe the virus into your shared air provides you Lengthy Covid. And when you’ve adopted the “private danger evaluation” technique promoted by the Biden administration in its effort to destroy public well being, that’s controlling your life, too. Oh, Newsweek charges Biden’s declare on Covid vaccines and most cancers TRUE. They are saying:

Evidently solely a foul religion or slender interpretation of Biden’s feedback might have pushed the concept he was actually referring to the remedies developed by Pfizer, Moderna and others, and never new applied sciences.

mRNA know-how used to develop the COVID vaccines is being utilized in new trials to deal with a doubtlessly big selection of cancers. The White Home introduced $24 million in funding final August which might, partially, discover using mRNA vaccination know-how within the therapy of most cancers.

Newsweek’s filled with it, and refuses to just accept the plain that means of Biden’s phrases (which had been presumably vetted by a phalanx of White Home staffers, former Covid Czar Zeints, and many others. All of them authorized the lie. In the event you assume “the vaccine that saved us from COVID” and “know-how used to develop the COVID vaccines” are the identical factor, then I’ve some bridge know-how that I want to promote you. It must be very simple.

Democrat Complicity

On abortion, Biden says this:

Like most People, I consider Roe v. Wade received it proper.

I thank Vice President Harris for being an unbelievable chief defending reproductive freedom and a lot extra. Thanks.

My predecessor got here to workplace decided to see Roe v. Wade overturned. He’s the explanation it was overturned, and he brags about it. Take a look at the chaos that has resulted.

In the event you — when you, the American folks, ship me a Congress that helps the best to decide on, I promise you I’ll restore Roe v. Wade because the regulation of the land once more.

Roe was determined in 1973. Here’s a web site that lists “Home and Senate Concurrence with Presidents” (that’s, when all are from the identical celebration). 1977-1980 (the Carter Administration); 1993-1994 (the Clinton Adminstration); and 2009-2010 (the Obama Adminstration). It’s arduous to keep away from the conclusion that if Roe was by no means “the regulation of the land,” it’s as a result of Democrats didn’t move the regulation (and in the event that they thought different issues had been extra vital, then what’s Biden whinging for?). To be honest, although, it’s simple to keep away from that conclusion when you’re a Democrat. Oh, and each single decide that overturned Roe was moved up the ladder till they received to the Supreme Court docket with Democrat complicity, since they by no means made Roe a litmus take a look at (because of the Norms Fairy, or one thing). And here’s what Biden has to say about that:

If a Democrat administration was complicit in any catastrophe that befell the American folks, particularly the working class, you’ll hear, in a sample so apparent as to verge on pathology, nothing about that from Biden, though, as with Roe, you’ll hear a few Democrat effort to say credit score for “combating” to resolve the issue they themselves created. (Biden’s remarks on deindustrialization are so scattered and vacuous I can’t pull out a quote, however you possibly can wager he’ll say nothing about Invoice Clinton and NAFTA.)

nothing

Conclusion

As the Monetary Occasions factors out, Biden’s SOTU was actually the opening speech of the Presidential marketing campaign of 2024:

So we’re speaking the morning after the State of the Union on Friday. And, Ed, earlier than we dive into this, the content material of the speech, have you ever ever seen a State of the Union tackle just like the one which we noticed final evening?

[EDWARD LUCE:] No. I imply, it’s a very good query. A number of them are forgettable as a result of they’re laundry lists of presidents’ legislative agenda. Biden’s specifically have been fairly forgettable. Final evening was unforgettable. Not simply due to the second, which is the worst potential polling numbers that Biden’s had since he turned president, but additionally as a result of it was a marketing campaign State of the Union. This wasn’t a laundry checklist.

It was completely a laundry checklist; see the transcripts. Extra:

This was the kick-off, actually, of his 2024 marketing campaign, and he spoke with the type of power of a politician on the marketing campaign path. So it was very, very totally different beast to your, to your run-of-the-mill State of the Union, most of which do get immediately forgotten. This one received’t be forgotten.

We’ll see whether or not will probably be forgotten or not. Nonetheless, you possibly can ensure that with Biden on the marketing campaign path, you’ll hear nothing concerning the FTC and antitrust, nothing about cleansing shared air, and nothing about Democrat duty for any of the issues we face, that are quite a few.

NOTES

[1] Really, whereas I feel this graphic is impactful and correct at a excessive stage, even at this time, it’s nonetheless static and never dynamic. Not being a graphic artist, I don’t know easy methods to categorical the dynamism of sophistication relations. Maybe a reader can level me to one thing higher.

[2] Six is the results of a lazy seek for Paul Eckaman’s work; there are different typologies for the emotional spectrum, fairly like there are coloration wheels with six, or sixteen slices, or different numbers.

APPENDIX Biden’s Demeanor

Listed below are some nonetheless pictures of Biden’s microexpressions from the primary seven minutes of his speech (that’s, earlier than he actually went on the assault towards his “predecessor”):

Take a look at the set of Biden’s mouth. I feel it’s secure to say that Biden’s two canines, Main and Commander, are vicious as a result of their grasp is vicious.

APPENDIX Biden’s Prognosis

The Babylon Bee has the most effective joke: DC-Space Pharmacies All Out Of Stimulants. However as I wrote:

As readers know, I’m not a fan of distant analysis (and I’m nonetheless ready for a White Home “reporter” to ask Biden to depend backwards by sevens throughout a presser). That stated, the canines aren’t barking within the evening on this. The primary non-barking canine is the White Home: Given the givens, it appears cheap to conclude that no cognitive checks had been run as a result of the White Home, at a minimal, was not sure what the outcomes could be. Subsequently, the conclusion that “Biden has cognitive points, identified to his interior circle,” appears inescapable (and says nothing about their nature or diploma, or the results of hyypothesized “juice”). By the identical token, I’d count on the environment friendly Republican oppo machine to have produced severe, medically-driven movies documenting Biden’s gait, flubs, and many others., by now. That hasn’t occurred both. Maybe they wish to prop Biden up simply as a lot as Democrats do?

That’s what we all know, and we don’t and may’t know extra. I actually do assume the snark about Biden’s cognitive points ought to decelerate, and at this level it’s mere lazy cynicism. We don’t know what we would wish to know to make a analysis, so let’s not use phrases (“dementia”) that indicate that we do. Biden gave an excellent efficiency on the SOTU, and beneath huge stress. All we will do is watch how he continues to do on the marketing campaign path, which is the one knowledge that actually issues.