State Of The Union Fail

Last week I noted that Biden wasn't really addresing the country in his State of the Union address. In fact, he wasn't addressing the free world, he wasn't addressing the American people, he wasn't addressing Congress, he wasn't addressing the justices of the US Supreme Court, although he did offend them gratuitously while insisting women had electrical power. I pointed out that he was actually addressing nervous Democrat donors, who'd sent a back-channel message that they wanted to see "passion and fire out in public as assurances" that Joe was still sharp and able to take on Trump.

The answer from the big guy himself, according to the CNN report I linked, was a cryptic "State of the Union". The implication seems to have been that this is where he'd turn it all around. After a week, it hasn't happened.

In the latest HarrisX/Forbes poll, which was taken three days following last week’s State of the Union address, Joe Biden saw his approval rating drop and former President Donald Trump’s 2024 lead tick up.

The best spin Team Biden can put on this poll is to seek comfort in the margin of error and say the State of the Union address changed nothing. But that wasn’t the goal, nor is it what Biden needed. He needed that speech to be a big win, to change public perception, and launch him into the coming presidential campaign.

In fact, Joe's handlers worked against themselves by sending Joe to an interview Saturday, when he'd have been better off going back to Delaware again. The full Jonathan Capehart MSNBC interview had him "regretting" calling illegals illegals, but the problems went farther than that:

Capehart asked if he would go back to Israel and address the Israeli Knesset. Biden answered, "Yes," then appeared to blank out and gave a long pause.

Capehart tries to help and lead the witness with the subsequent questions.

Biden looks clueless and then says, "I'd rather not discuss it more."

When Capehart asked what that meant, Biden said, "It doesn't mean anything."

. . . he claimed, "America made a mistake" in how it went after bin Laden.

"America made a mistake. We went after bin Laden 'til we got him, but we shouldn't have gone into Ukraine. I mean, excuse me, we shouldn't have gone into the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It wasn't necessary. It just caused more problems than it raised...than it cured."

. . . This is a very bad window into the thinking -- what there is of it -- of Joe Biden.

Then on Monday we had the handlers cutting his feed in New Hampshire as he threatened to answer reporters' questions, followed yesterday by former Special Prosecutor Hur's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which, with the transcripts of his Biden interview released the same day, simply focused more attention on Joe's mental state. Jesse Waters made the point,

Biden’s mental state let him escape justice, which forces the media to argue that Biden’s competent enough to be president, but not competent enough to stand trial.

Just the News noted,

After confirming the date of his son’s death with the lawyers, Biden still appeared to be confused about the timeline of his post-vice presidential private life.

Biden said: “And what's happened in the meantime is that Trump gets elected in November of 2017?"

Two individuals corrected him, saying it was in “2016,” according to the transcript.

“2016. Alright, so – why do I have 2017 here?" Biden asked.

Joe's handlers did their best to give him a script and a schedule that would change the dynamic of the campaign, which, given the results of yesterday's primaries, has effectively begun, with both Trump and Biden having won enough delegates to secure their respective nominations. The challenge for Biden's handlers will be to defeat the growing perception that in private, he's just as vague, shallow, and bumbling as he is in public. The fact that they had clearly hoped to turn this trend around after the State of the Union and haven't is an indication of the problems they face in an extended national election campaign.

Joe can't stop being Joe.