The union in a state

The rescheduled State of the Union address happened last night, and while there is a lot being said about the various interested parties reaction to the event, there isn't a ton of discussion about the speech itself, and honestly it's for good reason, it simply wasn't very interesting.

It was par for the course for "professional Trump" is what I mean, the usual talking points about border security with I guess some new focus on abortion thrown in there, the usual bragging about how great the country is because of him, the usual pack of lies about accomplishments. All the settings toned down to "barely tolerable when compared to everything else he says every day.".

The usual suspects on the right are describing him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, as they do every time he makes a speech that doesn't use a literal slur or explicitly call for the death of a minority group. But in general I don't see this helping him a ton, his single issue abortion voters will focus on that to the exclusion of all else, but they weren't gonna switch parties anyway so fuck em, but the base he connects with, as I mentioned in previous posts, doesn't really do subtlety, even when the subtlety is what we saw last night. It wasn't pandering directly to them so at best they will be neutral on the topic, at worst they will be pissed he didn't outright declare a national emergency over the wall. It did very little to distract attention from the tax returns that are coming back with remarkably low refunds for many who were expecting better.

As for Democrat reactions, I have little to say on it except regarding Nancy Pelosi, those of you who are online probably saw the picture of her mid-clap that made it look like the most sarcastic thing anyone has ever done and are giving her a lot of credit for it, that's fine I guess but do try to keep in mind that that picture is almost certainly a coincidence, and she was very likely un-ironically clapping for him because decorum is king in politics, at least the way Pelosi plays it. Her job is to unify the Democrats in the House, and despite the gains of lat election, there are still an uncomfortably large number of Dems that would be Republicans twenty years ago, hell she probably would be one of them herself, she isn't a willing ally of #resistance or anything she's an establishment politician who is in ascendance but depends on the goodwill of a pretty disparate group of folks to do anything, she isn't gonna alienate the moderates to pander to the new kids.

You can make the argument that she should actually do that of course, and you might be right. Decorum has always been overrated and possibly more so today than at any other time. anger drives votes. But that isn't her and treating her like she suddenly changed into that is giving her way to much credit, at best she is a temporary ally, but if/when a semblance of sanity returns to DC, she will be very much on obstacle to a real progressive agenda, to her credit she really hasn't tried to hide that at all, so it shouldn't surprise anyone when it happens regardless of how much you might like the picture.