Give Me Your Address

After Joe Biden's Presidential Address to Congress the other night, a friend commented that what he liked was how Biden delivered his speech as if he was talking to the American public watching, not to the members of Congress in attendance, most likely because the room -- which normally seats around 1,200 people -- only had about 400 and so delivering the speech to such a smaller group made a more personal approach the best way to go.

While my friend may have been right, what I said is that whatever the number of people sitting in the House of Representatives, when a president gives his address to Congress, he should always do so in a way that is speaking to the American public, not those people present.  After all, 30 million viewers is more than 1,200 members of Congress and their guests.  I'm sure the natural inclination when giving a speech to 1,200 people in front of you is that you talk to them -- but still, 30 million people watching at home remains a larger number than 1,200 people in attendance.

It turns out that talking directly to the American public, rather than having them just listening in as you give an address has its benefits.  The approval rating that President Biden got for the speech was an amazing 85%.  Almost as amazing was that 71% of Americans said that they felt better about the direction of the country after hearing the speech.

In fairness, I suspect most people who hate the sitting-president don't tend to watch a Presidential Address to Congress, so that likely skews the numbers higher.  But not only has Joe Biden not yet built up an antipathy after just 100 days in office that would keep all or most Republicans away, but his general approval thus far is reasonably good.

What I also suspect helped the public reaction is what President Biden said in his speech was pretty positive.  In fact, as I was watching, I wondered at one point how many people could be against this.  Yes, I know I'm biased in my support of what he was talking about, but nonetheless -- most people are for ending the pandemic, helping families and creating new industries that create new jobs.  The only people who seem not to be are Republican members of Congress and recalcitrant Trump supporters still upset that the insurrection didn't work.

And even those people were struggling to find things not to like.  For Republicans in Congress, it's tough to keep complaining about the cost of things people really like, when you passed a $3 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, which most people didn't like -- except the wealthy. And for Republicans who want to get into Congress, there was a tweet from JD Vance, a conservative Republican venture capitalist who wrote the memoir Hillbilly Elegy and is considering a run for an open Senate seat in Ohio.  He wrote about one of President Biden's proposals in his family bill that "'Universal Day Care' is class warfare against normal people."

While I'm sure there are people against Universal Day Care, I'm not quite sure what "normal people" would be, especially to the extent of going to class war to stop it.  The best I can guess is that, at least as a starting point of "normal people" is single people who don't have children or jobs.  Not limited to that, of course, but just as a foundation to build on. In fairness, I'm also sure there are people against pretty much anything, including puppies and pizza, so being against Universal Day Care isn't inherently a notable achievement, even for normal people.

The good news is that normal people being against Universal Day Care is a step up from the most common GOP issues today of Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, going to bakeries and giving books to immigrant children.  Not all that much better, but better, which is one of the advantages of being on the side of normal people.

The problem for today's Republican Party is that if they actually go after the normal people vote, they're in serious trouble.  Unless they go by JD Vance's definition which, at the moment, is still undetermined.

And so, the result is that there stands President Joe Biden with an 85% approval of his Presidential address and 71% of Americans feeling better after hearing it for the direction the country is going.  This is just the reaction to one speech, of course.  But responses aren't that high -- normally.