The surprisingly hidden truth of American politics is that voters like laundry lists. The speechwriters and political professionals prefer the soaring rhetoric and falling in love with their own words, but people want to know what their leaders will do for them. In this sense, Joe Biden had a successful speech last night.
I would point you to Harold Meyerson’s recap of the address, which makes a number of good points. He spent the first 100 days surmounting the potential logistical crevasse of the vaccine rollout, more than doubling his initial projection for shots in arms. (A bad break on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has coincided with a pullback that might be connected to hesitancy, and will be a major hurdle of the next 100 days.) And he got money to those in need (mostly) through the American Rescue Plan.
Having established that government can work, he’s pushing for more of it, and associating that project with the ability for democracy to function, setting up a race between democracy and autocracy for control of the globe. It sounds pretty stark, but FDR used this rhetorical technique in his day to good effect, at a time during the Depression when people wondered if democracy was worth salvaging and openly pining for an American dictator. Harold brilliantly deconstructs all that, go read it.
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