Did Biden's State of the Union Turn the Tables?

Plus: Advocates warn a key program to protect our Afghan allies is in danger.

Everybody have a good time with the State of the Union last night? Joe Biden was energetic enough that Republicans swapped their “Sleepy Joe” insults for wild speculation about amphetamine use, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dressed to impress, and Sen. Katie Britt gave the official Republican response from her kitchen in a speech that—in a rare display of bipartisan unity—was panned by pretty much everybody for its dramatic school-play cadence.

For us, Biden’s line of the night may have come after the speech was already over. Rep. Jerry Nadler came up to congratulate him: “Nobody’s gonna talk about cognitive impairment now!” 

“I kinda wish sometimes I was cognitively impaired,” the president responded.

It’s been quite the week! Happy Friday.

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A Very Political State of the Union

President Joe Biden delivers the annual State of the Union address. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool / Getty Images.)

Biden didn’t waste time last night in making the stakes of 2024 clear, as Gabe Schoenfeld writes: 

Biden opened by recollecting Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union address from January 1941. “I address you . . . at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union,” FDR had said. Freedom and democracy were on the line. “President Roosevelt’s purpose,” explained Biden, “was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.” We are once again at such a profoundly important turning point—only today, the threat to freedom and democracy is not just abroad, but here at home. “My purpose tonight,” said Biden “is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment, either.”

Biden blasted the MAGA Republicans who are blocking military aid to Ukraine. And he appealed to the American people, explaining that, if permitted to trample Ukraine, Vladimir Putin won’t stop there. Europe itself is under threat. “Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking.” Yet the aid is being blocked by “those who want to walk away from our world leadership.” To powerful effect, Biden contrasted Ronald Reagan, who told Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down this wall,” to Trump, who told Putin to “do whatever the hell you want.” “A former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. And it’s unacceptable.”

Biden deftly transitioned from Ukraine to the events of January 6th. This is a “moment to speak the truth and to bury the lies” about that dark episode in our political history. “You can’t love your country only when you win,” was the zinger with which he stung Donald Trump.

It’s a good zinger and a fair point. The question is: Will the voters agree in November?

Is it fair to turn so quickly to politics? I think it is. I say this not as criticism, just as a statement of fact: This was obviously a very political speech. Is it likely to “work” on those grounds?

According to the poll averages from the wizards at FiveThirtyEight, President Biden’s approval rating yesterday stood at 38 percent approval, 56 percent disapproval. That reflected some deterioration over the past year: On March 7, 2023, Biden was at 43 percent approval, 51 percent disapproval.

No one speech can singlehandedly reverse that trend. But it’s conceivable the State of the Union could mark an inflection point—a moment when the political dynamic is altered.

Of course, it would be helpful if the speech simply reassured and reinvigorated Biden supporters. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But if Biden’s main task is to get his approval rating stabilized or even moving up a bit, he would want to see some movement among persuadable voters.

Does Biden’s approval rating matter much? I think so. It’s true that he will try to make this election in large part about Trump, about the prospect of a Trump second term. He should make this election in large part about Trump and the prospect of a Trump second term. That question should be front and center in voters’ minds in November.

Still, Biden is the incumbent. The election is going to be at least in part a referendum on him. So if you’re a Biden supporter,  you’d want to see the beginning of at least some movement of the approval numbers in the right direction in the coming weeks.

CNN’s snap poll of speech viewers was mildly encouraging, with Biden getting generally positive remarks. But as CNN pointed out, State of the Union speeches are almost always received favorably at first hearing, and in fact Biden’s favorable ratings for last night were actually a bit lower than the positive marks he received a year ago. And of course even those had very little lasting political effect.

So it’s too early to tell if this is a big moment, a small moment, or no moment at all in the trajectory of the Biden re-election campaign.

In a conversation last month, Doug Sosnik, former political director in the Bill Clinton White House, pointed out that the next three or four months or so of the race are crucial. For all the hoopla of the conventions in the summer, for all the frenetic full-time campaigning in the fall, history suggests that the spring is when voters’ judgments—especially about an incumbent—really settle in.

Will we be more cheerful then? More despondent?

We’ll know more by Memorial Day.

Maybe.

—William Kristol

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Will Selber, The Bulwark’s military affairs fellow, is an Afghanistan vet who’s been knee deep in American efforts—both governmental and private—to aid the Afghans who for years assisted our forces during the war in Afghanistan. Now, he writes, Congress is poised to cut many of those Afghans off at the knees:

Will We Abandon Our Afghan Allies?

As Congress scrambles to hash out a short-term package to fund half the federal government before a March 22 deadline, veterans of the war in Afghanistan are sounding the alarm that a key government program may be left on the cutting room floor.

America’s messy exit from Afghanistan in 2021 created an urgent moral need: Ensuring that we were not abandoning the Afghan allies who had helped U.S. forces during the two-decade war to slaughter at the hands of the triumphant Taliban. The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which Congress enacted under the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, provides a path to the United States for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government for at least one year.

But the program has a hard statutory cap. Congress has authorized the issuance of 38,500 visas; of those, only 8,000 slots remain. Yet 130,000 applications still need to be processed, and more applications come in daily. At the current pace, the government estimates that limit will be hit by August. Given the gridlocked state of Congress, the pending round of must-pass spending legislation may prove the only viable vehicle to raise that cap in time—but there’s been little indication that key policymakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, see it as a priority in the ongoing negotiations.

“The Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly requested Congress authorize 20,000 more Afghan SIVs to stand with those who stood alongside our troops, diplomats, and development professionals during 20 years of war in Afghanistan,” a National Security Council spokesman told The Bulwark. “We are on track to use all remaining visa numbers this Fiscal Year and need Congress to act. While this program has enjoyed bipartisan support for years, a minority of congressional Republicans are refusing to do what’s necessary to meet our promise to Afghans who sacrificed alongside us.”

“The SIV program enjoys 89 percent support from the American public, and 75 percent of Republicans support it,” Shawn Van Diver, president of #AfghanEvac, told The Bulwark.

Congress’s failure to include this extension would be another betrayal of America’s combat veterans. However, it would not be the first. Earlier this year, the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would place those Afghans already in the United States on a path toward permanent residency, once again stalled out in Congress. However, unlike the Afghan Adjustment Act, the SIV program is already congressionally mandated. In essence, all that would be required to keep the program functioning is an administrative extension.

“This is a catastrophic moral failure and a willful one at that,” said Kate Kovarovic, a volunteer who has helped Afghans relocate since 2021. “If we want to maintain any semblance of integrity and live up to our promises to the Afghan people, there is only one option: maintain and expand the SIV program without interruption or delay.”

Failure to extend the SIV program this year would be a devastating blow to tens of thousands of American combat veterans who, like me, are already reeling from moral injury and combat PTSD. It would send an unmistakable signal to America’s allies about our reliability, too.

“We promised our allies we would be there for them,” said Afghan combat veteran Max Kimmel. “Congress might forget about these promises, but our allies won’t.”

—Will Selber

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Catching up . . .

• U.S. economy adds 275,000 jobs in February as unemployment rate jumps: Axios

• Sen. Robert Menendez and wife are charged with obstruction of justice: New York Times

• Are Biden and the Democrats finally turning on Israel? Vox

• Biden portrays next phase of economic agenda as middle-class lifeline: New York Times

• Why women were wearing white at the State of the Union: Washington Post

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Quick Hits: ‘He Can Win’

We mentioned the Schoenfeld piece above, but the whole thing is worth reading: “I’ve been a pessimist about Joe Biden’s chances to get re-elected this November,” he writes on the site today. “His tired appearance, his shuffling gait, his gaffes—the intense media attention on all of this was dragging him down and setting the stage for the unthinkable return of Donald Trump. Thursday night’s State of the Union address has gone a great distance to cure me of my pessimism. Biden’s performance was electrifying. Watching it, you can’t help but think: He can win.”

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