I haven't yet watched President Biden's SOTU. But I've read about the populist schtick in the speech. And his accusation that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. And a “make no mistake” comment or two.
As they say: it's great to be the king and vent any way you want without having to worry that the “fact-checkers” will shred everything you said before breakfast.
Really, it's kinda cool. You spend two years implementing the Bernie agenda and represent it as stimulus and “inflation reduction,” and then you pirouette of a winter evening and all of a sudden you are out-Trumping Trump.
It's good to be the king.
But I wonder if there's a hidden downside. It's great tactically to be able to get away with everything, but maybe not strategically.
On my understanding of politics the big problem is that you can never admit you were wrong. That's because the war leader is really a demigod. He is leading us to the existential victory against the enemy.
Victory, not defeat. You'd better be right, or fill the Narrative hose with triumphal messaging that makes it look to everyone except conspiracy theorists that your defeat was really a stunning victory.
I think your Democratic friends have a problem. They don’t have to make their Narrative good enough to take out the regime media as a Trump or a DeSantis has to. You just say your piece and the regime media approves.
Our Democratic friends, it seems to me, have been in go-for-broke mode ever since the Dawn of Trump. They seem to be telling us that, really, they are desperate to avoid being sucked into the whirlpool of history. If Trump were the bumbling lightweight of the Narrative all this pedal-to-the-metal would be superfluous. Trump would shortly self-destruct and everything would go back to normal.
But, of course, if the President's advisors are putting a populist message into his SOTU they are telling us that Trump's populism is not just bubba bait for the deplorables but a genuine Thing, a Thing that our educated rulers will shortly and nobly bestow upon the peasants.
Who knew? They told us all that the liberal regime would last for a thousand years and shine with the light of a thousand suns.