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Your publication just published an article saying us 33-year-olds are the most important people in America. Not that Galen took that personally.
Hello and welcome to this late night State of the Union reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It's about half past 11 on the East Coast, and we've recently wrapped up listening to both Joe Biden's State of the Union address and Alabama Senator Katie Britt's Republican response to the State of the Union response.
They both covered significant ground. I think we can get into some of the topics specifically. But Joe Biden came out of the gate talking about democracy and freedom and then very quickly got into some issues that divide the Republican Party, such as Ukraine and IVF treatments and abortion.
Katie Brick came out of the gates talking about her family and painted a very bleak picture of the immigration system in America, talked about the economy as well. We're going to cover all of it, and we're going to try to use some polling to get a sense of why both of these folks talked about the issues the way that they did. We have a powerhouse team with us this evening. Joining us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Good evening, Galen.
So glad to have you. And we should say, I don't want to bury the lead. You were in the room while it was happening. I was in the room where it happened. Yeah. And I rushed home to be here on the podcast with you, Galen. What was it like?
It was really cool, actually. It was the first time I had ever covered a State of the Union in person. I was in the press gallery up on like with the kind of a view or right behind Biden. So I couldn't actually see him. And actually, the audio in the chamber was not very good. So I actually had some trouble hearing the speech. So I think I actually had a very different perception of the speech itself from from probably most Americans. But the flip side of that was that it was excellent people watching and I got to see all the members of Congress and
all their reactions to everything. And that was really interesting and cool. Ooh, I also had a non-traditional experience because I was covering it live on ABC radio. And so I was listening to the transmission coming out of the room in perfect time, but watching it on TV, like 30 seconds delayed. So I would have to try to match up what I was hearing with what I was seeing live.
30 seconds after the fact. In any case, hopefully Ruth and Julia had more straightforward experiences observing the State of the Union all
Also here with us is Ruth Egelnik, New York Times editor for News Surveys. Welcome back to the podcast, Ruth. Yeah, thanks for having me. I watched it here among my children's stuffed animals. So it's much more normal, but I did, much like you, I was trying to contribute to our live blog at the same time. And so be relevant at the moment it was speaking, but also, you know, be reactionary. And also joining us is political science professor at Marquette University, Julia Azari. Likewise, welcome back to the podcast.
Thank you so much. Yeah, I watched from home in a very unremarkable setting. But it is remarkable that you study the political science of presidencies. So the State of the Union is, is it fair to say this is your Super Bowl? People always ask me that about elections. And I'm like, uh-huh, no, it's absolutely not my Super Bowl. Like the Super Bowl is fun and exciting and you just eat snacks and watch.
cool advertisements and musical performances. That's not at all what elections are like. That's elections. So, Julia, what is your takeaway from the night?
Yeah, well, I did. I ate a lot of snacks. I want to be really upfront about that. So I think my takeaway is that actually one of the reactions I was seeing on Blue Sky that I thought made sense from other political scientists, a whole kind of range of areas of expertise was that Biden said,
makes people happy in this form. And honestly, this is a genre, I don't know, it kind of is my Super Bowl. Can I give you my ambivalence about the whole thing? On the one hand, it's kind of my Super Bowl because it feels like
having a normal country in a way that it kind of hasn't for the last eight years. And I kind of like the tradition and you do see people kind of talking across the aisle. And so I kind of like it for that reason. But on the other hand, the genre has honestly been pretty rough. As media has evolved and there have been more and more forms of people having access directly to the president,
I think that the State of the Union has seemed more and more sort of stultifying, but Biden is much more natural in that arena. And I think, you know, he does well kind of
teasing Republicans and riffing a little bit. And tonight he was pretty energized and he really, his speech writers really didn't, um, didn't waste any time kind of starting out with all of the, the main things that really unify the democratic party. Um, and at a time when there's a number of issues that, that don't.
Yeah, I I the first thing I picked up on was he dove into the wedge issues, right? You're strongest on your political feet when you're talking about an issue that unifies your party and divides the other party. And that is exactly the issues that he went to first with Ukraine and IVF and things like that.
Then he talked about things that everyone likes, basically, as regards the economy. You know, manufacturing. No one's going to trash American manufacturing. He talked about junk fees and, you know, tax credits for mortgages and rent, child tax credits. Then you get to the latter third of the speech, and he's talking about things like the war in Gaza. He's talking about...
gun violence. He's talking about some things that are maybe more, and immigration, of course, that divide his party more and unite maybe Republicans a little bit more. Ruth, you are joining us after the New York Times released a really big slate of polling that got into the details of how Biden is performing on the issues, how Trump is performing on the issues, how Americans feel about them. It was super detailed. We've talked about it on the podcast, I think a couple times, actually. So it's great to have you here with us,
What did you make of maybe both the State of the Union and the response, given the amount of data that you've been pouring over?
Yeah, so I think based on what we see in our data, I'll take a sort of controversial take against what you both said, which is that I think it took him a long time to get to the economy. I think that that's something that showed up in our data as hugely important to people, the most important thing to people, particularly to these swing voters that he's trying to win back. And it took Biden a long time to get to the economy. He touched on democracy and abortion before that, which, as you guys point out, are unifying issues for his base.
But if he's looking to reach out to swing voters, which isn't necessarily the goal of the State of the Union, then it took him a while to get to the economy. By contrast, in the response, she got to the economy and immigration right away, which are issues that are hugely important to swing voters that showed up in our polling. And so I really saw those two things side by side and thought one of these people is really trying to speak to swing voters and one of these people, I mean, Biden was trying to speak to swing voters, but he started by, you know, sort of unifying his base and pointing to those issues first.
It's interesting that you say that, Ruth. I took it to be that both Britt and Biden basically lined up the issues in order from my party performs best on this issue to my party performs worst on this issue. And for Republicans, it is immigration. And so starting with immigration, I mean, she started by talking about her family, which she later couched.
in vitro fertilization as part of her being a mom and supporting families and children. But then she immediately got to immigration that when you compare Trump to Biden, Republicans to Democrats,
Republicans do the best on that issue compared to like any of the other issues. And then she went to the economy. And then at this point, my mind is blinking. But then she eventually talked about in vitro fertilization. And she talked about, you know, the moon landing and some optimism and whatever. But on the other side for Democrats, like,
they aren't performing the best on the issues that are most important to Americans. And so Biden started with the few issues where he does outpoll Trump and Republicans, which is basically democracy and abortion. And Ukraine, actually, I don't even know about Ukraine. Maybe you can tell me who's trusted more on the issue of Ukraine, Republicans or Democrats. You know, we haven't asked that directly, but we certainly have more Democrats than Republicans in support of the aid package. So
So, you know, he was smart to bring that up and push that to the front. But the other thing I'll bring up from our polling that –
was pretty front and center and I know was upsetting to a lot of people was that we did focus on Biden's age. And part of his sort of mandate here tonight was to try to change the story on that and really give a good performance. And I think by most measures, he did do a good job and gave a good performance. I think people had sort of lowered expectations and Biden was able to meet those in a way that I think a lot of Democrats are really happy about. I certainly saw that a lot on social media. So.
Yeah, I think he really benefited from the lower expectations there. Yeah, the speech was very forceful. I think a lot of Democrats in particular were very happy with it, certainly the ones in the chamber were. And he had moments where he kind of trailed off or made minor flubs, but honestly, anybody who's seen him speak knows that that's how he felt.
speaks, especially nowadays. So I'm not sure that those really landed. You kind of like got used to them throughout the speech. You kind of like, I think, mentally priced them in. And then the age thing was interesting too because at the end of the speech, he actually brought it up and he like made a few jokes about like, you've been around as long as I have.
you know, like I've been called young, I've been called old. And he kind of like addressed it like head on, which I think was interesting. But again, like, you know, I'm not sure how many swing voters were watching tonight. Not very many, but, but I did think it was an interesting strategy into the extent it's a preview of maybe what he'll do in, on the actual campaign trail and in debates and stuff like that. Then that's interesting. Yeah. When it comes to the age issue, I'm sure it's a little bit of a choose your own adventure. Like people who want to see Biden as like,
old and having difficulty delivering a speech like this, you could absolutely point to moments where that was the case. If you want to see Biden as able to win an election against Donald Trump and vigorous enough to do it, you could also see that. I mean, he was really there was one of our colleagues at ABC counted the number of exclamation points used in his prepared remarks. And it was just everything had an exclamation point. And he was essentially shouting more or less the entire time.
But when it comes to going off script, and it was maybe some of those off script moments that felt a little more vigorous where he was going back and forth with the House. One of the places where he did go off script in a way that Democrats are actually not happy about is that Marjorie Taylor Greene asked him to say the name of the woman at University of Georgia who was allegedly killed by somebody who was in this country illegally.
She asked him to say her name, Lakin Riley. He said her name and said that it was called the person, the accused, an illegal, which the response from Democrats has been no person is illegal. Some Democrats. Some Democrats. It's an interesting thing because like,
The way that we use language in this situation has become such a political flashpoint. And in a speech where he was trying to flip the script a little bit on immigration, he also used the language that Republicans use when they talk about immigrants who are in the country illegally, which I thought was notable, whether it was intentional or not. Yeah.
I don't know. And I will say for a certain set of swing voters, I'm not sure that that's going to matter as much. I think it did upset some people, some Democrats, particularly on the left. But that's not necessarily who he's trying to win with some of these arguments, particularly on immigration.
Right. I will say one of the interesting things sitting inside of the chamber was looking at the reaction of squad members to the speech. And for example, Rashid Tlaib, who, of course, is Palestinian American and who kind of endorsed the uncommitted campaign in Michigan against
Biden actually notably did not stand for any of Biden's applause lines, which seemed like it was probably a purposeful choice, even ones that were not related to Israel or anything like that. But to bring it back to immigration, the squad was generally, other than Tlaib, was generally approving of everything that Biden said, except on immigration. They did not clap for any of the things that he said, basically on immigration.
I mean, it does kind of get to the question of who the speech was for, because I think that contrast that a couple of you raised a bit ago really makes a lot of sense. The Katie Britt speech seemed very clearly kind of aimed at the
the center at the swing voter and trying to cut away from some GOP stereotypes. The Biden speech to me actually seemed much more aimed at consolidating the party. And we can debate about the kind of logic of those strategies. But one of the areas where he's been vulnerable on the left has been on immigration. And so it won't surprise me if that flub gets some press for the next couple of days. I don't know if it's going to really change anybody's mind in November. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that, I mean, in general, I don't think the speech really matters much for November. I had a whole article on FiveThirtyEight yesterday about how the State of the Union really doesn't matter very much politically. But I definitely agree that that moment, I know, I know, we're still going to talk about the speech for another 20 minutes, guys. We can just pretend for one night.
I mean, it is interesting, kind of as Julia said at the beginning, it is still like noteworthy as like a marker in history. But anyway, I think that that moment aside about Lake and Riley, which I think was like pretty anathema to the Democratic base, or at least like the progressive side of the party. I do think the speech was probably in game geared toward the Democratic base. And I think that's actually smart.
Because the viewing audience for the State of Union tends to be heavily weighted toward the party of the president. So, for example, in last year's speech, according to a poll taken by CNN immediately after the speech, 41 percent of the audience were Democrats and only 31 percent were Republicans. And so and of course, as Julianne Ruth mentioned, like Biden is right.
is kind of weak on his left flank or with his base. A lot of Democrats don't really aren't in love with him. And a lot of them are maybe considering staying home or at least kind of expressively responding that they're not going to vote for him right now. And that is definitely the
easiest way for him to make up ground in the way in the polls that he is trailing Trump in, to the extent that he had a democratic leaning audience tonight. I think it made total sense that he leaned into issues like, you know, democracy, and abortion and, you know, economic populism.
Well, and I will say, I know we're all very data-based, but some anecdata. I got a text from a friend in Missouri who is a strong Democrat and plans to support Biden, but comes from a family that has voted for both Democrats and Republicans. And he said, Sleepy Joe is really living up to his name tonight. So it does make me wonder how clips from this speech are going to play outside of the sort of Washington bubble.
Yeah, I mean, to that effect, Nathaniel, I think you've found that on average, these kinds of speeches two weeks after the fact have a net effect of...
two percent uh two two percentage points yeah exactly so according to the historical average and within the two weeks following the state of the union address um the president's approval rating changes by an average of two percentage points but that's a change in any direction just as often it goes up as goes down which i think basically tells you i don't think that like people are like react being like that was a bad speech minus two points uh i think people i think it's just random fluctuations slash other events happening in the news like a few years back
Trump gave his State of the Union address like right after the government shut down and his approval rating went up after that. But it was probably because like people were pissed off at him during the government shutdown and then kind of that stabilized afterwards. So, yeah, like it's not it doesn't seem to have a very big impact on presidential approval ratings.
Okay, but there are a couple numbers that stick out here to me, which is that Bill Clinton's first State of the Union address and his State of the Union address in 1998, his approval ticked up immediately.
percentage points and then 10 percentage points? Do we have some historical data to explain that away? Or was Bill Clinton just truly an orator for the ages and could move his approval rating 10 points with just one speech? Well, first of all, back then, the American public was a lot more persuadable and less polarized. Second of all, I believe in 98, there was...
Clinton was dealing with like the Monica Lewinsky scandal and stuff like that around this time, which I think would suspect had a much and obviously, well, maybe not obviously, we don't remember, but like the Republican Republicans who kind of went after Clinton ended up being a backlash against that that led to Democrats doing unusually well in 1998 midterms, which obviously are normally bad for the president's party. So I'm actually not sure what happened in 93. But again, I think outside events are more likely to be responsible for that.
Yeah, and I'll just add to that. The approval ratings right now are sort of like
Historically, they're a lot more reactive to events. And now with polarization, historic rating or approval ratings, excuse me, are incredibly stable and barely move. I mean, there was this whole concept of Teflon Don that nothing moved his approval rating. But that's the case with Biden also. Very little moves his approval rating. And that has a lot to do with polarization more than anything. So it's more that we're sort of converging into that world than anything unique to Clinton, per se. Yeah, I was going to point that out and also point out that Clinton had kind of a
dip in popularity pretty early on in his first term. I also think the media environment is probably related to some of that. There's sort of less to compete with a televised presidential speech in the 90s, and now we're just sort of saturated with political information. Okay, so our very dutiful producers did some counting throughout the speech tonight. I
looking at mentions. And one thing that I'll just name a couple of the words that we tracked that stuck out. First of all, the one that stuck out the most to me was fair, fair, got 13 mentions. And to compare that to some other things, you know, Putin got six mentions. Uh, Israel got nine mentions. Prices got six mentions. Freedom got nine mentions. Democracy got seven economy got seven, uh,
Gaza got four commitment to diversity, equality, justice got 12. But, you know, maybe perhaps similar in a similar vein, fair got 13 mentions. And he used fair when talking about taxes. He used fair when talking about housing and all different kinds of things. I can sort of imagine what he's doing here. But is there something in there, Ruth, that jibes with what you've seen in the polls?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a sense that inequality is a huge problem and particularly sort of around economic inequality. And so talking about fairness, fairness in terms of housing, fairness in terms of wages, like that very much fits with with our polling and what we see in our polling. So I didn't know that before, but that makes a lot of sense.
And those are smart themes for them to be hitting that meets what a lot of people in the electorate are thinking about and are worried about. And to our earlier point about the Democratic base, there's certainly a lot of concern about fairness there that goes beyond economic fairness. And so I think...
It doesn't surprise me that that was a theme that was hit heavily in the speech. You know, you heard folks at some point late last year saying, OK, the reelection script that Biden needs to use is Barack Obama's 2012 election script. And I'm not exactly sure why people have quite glommed on to 2012, except that it was he was the last time a Democratic president was reelected.
But that was the theme, right? Barack Obama said during one of the debates, like, well, I don't make it. There's not as much money in my bank account as in your bank account and made Mitt Romney almost into a caricature of this sort of
baron of business who like works for the consulting firms that are hollowing out the middle of america and you know romney helped himself by saying that a large chunk of americans don't care because they don't pay taxes but uh eight years later mit romney was basically the only republican applauding at anything that biden said exactly um but maybe that sort of stuck out to me as like
this is their way of trying to recreate that 2012 dynamic, in a sense. And I think that that's probably true. I have a colleague who's written about
about, uh, kind of the political psychology of economic inequality. And one of the things that, that she's found is it really matters who you compare yourself to. Um, and that's kind of what's going on with the Obama thing is like people are, are sort of roused in a certain way when you compare them to people who are richer than them. Um, but I think there's something else going on if I can get like a little rhetorical. Um, I think that fairness is
Sort of a way that that Democratic leaders talk about equality without having to talk more, you know, straightforwardly about gender or race. I mean, Biden did do that in other parts of the speech, but to sort of put it in this rhetorical framework that is about a kind of universal what everyone is entitled to.
and universal equality rather than just talk about here's this group and here's that group, which is something that Democrats have been accused of by both by Republican opponents, but then also I think within the party of kind of like you're treating people like a checklist. It gives it a little bit more of a foundation to talk about fairness and then you can link it to the economy or you can link it to other types of policies and concerns. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.
Do we want to say anything more about Biden's State of the Union before we move on to Katie Britt's response?
I mean, one thing I'll say is, you know, he obviously addressed Gaza and the aid package to Gaza, which was certainly a smart move politically, because we found from our December poll to our February poll that there was a lot of movement in the Democratic Party towards sympathy and concern about Palestinians. And so I think that's a place where he was absolutely, you know, thinking about that when he was coming up with the speech and coming up with the plan. So I thought that was a really interesting move.
It was also one of the areas where we got new policy proposals. I mean, a lot of the things that he talked about were things that we've heard him talk about before, even the junk fees and the fairness there. I mean, the tax credit on mortgages and rents was new policy. It was $400 a month for two years was the specific policy that he asked to be passed.
But the setting up a port in the Mediterranean in order to bring aid to Gazans was a new policy. And it's before you oftentimes hear a laundry list of like, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And we have a moonshot bill and like all of this different stuff.
It was we got a little bit of that towards the end, like we can do this and we can do this and we can do this. But in terms of new policy that no one had really heard about before today, that was one of the main things. Right.
On the other end of the seriousness spectrum, I think we should talk about the chip bag sizes. That was... Shrinkflation? Yeah, exactly. Shrinkflation. That was amazing. Well, he was doing this difficult dance of, like, every time he criticized corporations, he would be like, and here you me. I was a senator from Delaware. I love a corporation. Like, I know a good corporation like the back of my hand, but they also got to pay their taxes or, like, they can't sniff me on chips. And it's like...
I don't know, that is capitalism, right? Like you're going to regulate the chip companies into telling them how many chips they can put in a bag. But at the same time, this matters probably more than anything else he said in a speech to people, you know, on a day-to-day basis. So I think it's an important line to throw in there. I mean, this is something that's really important to people. We didn't always have labels that said the nutrition facts and stuff too, right? Like these things actually do change. Yeah, no, I'm mostly being facetious here.
But it is like notable, right, that the president of the United States is talking about how many Doritos are in a Doritos bag. But like, I think the Democratic Party has taken seriously the sort of message of popularism, which is just try to talk as much as possible about things that are popular, right?
We've gotten into this on podcasts in the past where, I mean, my argument is that if you only talk about the things that are that real popularism is running on policies that are popular. And it means sometimes stealing your opponent's positions when they are popular and still talking about them. So by only talking about the things that you feel like the Democratic Party can already own or policies that you think are popular.
are popular and then never talking about immigration or not talking much about immigration for three years as the country sees that the material situation on the ground significantly changes and reacts in the polls and isn't happy with the administration creates a situation now for Biden where it will be very, very, very hard for him to gain credibility on the issue because so much credibility has been lost. And now the popular position resides on
the right side of the political spectrum, to the extent even now that, for example, building a border wall from end to end on the southern border is a majority opinion. It's a fascinating thing to witness, right? Because when Trump was running in 2016, I mean, this was something that was certainly not a majority issue. And now when we look at people who have moved towards Trump, the initial, so like off of our last few polls, right, we've seen a lot of movement among Black and Hispanic voters, and particularly younger Hispanic voters. And there's a lot of
people saying, but what about the wall? And the truth is that's a majority favorable opinion now in a way that it didn't used to be. And so those kind of issues aren't bothering people in the same way that they were in 2016. People are seeing, like you said, seeing the situation at the border, seeing this on their TVs, they're concerned and they're looking for somebody to give them some leadership there. And that's coming from the Republican Party right now. Speaking of, let's talk about Senator from Alabama, Katie Britt.
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young, well, for Senate standards, woman from Alabama. I think the question was, how directly is she going to address the issue of IVF? Because the Supreme Court of Alabama ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children, which meant that the treatment wasn't provided by many clinics in Alabama for weeks. Alabama's legislature recently passed legislation and the governor signed legislation that would ensure that
these treatment centers wouldn't be legally liable or what have you so that treatments could resume. But definitely speaking of majority opinions, like on the wrong side of like upwards of 90% of Americans, that approach to IVF, what did we make of her speech?
She addressed it pretty head on. I mean, I thought it was, you know, it was certainly speaking to the moment and she didn't mince words. She said this is important. This is something we'll protect in her state with her state Supreme Court, which I thought was a really interesting move, given that some Republicans have sort of danced around it. She was very direct.
Yeah, that's that's certainly true. I mean, I thought her speech in general was I mean, it's very interesting in the sense that it was it had a lot of Trump themes, but not a lot of Trump.
which is very interesting given that we're coming off of Trump essentially becoming the party's presumptive nominee. I think it fell sort of... It had some of the pitfalls that these always have. They're just kind of an awkward setting. It's a difficult setting, and people have to kind of articulate a response to the speech and what the party's doing going forward, and it always ends up being, I think, a little bit awkward. Yeah.
And I will add, importantly, I mean, there was no mention of Trump, but she is being talked about as one of the top VP contenders for Trump. And one of my colleagues, Jonathan Swan, had a piece up tonight saying that explicitly, which he's been saying for a couple of weeks now. So in a lot of ways, this was an audition to be sort of like a warmer, fuzzier Trump. And she did get a lot of those messages across.
Yeah, I just want to say I did not watch the rebuttal since I was in transit to this very podcast. But it's not unusual that she wouldn't mention Trump. These speeches obviously have become more partisan and Biden's was basically a campaign speech. But the one line that has yet to be crossed, that maybe will be crossed at some point, is that you don't mention your opponent by name. And Biden repeatedly said, my predecessor, he didn't say Trump.
specifically. And I guess for Britt, Trump isn't the opponent, but it would be crossing a clear line to basically make the subtext text by saying, Trump is the candidate. Vote for Trump, basically. And so I don't think it's unusual that she didn't say Trump's name. Actually, to that point, Nathaniel,
My predecessor was tied for the most commonly mentioned word during Biden's State of the Union speech. So fairness was 13. My predecessor was also 13. So there you go. In case people didn't know who his predecessor was, that is who he was talking about. I was wondering. But yeah, the...
Julia, you bring up a really good point in that it was, we know, I mean, to the extent that political nerds and people who pay attention to this stuff know who Katie Bray is, is her identity is as
an affable person who was well-liked by both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, like almost in a rare way. She's sort of stayed under the radar as somebody who can work with both people who hasn't been labeled, you know, the establishment or a rhino or whatever as a result. But the speech, like she came out of the gates talking about
immigration in really graphic way, like talking about a migrant being raped by the cartels over and over and over again, you know, the kind of speech that you are more accustomed to hearing Donald Trump give.
I think that we've said that her speech was geared towards swing voters. And I think that's ultimately true, but still an interesting choice of a way to sort of get swing voters on your side. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many swing voters are watching the rebuttal to the state of the union. Um,
But it's a deep cut. Yeah, it's a deep cut. But she did have this more sort of moving away from some of the, I guess I would call it maybe partisan stereotypes.
in her speech. And part of it was, as you pointed out, Nathaniel, it's normal to not treat that as a campaign speech. Nothing about Trump's relationship with the GOP has been normal in terms of those boundaries. They've very deeply taken over state and local parties. He's
you know, going to have his daughter-in-law as one of the co-chairs of the RNC, like whatever that wall of separation has traditionally been, part of Trumpism has been to erode it. And so it's interesting. I mean, this speaks to my comment earlier about why I like the State of the Union as sort of like
Like having some vestiges and legacies of that other era of politics, a little more institutional separation. And so I think it was an example of that. But it was also very interesting in the way that it did seem to be ducking some of those more Trumpist themes. Right. Hot take, Julia. Yeah.
I think that with the whole like heckling and talking back and forth and people yelling at the president and the president reacting in real time, that some of that sort of old school state of the union vibe is eroding and it's becoming more similar, although still very far away from the prime minister's questions, which in my opinion is a much better way of doing things. The, the,
Members of Parliament actually get to ask the prime minister pointed questions, accuse them this way, that way, challenge them on their policies or approach or whatever. And they have to answer in real time. I mean, can you imagine if we had our presidents do that? I think that would be amazing. That would be a lot of fun if it was if they were more substantive questions. But to me, it seems more like, you know, it's like live Twitter. It's like live action Twitter. Yeah.
Okay, Nathaniel, Ruth, are you more, are you pro-State of the Union or pro-PMQs? I think I'm maybe a little more pro-State of the Union, not because I don't enjoy a good back and forth. And I actually think Biden handled it really well in this speech. But Julia, what you said stuck with me, which is that if it's substantive, and so far we're not seeing the heckling and the back and forth being very substantive. I think if they're more substantive questions...
Hold on, hold on, hold on. I know, gasp. Hold on. No, this is an earnest gasp. Literally, last year's State of the Union resulted in settling an actual policy question over the future of Social Security cuts. That's true, that's true. That is a substantive policy issue. And they panned to Marjorie Taylor Greene during that, and she was feverishly taking notes. And actually, Nathaniel, I wonder if you were able to see that better when you were in the chamber. But that did come up again. Alas, no.
Yeah, you're right. That's true. And this time, this time, the heckling back and forth was about whether or not to renew the Trump tax cuts. And he said, these folks want a two trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy and they don't want companies, corporations paying their fair share. And they said, like, boo, you're a liar, whatever it was. Again, you might have a better sense of what they said, basically.
I'm on board. Let's bring on the heckling. The heckling is on some of the most relevant policy questions. The actual purse strings that Congress is responsible for. The heckling is going in the wrong direction, right? Wait, what's that? It's going in the wrong direction, right? Like it's not holding Biden to account. And in theory, that's the direction you want it to go, right? Yeah.
Wait, he was held to account. He said Lake and Riley's name. That's true. Yeah, and I noticed in Katie Britt's speech they had to edit it because it seemed as though she was going to say he didn't say the name. And then she said he says the name, but then she had a clause saying it wasn't good enough. I don't remember what the clause was. But yeah, I don't think they expected that.
Yeah. And he took, I mean, this is obviously not an actual funny subject. It's like terrible that this woman was killed, but he took the button from Marjorie Taylor green and held it up and said, you know, I would, I know what it's like to lose children. Um,
I mean, that was a very notable moment from the speech, I will say, as sort of cynical as we can be on this podcast. Okay. Closing thoughts, remarks, comments that it is now a quarter past midnight. And this is our second late night podcast this week, in case you couldn't tell from my performance, which is rusty at best.
I mean, for me, as I said at the top, like coming into it, I was thinking a lot about the age question because we had these majorities of voters and especially majorities of Democrats saying that Biden was too old. I think he addressed it pretty well in the speech when he addressed it head on. But I also think Republicans were smart to draw that contrast with Katie Britt. And she talked about it a lot. She talked about the age piece. She drew that contrast.
So I think that, to me, was a really sort of interesting takeaway. I think that they both actually handled the age question pretty well. I mean, I guess I would just say, like, you know, it was a very campaign-esque speech, but I think...
It's a presidential election year. That is what you're going to get. You're not going to get something that's super policy heavy, although he did get into policies, but it wasn't really in a, it was more in a campaigning on policies way than in a like, you know, pass this policy way.
But yeah, I think that's to be expected. So some data that I pulled up from a couple of political scientists, Donna Hoffman and Alison Howard, they track how many requests the president makes of Congress every year. And in the average year, the president makes 33 requests of Congress. And I don't have a count for Congress.
for this year. But in presidential election years, that number tends to dip. So in 2016, when Obama, he was president, but obviously wasn't running for reelection, but it was an election year, and he was basically a lame duck. He only made five requests of Congress and instead kind of focused on like, we need to turn the temperature down in our rhetoric and stuff like that. In 2020, Trump made only 12 requests of Congress that year. And that was the year that it was coming off his impeachment. And he was, you know, touting how great America, the economy was and everything like that. And I think
closey tour of the speech. And that was, I think, probably until this year, the speech, the State of the Union address that most people were like, oh, my God, that was so partisan. And so in that sense, I think the speech was never going to be very State of the Union-y. And therefore, it's not surprising that we got essentially a campaign speech.
Yeah, I think that the thing that the State of the Union can do is really allow presidents to kind of speak for and unify their parties. And I think Biden's speech, it seems like Biden's speechwriters were really acutely aware of that. And I think the other thing I'll say about kind of Biden-style State of the Unions is
I don't totally dislike the kind of live action Twitter. Um, and Galen, you've convinced me that it's even maybe more substantial than, than I thought. Uh, not, it's not quite question time. No, but we would love, I would, I would personally. Oh yeah. I,
I'm always jealous when I interact with British journalists or British political coverage. They all seem like they're having a lot more fun. What could be more fun than this? Oh, boy. You know, Julia, nothing. And on that note, we're going to say goodnight. Thank you, Nathaniel, Ruth, and Julia. Thanks, Galen. Thank you.
Thank you. My name is Galen Drew. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chartavian. And our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening. And we will see you soon. Bye.