Dear Progressive Reader,

Thursday night, President Joe Biden presented his annual State of the Union speech to the U.S. Congress and the American public. The timing was a bit unusual (the speech has usually been delivered in January) and, since it followed the “Super Tuesday” primary contest that left Biden and Donald Trump as the presumptive nominees for their political parties, it was sometimes unclear whether Biden was delivering a campaign speech or a report to the nation.

For most of the first century or so of the country’s existence (1801-1913) the State of the Union was delivered to Congress as a written document. It was Woodrow Wilson who began the modern tradition of delivering the report as a speech. The requirement in Article II of the U.S. Constitution is simply stated as: “[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Biden seemed to consciously tick off all the boxes: He was energetic, but also seemed casual and even engaged in some off-script repartee with members of the audience (like a nightclub comedian, quipped one commentator). The speech was also full of policy–both a listing of things achieved and an announcement of things yet to come. For those looking for the Constitutional request of information and recommendations, those were there. For those looking for Biden to squarely address the issues around his age and ability to serve, he did that forcefully. “I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” he joked. “And when you get to my age certain things become clearer than ever before.” The speech clocked in at sixty-seven minutes—exactly average for all of Biden’s previous speeches, and similar to Barack Obama’s average (and only slightly shorter than his most verbose predecessors Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, but longer than any other President in the past sixty years).

As a campaign speech, Biden did a good job of addressing the issues that voters are concerned about. Besides age, Biden took on concerns about the economy—saying “our economy is the envy of the world!” He also addressed concerns over the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza by announcing the plan to build a “temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

On the economy, however, he may have missed an important point. In the 1992 election, a slogan wielded against George H.W. Bush said, “If you think the economy is working, ask someone who isn’t.” This is true for today as well. While not specifically an unemployment issue, the prices people pay for food and housing remain high, and voters feel that. Even though inflation is going down (from 9.1 percent down to about 3 percent) the prices are not going back to pre-pandemic levels. As one young economic analyst pointed out last night, “firms are out there just raising prices, and their telling you that in their earnings reports—they’re like, yea, we’re going to expand our profits.” This is an issue that it may be more difficult for Biden to address, since he said Thursday, and has repeatedly told the country, “Look, I’m a capitalist. If you want to make a million bucks—great!”

In the meantime, Trump’s campaign (in spite of his constant legal jeopardy) continues to move forward. As Bill Blum writes this week, if Trump were to be re-elected, he already has his eye on adding an even more conservative judge to the Supreme Court. And, of course Trump already has a lot of friends on the Court as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates. The Wisconsin presidential primary is not for a few more weeks, but Ruth Conniff is already looking at the numbers and threats of a possible Trump victory in her state. “There’s a horror movie quality to Trump’s return—rising again despite his ninety-one felony counts, his incitement of a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol based on the lie that victory was ‘stolen’ from him in 2020, and his increasingly unhinged declarations that he will be a dictator on Day One, root out leftwing ‘vermin’ and stop immigrants who are ‘poisoning the blood’ of our country,” she notes.

Elsewhere on our website this week, Tamara Dean reports on an environmental victory in Michigan; Jeff Abbott describes a new trilateral agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala on migration; and, just before the Oscars are announced, Curtis Asplund reminds us that the nuclear threats depicted in the film Oppenheimer are still very much with us today. Also, Eleanor J. Bader reviews the new book Fight Like Mad, which talks about the movements that have arisen since the end of Roe v. Wade; and Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Dorian Warren pen an op-ed on the 1960s War on Poverty. “The War on Poverty was successful as far as it went,” they write, “It simply didn’t go far enough.” And, in an update to a story we ran last week by Jeff Abbott on the trial of former Honduran leader Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president was convicted in federal court in New York of drug trafficking on Friday.

Friday March 8 was International Women’s Day, “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality” and was first celebrated worldwide in 1911. A political button produced by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) during the 1980s read: “Listen to Women for a Change.” This week, at The Progressive, we celebrate that phrase in both of its meanings. Happy International Women’s Day 2024!

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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