Biden Starkly Lays Out the Stakes for 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden delivered one of the most political—and politically significant—State of the Union addresses in memory on Thursday night, laying out in the starkest of terms the stakes of the forthcoming election for the United States and the entire world.

Considering that the United States is not under direct threat of war, perhaps what was most striking about the speech was that Biden opened it by invoking President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union from January 1941, ahead of America’s entry into World War II. “I address you in a moment unprecedented in the history of the union,” Biden quoted FDR as saying.

“Now, it’s we who face an unprecedented moment,” Biden said. And then, without ever naming him, Biden cast his almost-certain 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, in the menacing role of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. If that were not enough, Biden immediately went on to identify Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement with the Confederates who seceded from the union.

“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today,” Biden said. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the very same time.”

In other words, the president seemed to be saying, the nation faces in Trump an even more perilous threat today than FDR and Abraham Lincoln—generally considered two of the greatest U.S. presidents in history—did individually. Biden then proceeded to lambaste his “predecessor”—as he repeatedly called Trump—over and over. Biden accused Trump of “bowing down” to Russian President Vladimir Putin over his Ukraine invasion; fomenting political violence at home (“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said); sounding like a fascist by saying immigrants are “poison in the blood of our country”; and shrugging his shoulders over endemic gun violence.

Biden repeatedly sounded the theme of the combined domestic and foreign threat posed by Trump: that is, peace in peril abroad, democracy undermined at home. “If the United States walks away, it will put Ukraine at risk. Europe is at risk. The free world will be at risk, emboldening others to what they wish to do us harm,” he said. “History is watching. Just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.”

One thing is clear: Biden and his team were intent on overcoming, all at once, the cascading doubts about his age (81) and his record that have left him with grim approval ratings, virtually turning him into an underdog against Trump with just eight months to go. The president waited until the end of his nearly 70-minute speech to confront the single biggest issue of his reelection bid—his age—but he did it forcefully and without any obvious flagging of energy.

“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around awhile,” Biden joked, giving his big, white-toothed grin. “When you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever before. … My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

Will it work to save his presidency? Biden’s 2023 State of the Union, despite getting rave reviews, didn’t affect his low approval ratings much. This address, however, landed at a very different moment. Coming only two days after Biden’s big wins on Super Tuesday and the departure of Trump’s last Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, from the presidential race, the speech also served as a harsh reality check for the American electorate. For the first time, it is apparent that Biden isn’t going anywhere and that Trump will be his opponent eight months from now—that only this halting 81-year-old man stands between disaster and the continuation of American democracy, in the eyes of many Americans.

The obvious bet of the Biden campaign is that the threat of a would-be autocrat—much like an imminent hanging—concentrates the mind wonderfully, in Samuel Johnson’s formulation. Suddenly, people no longer have the luxury of wishing they had someone 30 years younger, or more inspirational, to vote for. It’s just Joe and Donald now. People are clearly not excited about a Biden second term, even most Democrats. But if that is all they’re left with—if the choice is a bad cold versus cancer—then the course suddenly becomes clearer.

“People always like to say that they have to choose between the lesser of two evils,” Norm Kurz, Biden’s former Senate communications director, said in an email. “Biden’s refrain that voters should not compare him to the Almighty but to the alternative will begin to resonate.”

His speech recalled past moments when U.S. presidents sought to clarify the stakes at an existential level. None more so than Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union address, when he said, “The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.” Or John F. Kennedy’s warning in January 1961—at the height of the Cold War—that the nation faced “an hour of national peril and national opportunity” when “we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.”

Yet it was also a measure of the delicate balance that Biden has been forced to achieve in his presidency—restoring America’s traditional global cop role while playing to the neo-isolationist sentiment that Trump has awakened—that the president deferred to the millions of voters who believe the United States is overextended in the world. He touted his “Buy American” neo-protectionist approach to national security, saying, “Past administrations including my predecessor … failed to buy American”—and even as he pushed again for a $60.1 billion aid package to Ukraine, he repeated that American troops would not get pulled in.

Biden also sought to stamp out a brewing progressive insurgency over his pro-Israel Middle East policy—hundreds of thousands of primary voters registered their discontent with him on Tuesday, and protesters Thursday sought to block his motorcade to the Capitol—by announcing the creation of a pier off the coast of Gaza that would “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance” going to besieged Palestinians.

Here, as well, Biden pledged, “No U.S. boots will be on the ground.”

Biden spent the majority of his speech in more traditional State of the Union fashion, spelling out a positive agenda that contrasted with Trump’s “ancient ideas” and reminding voters of his greatest accomplishments. Among them, “the most significant action ever on climate in the history of the world”—cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030 and creating tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs—and his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including 46,000 new projects “moderniz[ing] our roads and bridges, ports and airports, public transit systems,” as well as a spate of new gun laws. Biden boasted about preserving NATO—“the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen”—and introduced the prime minister of Sweden, the alliance’s newest member, who stood up grinning and waving in the gallery.

The president also announced plans to increase taxes on corporate wealth; remove tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, and executive pay; and noted he has signed into law a bill that dramatically reduces the cost of prescription drugs. He also hit Trump hard on reproductive rights, which polls show have hurt Republicans badly, saying abortion opponents have “no clue about the power of women” in America. Biden declared, “I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

On the issue that has most frustrated him, the economy—which polls show a plurality of voters believe Trump would be stronger on despite strong growth numbers—Biden continued to insist that it’s just a matter of time before voters realize how good they now have it. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is literally the envy of the world. Fifteen million new jobs in just three years—a record, a record. Unemployment at 50-year lows,” he said. “Wages keep going up. Inflation keeps coming down. Inflation has dropped from 9 percent to 3 percent—the lowest in the world.”

The rhetoric was rousing, even incendiary, possibly a little desperate. But Biden, let’s face it, will never be a great speechmaker. The stiffness, slurring, and occasional stutter that seem to make every Biden speech a breathless high-wire act—one never knows if he’ll get all the way through a sentence without stumbling—were all there Thursday night, accompanied by an occasional coughing spell between applause lines.

Yet the president also didn’t commit any major gaffes and finished as strong as he started. The president was effective, too, in repeating his tactic from last year’s speech in mocking GOP lawmakers who shouted out insults, especially given how ineffective and obstructionist the Republican House has been. Without quite saying so, Biden came close to emulating President Harry S. Truman’s successful 1948 tactic of attacking the infamous “do-nothing” Congress. Over and over, Biden challenged the Republican-led House of Representatives to pass long-stalled legislation, especially the Ukraine national security aid. In any case, the Republicans were repeatedly drowned out by chants of “four more years” from Democrats, which also gave the whole affair the flavor of a campaign rally.

Biden’s State of the Union address was always going to be less about what he said than how he said it—how he spoke, how he walked to the podium, how he responded to his hecklers—and by that measure he succeeded. Above all, Biden was plainly showing his confidence that American voters will come to see, finally, that his programs are working.

The challenge for Biden—and Americans—is that his opponent, the previous president, is now deploying similarly apocalyptic rhetoric. In a speech in late February, Trump also drew comparisons to World War II, saying, “This time, the greatest threat is not from the outside of our country, I really believe this. It’s the people from within our country that are more dangerous. They’re very sick people.” And following his victories in 14 states Tuesday night, Trump said that under Biden the United States had been reduced to “a third-world country.”

The data of accomplishments are clearly on Biden’s side. Even so, Biden can no longer be as confident—as he was after the 2022 midterm elections—that it’s just a question of time before voters appreciate his policies. The day after the midterm elections, Biden projected confidence in the country’s direction, responding “nothing” when asked what he will do differently in the next two years.

That tactic didn’t work. It remains to be seen whether the president’s new one will.