{"id":2585,"date":"2015-01-23T14:24:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T19:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=2585"},"modified":"2015-01-23T14:25:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T19:25:35","slug":"state-of-the-union-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/state-of-the-union-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"State of the Union Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 326px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pixel.nymag.com\/imgs\/daily\/intelligencer\/2015\/01\/20\/20-barack-obama-sou-3.w529.h352.jpg?resize=316%2C210\" alt=\"\" width=\"316\" height=\"210\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Alex Wong\/2015 Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t had much time for reading up on\u00a0it this week, but here are just a few things I came across about Tuesday night&#8217;s State of the Union.<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=www.washingtonmonthly.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/political-animal-a\/2015_01\/the_sotu_snap_poll053819.php\">The SOTU Snap Poll (Ed Kilgore<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=www.washingtonmonthly.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/political-animal-a\/2015_01\/sotu_and_the_struggle_for_the053818.php\">SOTU and the Struggle for the Soul of the Democratic Party\u00a0(Ed Kilgore)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=nymag.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2015\/01\/obama-began-a-new-era-of-democratic-politics.html?mid=rss\">Obama Began a New Era of Democratic Politics (Jonathan Chait)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=www.newrepublic.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/120816\/joni-ernsts-2015-state-union-response-proves-gop-broken?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%20Template%20-%20Jan%2021\">Joni Ernst&#8217;s 2015 State of the Union Response Proves GOP Is Broken\u00a0(The New Republic)\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=www.newrepublic.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/120814\/2015-tea-party-state-union-response-shows-failed-strategy?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%20Template%20-%20Jan%2021\">2015 Tea Party State of the Union Response Shows Failed Strategy\u00a0(The New Republic)\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/s2\/favicons?domain=www.newrepublic.com\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0<a class=\"clickable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/120809\/obamas-reagan-moment-upon-him-or-so-he-hopes?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%20Template%20-%20Jan%2021\">Obama&#8217;s 2015 State of the Union Was Reagan Moment He Imagined\u00a0(The New Republic)\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;from the latter piece from Brian Beutler at TNR:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s David Frum, once a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, <a href=\"The%20Atlantic\u2019s David Frum, once a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, posits that Obama\u2019s real aim in proposing policies he knows Republicans will reject is to limit Hillary Clinton\u2019s options, lest she be tempted to regress toward a mushier centrism. ...  This would be a more compelling argument if the White House and the burgeoning Clinton campaign weren\u2019t closely aligned\u2014if Obama were promoting ideas that offended Hillary Clinton\u2019s brain trust, or if his consigliere, John Podesta, wasn\u2019t leaving the White House to staff up and guide the Clinton campaign. Frum assumes that Clinton, the 2016 candidate, will see the country\u2019s political challenges no differently than when she ran for president before the economic crisis in 2008, or when she represented New York state as a senator for two terms starting in 2001.  Most of the evidence points in a different direction. Yet if Obama and Clinton are more closely aligned than people assume, he wouldn\u2019t need to use his State of the Union to confine her, but rather to begin the process of priming the public for her campaign. And that\u2019s not strictly a matter of testing voter appetite for various policy ideas, but of building a case before the public that Democrats have had better economic ideas all along and that a Democratic approach to national policy deserves to reap the benefits of incumbency.  Tuesday\u2019s State of the Union was thus a single component of a project that\u2019s much more meaningful than budget brinksmanship or the 2016 campaign\u2014to establish the parameters of the economic debate for years and years, the way Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency lent supply-side tax policy and deregulation a presumption of efficacy that shaped not just Republican, but Democratic policy for two decades.  Seven years into Obama's presidency, the U.S. economy is finally growing rapidly enough to boost his popularity and to sell the country on the idea that Obama\u2019s peculiar brand of ostentatious incrementalism\u2014building out and improving existing institutions, directing resources through them to the middle class\u2014has worked, and should serve as a beacon not just for liberals, but for conservatives aspiring to recapture the presidency.\">posits <\/a>that <strong>Obama\u2019s real aim in proposing policies he knows Republicans will reject<\/strong> is to limit Hillary Clinton\u2019s options, lest she be tempted to regress toward a mushier centrism. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This would be a more compelling argument if the White House and the burgeoning Clinton campaign weren\u2019t closely aligned\u2014if Obama were promoting ideas that offended <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/1\/16\/7557803\/inclusive-prosperity-hillarynomics\">Hillary Clinton\u2019s brain trust<\/a>, or if his consigliere, John Podesta, wasn\u2019t leaving the White House to staff up and guide the Clinton campaign. Frum assumes that Clinton, the 2016 candidate, will see the country\u2019s political challenges no differently than when she ran for president before the economic crisis in 2008, or when she represented New York state as a senator for two terms starting in 2001.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the evidence points in a different direction. Yet <strong>if Obama and Clinton are more closely aligned than people assume, he wouldn\u2019t need to use his State of the Union to confine her, but rather to begin the process of priming the public for her campaign<\/strong>. And that\u2019s not strictly a matter of testing voter appetite for various policy ideas, but of building a case before the public that Democrats have had better economic ideas all along and that a Democratic approach to national policy deserves to reap the benefits of incumbency.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday\u2019s State of the Union was thus a single component of a project that\u2019s much more meaningful than budget brinksmanship or the 2016 campaign\u2014to <strong>establish the parameters of the economic debate for years and years<\/strong>, the way Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency lent supply-side tax policy and deregulation a presumption of efficacy that shaped not just Republican, but Democratic policy for two decades.<\/p>\n<p>Seven years into Obama&#8217;s presidency, the U.S. economy is finally growing rapidly enough to boost his popularity and to sell the country on the idea that <strong>Obama\u2019s peculiar brand of ostentatious incrementalism<\/strong>\u2014building out and improving existing institutions, directing resources through them to the middle class\u2014<strong>has worked, and should serve as a beacon<\/strong> not just for liberals, but for conservatives aspiring to recapture the presidency.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious; that we would crush jobs and explode deficits,&#8221; Obama said. &#8220;Instead, we\u2019ve seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in fifty years.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<!-- sktbuilder starter --><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-content\/plugins\/skt-builder\/sktbuilder\/sktbuilder-frontend-starter.js\"><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-content\/plugins\/skt-builder\/sktbuilder-wordpress-driver.js\"><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> var starter = new SktbuilderStarter({\"mode\": \"prod\", \"skip\":[\"jquery\",\"underscore\",\"backbone\"],\"sktbuilderUrl\": \"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-content\/plugins\/skt-builder\/sktbuilder\/\", \"driver\": new SktbuilderWordpressDriver({\"ajaxUrl\": \"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php\", \"iframeUrl\": \"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/state-of-the-union-notes\/?sktbuilder=true\", \"pageId\": 2585,  \"nonce\": \"22d9680d15\", \"pages\": [{\"title\":\"NTD Officers\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/napervilledemocrats.org\\\/ntdo\\\/wp-admin\\\/post.php?post=475&action=sktbuilder\"},{\"title\":\"2022 Election\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/napervilledemocrats.org\\\/ntdo\\\/wp-admin\\\/post.php?post=11490&action=sktbuilder\"}], \"page\": \"State of the Union Notes\" }) });<\/script><!-- end sktbuilder starter -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t had much time for reading up on\u00a0it this week, but here are just a few things I came across about Tuesday night&#8217;s State of the Union. \u00a0\u00a0The SOTU<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/state-of-the-union-notes\/\">+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,154,12,40],"class_list":["post-2585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-extremist-gop-2","tag-hillary","tag-obama","tag-speeches"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/20-barack-obama-sou-3.w529.h352.jpg?fit=529%2C352&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzCg-FH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2585"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}