Joe Bidens' Insane State of the Union Delay

It's one Helluva Hail Mary

The State of the Union address is a fun filled event; a much-televised spectacle of pompous regalia and ceremony in which the chief executive of the United States parades himself before congress and the public, either bragging about victories and achievements he often had little to do with, or downplaying failures- sometimes to the point of avoiding any mention of them.

This ceremony is normally held in January or February each year. Indeed, the latest it has been held since the Clinton era is February 12, for the year 2013. It has never been held later than this, until now.

This years' self aggrandizement ceremony will be held on March 1st. Why the delay? The answer is obvious; holding the SOTU in January or even February would not allow Joe Biden to take credit for the near-certain reduction in daily COVID cases which is almost sure to occur before March begins, if the last two years are any indication. With each variant, the rise and fall of cases has been more or less predictable. Biden will, of course, have nothing to do with this potential drop in case load, any more than he is at fault for the rise in cases we now see- but Biden is in a tricky situation, having assured people both when campaigning and once in office, that he would "defeat" the pandemic. There's also the issue of inflation- which is scheduled to peak in February- but those numbers will not actually become available until the middle of March, allowing Biden to hope that the January numbers which will be most recent when he speaks, will not be as abysmal as they were for December, standing at nearly 7%. His hope is probably misplaced, but it's the only hope he has- a SOTU-scheduling "hail mary" if you will.

It is not clear that Biden has any accomplishments to tout in his address, which means we're likely to hear a brief rehashing of the kind of "blame the other guy" diatribe we were subjected to on January 6th. We will probably also hear about vague "threats to Democracy." And while jobs will be mentioned, they are likely to be mentioned in broad terms (Biden insists he has "created" a record number of jobs per month) while ignoring monthly data, which has been below expectations consistently since July. That none of this actually involves creating "new" jobs will be glossed over by Biden as much as it was Trump, when the early recovery began in the middle of 2020. Also likely to be mentioned; "obstruction" (a thinly veiled swipe at Joe Manchin) and the need to "secure voters' rights" (a not so thinly veiled applause for the Democrats' doomed voting rights act- a pig in a poke concept meant to federalize the election system and prevent any semblance of coherence and honesty in election results- a mass "fortifying" of the system on behalf of the rich donor class, so to speak.)

When the State of the Union is best seen as an opportunity for the president to use the bully pulpit each year to brag about what he has accomplished, this unprecedented delay is a stark admission that Joe Biden has accomplished absolutely nothing.