Last night, President Biden gave (depending on how you look at it) a rousing State Of The Union speech or perhaps the first speech of his re-election campaign. Throughout it all, by my count, he uttered the phrase "Let's finish the job" a whopping 10 times (at the very least... I know I must have missed a few...). That sounds an awful lot like a new campaign slogan to me....

Biden's speech was rather extraordinary, mostly because of his delivery. He actively engaged with Republican hecklers, which is a very tricky thing to do, but he pulled it off masterfully. He stressed cooperation over partisan confrontation, for the most part, and called for unity and getting done what they could both agree upon. Which, again, is a very hard needle to thread in today's hyper-polarized America. But he managed to stay folksy and cheerful throughout it all, which is what made it all so extraordinary. I've already seen the term "happy warrior" used to describe Biden's performance last night, and it fits pretty well.

As expected, the speech stuck mostly to the tried-and-true listing of accomplishments mixed in with Biden's ambitions for future legislation. Biden reportedly heavily vetted the speech himself to remove all "Washington-speak" and/or technical government terms from the text. If this is true, he did a great job. He sounded natural and in his element for the entire speech -- it was all delivered in "Bidenese," to put it another way.

Biden's delivery was fast-paced. Extremely fast-paced, for him. But he didn't stutter much (if at all) and only stumbled over a few words along the way (he called Chuck Schumer "Minority Leader," for instance, but then quickly corrected himself). For a lifelong stuttering sufferer, that was a major achievement. He sounded forceful and when forced by the hecklers to think on his feet, showed a very sharp edge in his responses. He kept up this fast pace and high energy for almost the entire speech, only ebbing when the subject matter turned somber.

Biden knew, going in, that he would be facing the most unruly Congress in a very long time in American history. Remember when one Republican congressman made the news for yelling out: "You lie!" to Barack Obama? Seems almost quaint, now, that so much was made of that one little outburst. But back then, there simply were no outbursts of that type -- it made news for its sheer rudeness and effrontery. These days, it was completely expected and the Republicans showed once again that they lost all sense of decorum years ago. It reminded me more of listening to the British Parliament than it did to classic State Of The Union speeches, which is saying something (if you've ever heard a "Prime minister's question period," for example). The rabble was roused, to put it mildly.

But the surprising thing is that Biden was ready for it. He not only took it in stride, he heckled them right back in many instances. He reminded me of a rather astute comedian being heckled onstage who tosses back his own zingers.

I don't believe I have ever seen anything like it before, from a president giving an address to Congress. Obama was downright shocked the first time he was heckled (to be fair, so was much of the rest of America, just for the sheer disrespect it displayed). He managed to answer back, but he only got heckled the one time, by one person. Biden had to put up with it whenever he approached any contentious issue tonight, and he gave as good as he got. In fact, he likely did a better job of it than Obama could ever have managed, as eloquent as he is. Bill Clinton likely would have been up to answering hecklers (he likely would have had fun doing so, too), but not every president has this ability. And it was a pleasant surprise to see how well Biden took it all in stride.

What else, before I get on to the speech itself? Fashion statements? Senator Kyrsten Sinema apparently was celebrating Sesame Street, as she arrived dressed just like Big Bird. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, channeled her own inner Cruella de Vil.

After Biden's speech, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, newly-minted governor of Arkansas, gave what was supposed to be a rebuttal to Biden's speech, but was instead an absolutely unhinged rant about how Biden has somehow been "hijacked by the radical left" and the hellscape that has ensued due to this insanity. It was pure dystopian fearmongering delivered in a down-home accent. Really, the less said about her speech the better, although I will do my best to review it at the end, here.

Biden's 2023 State Of The Union speech

President Biden spoke for a little over an hour, which is a good length for one of these speeches. But to fit it all in, as mentioned, Biden had to maintain a rapid pace of delivery for the whole thing. Which he did a great job of doing, actually.

He opened with a couple of jokes, one of which (to the Supreme Court chief justice) fell completely flat due to Biden's botched delivery, and one of which (to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after graciously congratulating him on his victory) went over a lot better. The meat of his speech then started, at 9:12 (Eastern).

As mentioned, the first part of his speech was sprinkled with all the things he has already accomplished as president, and Biden led off with a line we'll be hearing again and again (most likely) on the campaign trail -- Joe Biden has now overseen 12 million new jobs get created in America, "more in two years than any American president has created in four years in office." You've got to admit, that's an astoundingly impressive stat!

Biden set a positive tone to his speech from the start, saying "today COVID no longer controls our lives," and "though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken." He reminded everyone that he has tried to govern in as bipartisan a manner as his opposition would allow, pointing out that he had signed "more than 300" bipartisan bills already. He listed some of the important ones, including the Violence Against Women Act renewal, the infrastructure bill, the new toxic burn pit law for veterans, and the Respect For Marriage Act. Some memorable lines from this segment of the speech: "No reason why we can't work together on things and find consensus in this Congress as well" (that one got a big bipartisan hand from the peanut gallery), as well as: "Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict gets us nowhere."

Joe then segued into his "building back America" theme, with the prominent use of his signature phrase "from the bottom up and the middle out," which might just prove to have the historic staying power of the message it is meant to contradict, Ronald Reagan's "trickle-down economics." Time will tell.

When Biden talked about jobs, he always returned to the dignity of work. This may sound like a minor thing, but it's not. It also sounds like "just a thing a politician would say," but all that stuff about how Biden grew up obviously shaped the man he became, and his dad's lessons on how a "job's about a lot more than just a paycheck... it's about dignity and respect" ring very authentic, with Joe. He rattled off some more good economic stats to show how good his record so far on this front has been, including highlighting the revival of American manufacturing jobs and the record growth of new American small businesses under his watch.

This led straight to talking about the CHIPS and Science Act, which is also going to do a lot of good when all those factories now being planned actually get built in small-town America. Democrats have been losing a lot of votes from such places, due largely to people there feeling overlooked and ignored by the party ever since the 1990s centrist "New Democrat" wave pushed all the globalism that decimated what manufacturing jobs remained at the time. Biden got off one very good line in this part, laying out his goal for the future: "The supply chain begins in America." This got another big bipartisan round of applause. He also had a different flavor of his new campaign slogan to use: "We're just getting started!"

Which he has certainly earned. Joe Biden is accomplishing what a lot of past presidents (Donald Trump most definitely included) promised but never actually delivered on. The infrastructure bill passed and few people took note, but now the money is starting to flow and ground is being broken on all sorts of new projects, and people will take note of that. The question of whether they'd give Biden any credit for it was always an open one, but Biden looks eager to enthusiastically make that case in the coming months. Which, as I said, is fully deserved. Biden got it done, he didn't just talk about it. The issue didn't help all that much in the midterms, but by 2024 a lot of those projects will be finished or at least nearing completion.

This was the point in the speech where Biden first began almost openly taunting the Republicans. Speaking of all the good infrastructure projects now being started (as a result of both his Inflation Reduction Act and his infrastructure bill), he pointed out that a whole lot of them will be built in congressional districts and states represented by Republicans who did not vote for the money. And in direct contrast to his predecessor, he noted that his administration would not take such things into account, and he would be happy to fund projects in the naysayers' districts, because of his vow to be "president for all Americans," not just the ones who voted for him. But he did so in a friendly, but definitely teasing sort of way, with a genial smile on his face:

I want to thank my Republican friends who voted for the law, and my Republican friends who voted against it as well. I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well. But don’t worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.

Biden ended his infrastructure section of the speech with a big rousing "Buy American!" push, which got the Republicans applauding once again, but then he rushed through what might have been another campaign slogan being test-marketed: "a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America."

His next issue to highlight was his achievement on insulin, which just went into effect at the start of this year. Seniors on Medicare will now only have to pay $35 per month for their insulin, instead of the hundreds of dollars per month some of them had previously been charged. Biden pointed out that we pay the highest price for prescription drugs in the developed world and that it only cost drug companies $10 a vial ($13, with packaging costs) to produce insulin -- a drug discovered 100 years ago -- and called on Congress to expand this coverage to all Americans, not just seniors (which, to be fair, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema actually killed in the previous Congress, together with all the Republicans). Biden also touted the fact that seniors' drug costs are now capped at $2,000 per year -- once they hit that cap, they no longer have to pay out-of-pocket any more. This will be an enormous difference for millions of Americans, so it is entirely fitting that Biden (and the Democrats in general) remind people who accomplished it for them. Biden also pointed out Medicare will now be able to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs and that if the prices rise faster than inflation, the companies will have to pay the difference back to Medicare.

Biden then taunted the Republicans a second time, surprising them by co-opting their own talking point, stating quite truthfully that if they did attempt to repeal his Inflation Reduction Act (which accomplished all the progress on drug prices) that it would only serve to raise the deficit by "hundreds of billions of dollars," and daring them to go ahead and try to repeal it anyway, "...as my football coach used to say: 'Lotsa luck in your senior year'... I will veto it!" This frontal attack left many Republicans gasping, or with mental whiplash, from the way it sounded.

Biden devoted a section of his speech to green energy and climate change, and boasted that he had made the biggest climate change investment ever, which has the benefit of being true. He did toss Republicans a bone by admitting that "we're still going to need oil and gas for a while," but then later in the speech said the same thing but ended it with "for at least another decade," which Republicans laughed at (since they'd prefer to continue fossil fuel use forever, of course).

He coupled all this with making the case for taxing big corporations more, and instituting a "billionaires' tax." "No billionaire," Biden stated, "should be paying a lower tax than a school teacher or a firefighter." He called for quadrupling (which sounds drastic, but it'd only move it from one percent to four percent) a tax on corporate stock buybacks, and boasted that "cracking down on wealthy tax cheats" helps bring the deficit down as well. He also took credit for "$1.7 trillion" in deficit reduction under his watch -- the "largest in American history."

Which he had to rub in the Republicans' faces, by specifically reminding them of "my predecessor" who racked up more in deficits and debt than any other president, for four years running. This brought an angry response, to which Biden told them: "They're the facts, check it out. Check it out."

He also reminded them that during Trump's time in office they blithely raised the debt ceiling three times "without preconditions or crisis," because the bills have to be paid. Biden accused the Republicans of wanting "to take the economy hostage," which is an accurate description of the game they are getting set to play. Biden reminded them of a Republican senator's GOP agenda in the last election (which got a lot of attention because the Republican Party didn't put out any agenda and because this particular senator was in charge of getting Republican re-elected to the Senate), which included sunsetting Social Security. Republicans booed this loudly, but again, Biden has the benefit of the truth being on his side. He shot back at them: "Contact my office, I'll give you a copy of the proposal." Many Republicans were angry that Biden accurately pointed out how they are thinking of slashing Social Security and Medicare, and when a whole bunch of them loudly protested, Biden claimed a point -- "Apparently, it's not going to be a problem." You can bet he'll be reminding them of their outrage when they do actually propose slashing Social Security and Medicare, that's for sure.

Biden then moved on to less-contentious ground, talking about how he had lowered medical bills and allowed over-the-counter sales of hearing aids. He pushed hard for his "Junk Fee Prevention Act," which would reduce extortionate hidden fees by airlines, hotels, cable companies, concerts, and sporting events: "Americans are tired of being played for suckers. Pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act so companies stop ripping us off." He had one particularly good line in the middle of all this, when he attacked airlines for charging a fee to allow families to sit together, saying: "Airlines can't treat your child like a piece of baggage." Some Republicans and pundits may scorn this as being somehow "small ball" politics, but Biden knows that this is one thing that could make a very visible change in millions of Americans' lives, so it's a great issue to push for: "Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most folks in homes like the one I grew up in. They add up to hundreds of dollars a month."

Biden then decried "non-compete agreements" and used the example of a person working at a burger joint who wants to go across town and work for another burger joint but can't because of a piece of paper he had to sign to get his job. Again, more GOP heckling was heard, to which Joe told them: "Look it up!"

The last portions of Biden's speech dealt with what might be called obligatory issues -- Union support, further plans for education, COVID ("we've broken the COVID grip on us... deaths down 90 percent"), crime and policing, drug use and fentanyl overdoses, banning assault weapons, the border and immigration (most which got a lot of GOP heckling, naturally), the Ukraine war, veterans, his cancer moonshot, and a few other traditional Democratic ideas. Biden issued a threat on a national ban on abortion -- "I will veto it!" -- but with a Democratic Senate nobody expects any such bill to make it to his desk, so it was a rather easy promise for him to make.

Biden closed by speaking of his defense of "our democracy itself," and introduced Paul Pelosi (husband of Nancy) in the gallery. Biden reminded the Republicans that Paul's vicious attack was done by a man who was "using the very same language the insurrectionists used," and scolded that we must "give hate and extremism no safe harbor." He turned his message into "hope over fear" and quickly wrapped up the speech (at 10:22, or a little over an hour).

President Joe Biden had reportedly made a sort of deal with Kevin McCarthy -- Biden would forgo using the term "extreme MAGA Republicans" if McCarthy could keep his caucus under control. Biden kept his half of the bargain, but McCarthy failed utterly to hold his end up. McCarthy, to his own credit, was polite throughout the night while sitting directly behind Biden, but he simply could not control the craziest of his crew. Not even close -- there was more yelling and heckling last night than any State Of The Union address in modern times, perhaps even "ever." But it wasn't entirely unexpected, after the past six years or so -- and Biden did a great job of handling it virtually every time he was jeered. I certainly hope that this isn't going to be a regular feature of such speeches, but I fear that that may be the case (at least for the next few years, at any rate). Biden overcame this with aplomb, but not every president we've ever had would be able to do so.

The Republican response

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke for the Republicans, and the less said about her rant the better, really. As always, I have to at least point out (in all fairness) that these speeches aren't ever really a "response," since the opposition party member who gives it is not provided a copy of the president's speech ahead of time. To give a true response would require doing what I just did -- take notes during the president's speech and then try to rebut all the points he made with the Republican agenda. But no politician (these days) is up to thinking on their feet this quickly, so the "response" speech is always just guesswork, since you can't respond to something you haven't even heard yet.

So Sanders attempted to answer what she thought Biden would say. And she guessed wrong, in a big way. Sanders, of course, is full-on MAGA and has always been very comfortable telling the American people lies (as she continually did as Trump's press secretary) and she proved this once again last night.

Sanders painted a picture of an American apocalypse. Or, to put it slightly differently, she gave a speech specifically for the Fox News target audience. There was zero attempt to reach out to anyone in the middle, and Democrats were all lumped in together as "the radical left."

Without a hint of irony, Sanders presented the choice America faces as "between normal and crazy." No, really -- she actually said that, and she actually meant the Democrats were the crazy ones. What made me laugh was how she followed this up -- with what has to be one of the worst political segues ever. If an anti-Trump Republican had said it, it would have made perfect sense, but Sanders is far from that. Here was her delivery (although no doubt she would have put a paragraph break in there): "The choice is between normal and crazy. It's time for a new generation of Republican leadership...." Again, without a hint of being aware of the irony of it all.

Let's see, what else? Donald Trump is a colossus who strode the Earth, everything under his watch was peachy-keen, and now "violent criminals roam free" while true-blue 'Merikins are "under attack in a left-wing culture war that we didn't start and never wanted to fight!" Um, yeah, sure Sarah. Those dastardly lefties are going to corrupt the youth of America, blah blah blah.

Also: "I am young, and Joe Biden is old as the hills" (I am paraphrasing, but not by a whole lot). She made that point several times during her speech. I guess she's unaware of how old Trump is? It's hard to figure what this woman is thinking, and after a while I just sort of gave up trying. Her speech was so unhinged and divorced from reality it really only belonged on Fox News, that's a good summation of it.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant