Biden, 80, mops the floor with heckling Republicans

President Joe Biden, at the ripe age of 80, came out with ample vim and vigor in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and proceeded to mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party.

Preaching populism and leaning on his noted skill as the empathizer- inchief, Biden bounded through a speech that acknowledged the nation’s struggles while remaining unerringly optimistic. He went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.

I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech – they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.

Whatever the White House cooks are feeding Biden these days, I’d like a plate of it myself. It’s like he’s Benjamin- Buttoning all of a sudden.

And as he ponders running for reelection and nervous Democrats eye a younger candidate, Tuesday’s speech suggests he’s still got it when it comes to retail politicking.

Performative silence and outrage

Biden, of course, will never be mistaken for a great orator. But his address relentlessly hit notes most Americans would cheer, putting the Republican lawmakers in a bind.

Biden said, “Our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.” Republicans kept quiet.

Bided talked about a boom in infrastructure projects. Republicans kept quiet. Biden quipped, “I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.”

Biden said the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in decades. Some offered tepid applause while others kept quiet.

If you don’t cheer for democracy, improved infrastructure and a low unemployment rate, people are going to wonder whose team you’re on.

Throughout the speech, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave a clinic on squirming uncomfortably. At one point, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted “LIAR!” at Biden. When the president was speaking about a man who lost his child to a fentanyl overdose, Republicans began shouting Biden down, one yelling, “It’s your fault!”

The midterm elections showed clearly that the American people are not buying the kind of performative outrage Republicans are selling. But on Tuesday night, while the older guy they routinely describe as “senile” was energetically promoting hope and ideas that might make the country a better place, performative outrage was, again, all GOP lawmakers had.

You could see it in McCarthy’s face as he tried to silence the please- put-me- on- Fox- News loudmouths in his caucus. He looked defeated.

In the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s address, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”

I don’t think she understands which side the American people see as crazy.