(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Pierce on Biden last night [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-08 Republican hecklers underestimated his appetite for bare-knuckle politics. With the responses to Biden’s SOTU last night singing his praises (except for the usual suspects), Charlie Pierce would remind us Biden has done this before. In the article linked above, Pierces takes us back: Back in 2012, when the shebeen was all shiny and new and vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden was preparing to dismantle the electoral career of Paul Ryan, zombie-eyed granny starver from Wisconsin, this is something I wrote about in anticipation of their debate. Remember, this debate came directly after President Barack Obama's curiously passive approach to his first debate with Willard Romney. Joe Biden is not riven with self-doubt. Joe Biden is not exhausted by the hurly-burly of politics. Joe Biden is not burdened by the weight of events and laid low by the constant battle against know-nothing obstructionism. Joe Biden is not going to take the stage tonight and find himself wishing he were anywhere else. I mean, god be good to him, as my gran' used to say, but Joe Biden actually likes all these silly performance pieces in which we insist he be engaged in order to stay vice-president. He revels in them. He would do ten of them a day, if he could. When I consider Joe Biden, and I look at the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into the various cataracts and torrents of hogwash that constitute our politics these days, I find myself looking at him the way I look at people who sky-dive or drive in demolition derbies. I have no idea why they do what they do, and I have absolutely no intention of doing it myself, ever, but, goddamn, do those people look like they're having fun. We saw it again Tuesday night when President Joe Biden freight-trained his whackadoo Republican opposition in his State of the Union address. He also flipped the very idea of the State of the Union address on its head by turning it into an American equivalent of the prime minister's Question Time in the British Parliament. He wrapped them in a bear hug so warm that they didn't realize they were being smothered. He took on hecklers like a veteran of a Catskills resort. He smiled, he laughed, he bellowed when it was called for. He had the only microphone in the room, and he used it like a hammer. I will admit there are times when Joe Biden comes across to me as not as… confrontational… as I think the times require, but last night was a master class on how to hand the GOP a shot across the bow and make them back water while having some honest good fun while doing so. Biden was able to score some serious hits without the show of meanness and cruelty the former guy would have gloried in doing. No whining either. The earlier piece Pierce links to also has some gems. Republicans deny they’re coming after Social Security and Medicare, but it’s worth remembering doing so is their equivalent of Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick. (Not to mention their long campaign finally overturning Roe v Wade and now seeking to outlaw abortion under any circumstances anywhere.) As Pierce noted about Paul Ryan in 2012: There is no mistaking what Paul Ryan is seeking to create in this country, and it doesn't matter how much happy-clappy middle-class opportunity gilding he puts on it. He believes that the general government — which, I have to keep reminding him, is ultimately a manifestation of the political commonwealth — has no role in alleviating poverty, very little role in alleviating disease, and is designed primarily to create and sustain a political and social oligarchy. His devotion is nearly theological. He opposes Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid on principle. He believes them to have been always illegitimate exercises of government's power because, ostensibly, he read that somewhere in the Constitution, but actually, because they thwart his attempts to hand all the nation's power, and certainly all of its wealth, over to the "makers," and the hell with the "takers." He learned this, of course, in his pursuit of his bachelor's degree from Miami of Ohio, which was paid for on my dime, through Social Security survivor's benefits and, as always, you're welcome, Ace. That’s pretty much still the Republican agenda today, only with more misogyny, more homophobia, more racism, more fascism, and more crazy. Biden did this to Ryan: In that 2012 debate, when Ryan criticized the Obama administration for "wasteful" stimulus spending, Biden pulled out a letter that Ryan had written to the administration requesting some of that spending for his congressional district back in Wisconsin. And then Biden laughed, and I have forever marked that moment as the end of Ryan's importance to our national politics. That last line—"I'll see you at the groundbreaking"—felt like the same kind of moment. And he smiled wide as he delivered the haymaker. If you can get past the paywall to read all of Pierce on last night, do so. He winds up with this: [Howard Cosell voice:] "Down goes McCarthy! Down goes McCarthy!” It was far from a conventional political address. There were very few oratorical bells and whistles. Instead, it was something akin to FDR's fireside chats: colloquial and intimate. So many sentences began with the word "look" and were addressed to "folks." More than anything else, its tone sounded like it had been drawn from a particularly energetic ward committee meeting down at the AOH Hall. It was the best speech Joe Biden ever has given because it was the most Joe Biden speech anyone ever has given. It was all him, aimed right at all of us, addressed to all of us—you know, the folks. emphasis added [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/8/2151836/-Pierce-on-Biden-last-night Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/