As President Biden prepares to give his State of the Union message for 2024 which some of his supporters are saying provides him with the opportunity of resetting his reelection campaign, I thought it might be fun to do a little retrospective on his previous SOTU messages.
This evening’s SOTU will find the president not with the lowest net approval rating of his presidency but with the lowest at the time of any SOTU message:
| Date | Spread |
| April 28, 2021 | +11.0 |
| March 1, 2022 | -13.6 |
| February 7, 2023 | -7.3 |
| March 7, 2024 | -18.5 |
In my memory no SOTU message has been a barnstormer of the sort that some, e.g. Robert Reich, are advising. All have been dreary wishlists, landing like dead cats, forgotten within days of their delivery.
The targets that have been leaked include big corporations, centimillionaires, credit card companies,
To date none of President Biden’s SOTU messages have been followed by sizeable improvements in his popularity. Will this time be different?
I think the president would be prudent to give the shortest SOTU by a Democratic president since Jimmy Carter but I doubt he will.
I do have to wonder who the audience for these things is. In 2023, Biden had the lowest (or second lowest) audience since 1993, the first year Nielsen had ratings available. Almost certainly ratings were higher before 1993.
“Nearly three-quarters (73%) of the people who watched Biden’s speech were 55 and older, Nielsen said. Only 5% were young adults under age 35.
“The speech was carried live on 16 television networks.
“Biden’s largest audience came on Fox News Channel, where the speech was seen by 4.69 million people, Nielsen said. ABC had 4.41 million viewers for Biden, NBC had 3.78 million, CBS had 3.64 million, MSNBC had 3.55 million, CNN had 2.4 million and the Fox broadcast network had 1.66 million.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/state-union-draws-second-smallest-audience-least-30-years-rcna69844
So the audience is older, possibly more conservative, likely already used to watching evening cable news, or waiting for their program to come on the traditional networks. Is that the audience, or is the influencers who will be commenting on the SOTU? Or is the audience people who will end up seeing discrete clips through social media curated to their interest/ demographic group?
I probably wouldn’t watch except that my wife will insist on watching on the grounds that it’s of cultural importance.
Otherwise I’d probably just wait for the commentary. The open question is whether I’ll manage to stay awake.
I’d offer that your wife is correct. Although maybe not on cultural grounds but simply an opportunity to take a measure of the man.
If he does the hoary old schtick of blaming “greedy” corporations for inflation and similar BS on other issues he will reach only the wildly partisan and the dim. He could actually alienate the moderates. Gene Sperling tried telling everyone the economy was gangbusters today. (“Prices are a little bit up for 3 years ago”). Bizarre.
No positive effect if it’s just a gaslighting and blame MAGA affair.
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Americans are woefully uninformed on many issues. And can’t go toe to toe with an economist. But on economics they shop, and feel it. Sperling can lie through his teeth, and Joe Biden have the crank in his back wound up and play Polly parrot. But the voters know better.
I think it’d be better if more people watched, also if they voted on election day at a polling place. I probably watched some of the 2021 address to Congress, which my link indicates was less watched than any SOTU, and seems likely to be more important in terms of directing policy.
Asking how many people viewed it live on TV networks is probably not the best way to record its impact.
There’s going a significant percentage that watch it in the next month on Youtube; and undoubtedly an even larger number will see clips via Tiktok and Instagram reels.
My personal two cents, the State of the Union as it has been for the last century; a 1 to 2 hour speech for mass broadcast media (radio and TV) is becoming obsolete. It needs reinvention in the age of short form video clips, remixing, and ubiquitous digital overlays.
CO- OMG, you want to turn it into a powerpoint/TedTalk!
Steve
Fundi voice
Fred could handle them.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL84WS6r/