During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Joe Biden called for unity to get things done in Congress.
“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress,” Biden said. “The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere. And that’s always been my vision for the country: to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America: the middle class, to unite the country. We’ve been sent here to finish the job!”
The last Congress, of course, had Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate, and, for the most part, things were passed rather easily in both chambers because Democrats were united behind Joe Biden’s agenda. But Americans voted for divided government in 2022, handing Republicans the majority in the House. Despite Biden’s suggestion, the message sent by the American people is that they want the recklessness of one-party control reined in.
As for his calls for unity, Biden has often given lip service to “unity” and “bipartisanship,” but polls have shown that Americans have doubted his ability to “bring the country closer together” from the beginning.
But unity has never actually been his goal.
In April of last year, Biden’s then-press secretary, Jen Psaki, admitted that he never actually intended to work with Republicans on Capitol Hill at all. “I will say that the president’s view is that bringing the country together is bringing the American people together,” Psaki said. “So, when I say he’s, uhh, focused on bringing people together, bringing Democrats and Republicans together, he’s not talking about solving bipartisanship in this zip code.”
But Joe Biden’s call for unity comes across as particularly hypocritical considering he gave a Hitleresque primetime address back in September, during which he dubbed millions of Trump-supporting Americans threats to democracy,. He was roundly criticized by the right but met with mixed reactions from the left.
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