All Muddle No Middle

Last night's State of the Union Address was a perfect opportunity for Joe Biden to tack back to the middle and present a slightly left-of-center agenda, something in the Bill Clinton mold of the old Democrat Party, which many Americans thought Joe Biden represented. 

It would have made sense for him to do so. Americans clearly are not happy with Biden's current agenda and direction. He's polling in the 30s, and 78% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. A course correction is definitely in order.

There's a huge foreign policy crisis. There are staggering increases in the price of oil, which if they continue will tip the country into a recession. 

He could have easily cited those things as legitimate reasons for why he's restarting the Keystone pipeline, and ordering the federal bureaucracy to suspend the growing number of regulations on our energy industry. 

He could have declared that he is immediately reinstating all programs to limit illegal immigration and to finish Trump's border wall because we cannot have Russian assassins and saboteurs crossing our southern border as they are currently doing in Ukraine. 

By the way, that's not merely a hypothetical concern.  More than 4,000 Russians crossed our southern border last year, many of them at the end the year after Putin's started massing troops on Ukraine's borders.

Yes, the left would have howled in rage. But Biden's approval ratings would have jumped 10 points or more overnight, perhaps saving any chance his party might have of holding Congress.

But Joe Biden didn't say any of that because he is owned lock, stock and barrel by the progressive left. He acts like he isn't afraid of Putin, but he surely is afraid of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the left. As a result, his speech was a mixture of gaslighting and doubling down on failed ideas. 

I'll provide a few examples below. But first I want to comment on something that should be of deep concern to everyone.