For years, thanks largely to the McConnell Project, it has felt like the Democrats were in office, but not in power. While the blue agenda was blocked by the judiciary and the lack of votes in the Senate, reactionaries have been running wild in the red states. Nothing could be done about it without changing the political system itself, which only Trump and his allies were willing to contemplate, and the president didn’t appear to be doing anything to fight back. It was demoralizing. That, even more than inflation or Gaza or the bad polls, was the source of the blue team blues.
SOTU will have changed that. It has given the blue team hope. The widening divisions between Biden and Bibi, which I predicted months ago, will help rally the base. Trump is starting to get more scrutiny, and his first trial starts in two weeks. Things are looking up.