Tonight, Thursday, March 7th, is the State of the Union Address so lets keep everything related to it (including the Republican response) confined to this thread.
This is probably one of the most important speeches Biden can give this year. He has to come across as “Present”, not just “President”.
This will set the tone for the campaign the rest of the year and will be second only to the Democratic Convention speech in August for visibility.
Watch it live here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2024/
Or through your favorite news source.
The Republican response will be delivered by Senator Katie Britt of Alabama:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236338784/katie-britt-alabama-republican-biden-state-of-the-union
Very good speech!
Full transcript is here:
https://time.com/6898705/read-president-joe-bidens-2024-state-of-the-union-address-full-transcript/
Republican response from Katie Britt here:
I encourage you to watch the video and not just read the transcript. Reading it doesn’t carry just how breathless and borderline weepy her delivery is.
You bring up an interesting question, and it’s something I noticed in my own life, but for me I always related it to confidence/optimism.
I’m naturally very anxious, and I think ahead because I worry a lot and I need to have some control of my future or to at least feel like I do by having as much information as I can. Stability has always lacked in my life, and still does, so I know confidence and optimism are in very short supply for me.
I think more confident/optimistic people tend to be more relaxed about the future because of their natural tendency to believe they’ll be ok and therefore the things around them should be fine.
That’s an interesting insight. I, too, tend to be anxious about negative outcomes and I think that comes from bad experiences due to ADHD and maybe childhood stuff. Idk.
Normalcy bias certainly is a thing. So is paranoia. I tend toward the latter lol. But have come to see that outcomes almost always land somewhere between, “eh, it will be fine,” and, “omg we’re doomed.” And usually they wind up slightly more toward the “fine” side of things.