Professor John Johannes, PhD, says:
A very well delivered speech, the best in recent years. Very conversational, almost Reaganesque in style. The appeal to a "better politics" surely will resonate widely.It was a very liberal, left-leaning speech, delivered, I suspect, as much or more to solidify and placate his Democratic left than to lay out an actionable agenda. After a touch set of seat losses in November, this seemed soothing, I'm sure.There were actionable proposals, at least a few. I'm puzzled why he didn't lead with them, especially tax reform and cyber safety and maybe infrastructure. Could be that the reason he didn't was because he wanted to build the talk around several themes -- hard work, skills, opportunity, and helping fellow Americans to a better life. He utterly failed to show where the money would come from to pay for all his initiatives. Those initiatives sounded fabulous, but the devil's in the details -- and in paying the bills. It's great that deficits have come down, but they still are something like $460 billion annually, which adds to the debt and thus to the payment of interest.
Professor Matt Kerbel, PhD, says:
Riding a surge in public support reflecting an improved economy, a buoyant President Obama used his State of the Union Address Tuesday to launch the 2016 campaign cycle by making income inequality the centerpiece of his message. In an address ostensibly aimed at the nation but crafted to resonate with Democratic partisans, the president articulated a wish-list of policies aimed at strengthening the middle class by taxing the very rich. Facing a Republican Congress, Obama knows his program is unlikely to become law and instead is designed to position Democrats as a progressive populist party ahead of the next presidential election in the hope of forcing Republicans to defend the 1% as they oppose his proposals. But Democrats face an internal battle between movement progressives, notably the Internet-savvy netroots, and neo-liberals who have long been influential in party decision-making, over whether Democrats would provide more than rhetorical support for the president’s agenda if they were again given the opportunity to govern.
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