So, here’s a question: do State of the Union addresses matter? Well, umm, not really.
Here’s why they’re supposed to matter: they provide a president with a forum to explain his program to the American people, who are then supposed to rally around the president and pressure the Congress and the other branches of government to pass the president’s agenda. It’s called “going public,” and State of the Union addresses are one of many ways presidents can try to use their public prominence to do an end run around Congress to get what they want.
But here’s the thing: it doesn’t usually work. Presidential poll numbers might go up slightly, but this rarely translates into support for the president’s plans. W was fairly successful at this after 9/11, but by the end of his presidency he was ignored. Remember how we were going to Mars? Neither does anyone else.
So the speech last night was well done, and depending on which side of the political universe you stand on you liked it–or didn’t. But that’s the point: in a highly partisan period like this, there is no way one speech will rally sufficient support to change the party gridlock. That takes several elections and an American people which has decided to try a new way of doing business. And it seems to me, I am sad to say, we’re not there yet. Which will be a post for another day!
This is fucking horrifying Handmaid’s Tale shit at this State of the Union. Ladies all of us need to be scared when Trump is asking SCOTUS to take up legislation against late term abortion, calling all babies gifts from god, and talking about doctors executing babies after they are born. Lying while his sycophants are giving him a standing ovation. Literally gave me chills. This is scary shit. We need to be worried.
1K notes ·
View notes
Statistics
We looked inside some of the posts by
turn-off-your-mind-relax
and here's what we found interesting.
Average Info
Notes Per Post
1M
Likes Per Post
554K
Reblog Per Post
595K
Reply Per Post
517
Time Between Posts
3 days
Number of Posts By Type
Text
9
Photo
6
Note
1
Video
1
Explore Tagged Posts
Fun Fact
BuzzFeed published a report claiming that Tumblr was utilized as a distribution channel for Russian agents to influence American voting habits during the 2016 presidential election in Feb 2018.