The key takeaway from Biden's State of the Union address was the combative exchange over Social Security and Medicare. A handful of Republicans have - for years - wanted to end these entitlement programs. While Hurricane Katrina and Iraq were considered important in driving George W. Bush's approval ratings into the toilet, it was his plan to privatize Social Security (plus meddling in Terri Schiavo's death) that really crushed him. Cutting Social Security benefits is electoral poison.
When Biden seemed to get the Chaos Caucus to agree with him not to cut Social Security and Medicare, he really put them in a tight spot. They are very visibly on record saying they don't want to cut entitlements.
Then the backtracking started, to the point where Rick Scott and Ron Johnson are talking about cutting benefits. Mitch McConnell - whose political genius is overstated - has tried to distance the GOP from this position, but they keep stepping on that rake.
In some ways, this debate is going to be a mirror image of "Defund the Police." That was a messaging fiasco for the Democrats, as a few vocal activists took a phrase that was at best misleading and turned it into a major message leading up to the 2020 election. They would say "Defund the Police" and then spend ten minutes explaining that they didn't literally mean deny funding to police departments, but changing where the money went and blah blah blah.
Today, the GOP is making semantic arguments where they parse whether they are cutting benefits to current entitlement recipients versus future recipients. That's just terrible politics. "If you're explaining, you're losing" is a pretty good rule of thumb and they are going to be called out on this every chance Democrats can do it.
What makes this even funnier is that Rick Scott - a man who make Voldemort look warm and fuzzy - is running for re-election. Now, it could very well be that Florida has self-sorted itself into Alabama with better beaches, but if the main issue in the 2024 Florida Senate race is Rick Scott trying to gut Social Security and Medicare, it could be the type of stark issue that shakes up a winnable race for the GOP.
Biden's stutter makes him a less than compelling "leader" in a TV-driven media landscape, but his political instincts are excellent. Picking a fight over entitlements is a great way to drive a potential group of swing voters into Democrats' arms.
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