Biden’s State of the Union unofficially kicked off his re-election campaign | Moira Donegan

The president touted many of his greatest achievements. But there are some areas he still needs to work on

It was President Biden's first address to Congress since Republicans won control of the House, and unofficially, it was the start of his 2024 re-election campaign. Biden faced a newly adversarial audience at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a group of empowered Republicans clustered on the right side of the House chamber, each one eager to perform outrage for the cameras.

The speech, a strictly choreographed bit of political theater, was as much a competition of affective performance between the president and his Republican rivals as it was a set of policy proposals. Mostly, Biden won. The Republicans heckled and booed. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracist from Florida, bellowed at Biden in a big, fluffy fur coat, like Cruella De Vil; Kevin McCarthy, newly elected speaker after a long and humiliating Republican leadership contest, sulked pointedly in a chair behind the president. But Biden countered their flustered outrage with a cool, almost irreverent indifference.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist