Unlike in many recent years, I actually watched a good piece of the State of the Union address last night. It seemed that it might be interesting to see how Trump would deal with the challenge of delivering this speech with the “impeachment” still technically pending.

Granted, the most important function of the modern SOTU is to give the sitting President an opportunity to force members of the adversary party, in front of a large national audience, to admit by their conduct (failure to applaud or stand) their opposition to many of his most popular policies. But the question is, is Trump just better at this game than his predecessors? Or is it that he really is not much different from his predecessors — certainly, not much different from Obama on this subject — but that the Democrats are so crazed in their hatred of the man that they fall time after time right into his trap?

Surely, the Democrats in general, and Nancy Pelosi in particular, given an hour to think about it, could easily have predicted sixty to eighty percent of the points that Trump was going to make in the SOTU. After all, Trump almost certainly chose most of his points by their results in poll-testing. When Trump made an easily-predicted point that was non-controversial, the Democrats could have coordinated and agreed to offer some half-sincere smiles and at least a smattering of polite applause. They then could have saved the folded hands and frowns for points of real disagreement.

But no. With the camera unforgivingly fixed on Pelosi (sitting behind the President) for almost the entire time, we got that unflinching scowl, nearly from beginning to end of the speech. In the instances when the camera cut away to focus on other Democrats, almost always they were following Pelosi’s lead. On point after point that I thought few to none would oppose, Pelosi sat there motionless and scowling away. The clear message I got was, we hate this man so much that we are going to oppose everything he suggests, no matter how reasonable any particular proposal may be.

I missed the early part of the speech, and did not try to make any kind of comprehensive list, but here are just some of the points that had Pelosi frowning:

• We oppose socialism, and stand with the opposition in Venezuela.

• We favor school choice and scholarships to enable minority children to escape failing inner city schools.

• We oppose free health care for aliens in the country illegally. (At this point the camera panned over to show Chuck Schumer, who was scowling along with Pelosi.)

• Illegal crossings across the Southern border are down 75% this year.

• We support a more merit-based immigration system.

• We support the Second Amendment rights of our citizens. (In case you were wondering whether the Democrats just want reasonable restrictions on guns consistent with the Second Amendment, as opposed to opposing the Second Amendment entirely, now you know.)

• We are working to combat radical Islamic terrorism.

• “Our ancestors built the greatest Republic in human history, and we are making it greater than ever before.” (On this one, the camera again panned to show Schumer, as well as other Democratic members of Congress, all of whom were sitting and scowling as far as I could tell.)

OK then, I guess a few lines of demarcation have been drawn. Good luck to the Democrats running on any in that list of points.

And then Pelosi stood up at the end of the speech and ostentatiously ripped in half her printed copy of the text. Did she think that that act would persuade any uncommitted voter? Who wants to be associated with such a classless group of people?

Meanwhile, with Joe Biden thought to be the strongest potential candidate to beat Trump in the general election, the impeachment exercise has had the clear effect of focusing unwanted attention on the corrupt dealings of the Biden family in Ukraine. See many prior posts under my tag for “Corruption.” I have previously commented that the known facts make out such a lay-down case of corruption that I didn’t think Biden would ever be able to articulate a credible defense. If you think I was wrong, check out Biden’s interview with Savannah Guthrie of NBC on February 3, even as the Iowa caucuses were starting. Here are excerpts:

“No one’s found anything wrong with his [Hunter’s] dealings in Ukraine except they say it sets a bad image," Biden said when Guthrie asked whether the Hunter Biden controversy was impacting his campaign. 

"Do you agree that it sets a bad image?" Guthrie followed.

"Yeah, and my son said that," Biden, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, replied. 

"Do you think it was wrong for him to take that position, knowing it was really because that company wanted access to you?" Guthrie asked. 

"Well, that's not true," Biden retorted. "You are saying things — you do not know what you are talking about. No one said that. Who said that? Who said that?"

It’s the “Who said that? Who said that?” defense. To give you one example of “who said that,” there is Ukrainian associate general prosecutor Renat Kouzmine, quoted in my January 30 post as saying “Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, hired Hunter Biden with the sole goal of putting pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to force them to stop the judicial investigation of Burisma.” If you are skeptical as to whether Kouzmine actually said that, go to that post for a link to the video of Kouzmine saying it. But of course, it’s obvious to absolutely everybody that influencing Joe Biden to get the Ukrainian prosecutors to back off from Burisma and Zlochevsky was the reason Zlochevsky hired Hunter Biden. And that’s true no matter who said it or didn’t say it.

Looks like the voters are catching on. At this writing, RealClearPolitics is reporting 92% of the vote (finally) in from Iowa, and Joe Biden, after leading the polls for months, is a distant fourth, at 13.7%. That’s not enough to pick up a single delegate. Congratulations to the impeachers for putting enough of a spotlight on Biden to help achieve this important result.