SPEAK UP: What do you want to hear from Joe Biden at the State of the Union?

What will it take to make the case against Trump — and for democracy?

Tonight, Joe Biden delivers the final State of The Union address of this presidential term.

We’re sure Biden will give us a long list of achievements, but what we’d really like to hear is a hell of an argument from Dark Brandon: for freedom, against Trump’s deeply unpatriotic threat to that freedom, and along with that a real embrace of patriotism — reclaiming it from the Republican operators who’ve twisted it into nationalism since they stole away the concept from all of us sometime in the depths of the last century.

What do you think Biden needs to say to convince you — and not just you, but your friends and family, your neighbors, and your community? What do you hope to hear from him? We want to know.

To get you thinking, we’ve collected some thoughts from some of the smartest folks we know. As always, this is a safe and generative space for our subscribers, and we expect you all, as always, to treat each other with openness, kindness, and curiosity.

I think we have to invoke patriotism. Obviously, the Democrats deeply love this country, believe in this country, believe in the role of government. You don't run for the United States Congress if you don't have some real belief in the possibility of doing good with government for the nation.

He's got to give up on the idea that Trump is an aberration in the Republican Party. He's got to connect Trump's outright white supremacy to the tilling of the soil by a Republican Party that adopted a Southern strategy that was about economic redistribution upwards but used the emotional notes of white grievance. 

He can, I believe, recast the story of American poverty as not a moral or cultural failing. He really in many ways can be an avatar of a white moderate journey. 

I think in this moment, when what we have seen has been so stark and so ugly, the most important job is to develop among the majority of Americans who actually rejected the idea of autocracy a sense of what our democracy needs to be. 

We need to look with clear eyes at the foundation of our democracy and decide what has been missing and has to be added to the mix, what has to be strengthened, what has to be created to ensure that we never end up where we were, which was so close to being over the cliff.

Biden could pick more fights, which actually helps with the problem of touting accomplishments. One specific reason it doesn’t work to tell people, “We did this, we did this, we did this,” is that the message fails for people whose perception of the last few years is, “I don't feel better. I don't feel like I'm happy with my life.” What they hear is that doing your very best didn't do anything for them. 

The message fails because it doesn’t present the conflict. If you say instead, “We are here to ensure that every single child can get the care that they need. We gave that to you for a short time, and then Republicans took it from you.” You present that conflict, you present yourself as a fighter.

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Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images