Can Biden gain momentum from State of the Union speech?

(TND) — President Joe Biden will be looking to build reelection momentum coming out of a generally well-received State of the Union speech.

The president, saddled with a low 38% job approval rating, found favor with 65% of Americans who watched his speech Thursday night, according to a CNN/SSRS poll.

As expected, Republican viewers weren’t impressed. Just 27% of them said they had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech.

Also as expected, nearly all Democrats gave a positive response.

But 65% of key independents also had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech.

Before the speech, CNN found that just 45% of Americans thought Biden’s policies would move the country in the right direction.

That figure, from the same group of survey participants, jumped to 62% after the State of the Union.

Tyler Johnson, who teaches about campaigns, elections and public opinion at the University of Oklahoma, said any president has “jobs” they want to accomplish with their State of the Union speech.

One job is for the president to go before the American people with his “shopping list of what he'd like to do in the next year,” Johnson said.

An incumbent running for reelection also has the task of setting their agenda for their campaign.

“But Biden had the very specific third job of trying to change the conversation about age and fitness and so forth,” he said.

Johnson said Biden seems to have hit the mark there. The complaints he’s heard have been more about Biden being loud than him being old, Johnson said.

And that’s a trade-off Biden’s likely willing to make, he said.

“In the moment, he has put a sort of vision and profile in viewers minds that differs from the expectations they might have had,” Johnson said. “Now the question is, can he back that up with repeated action over time to sort of reinforce that? Speeches in general, and even the most momentous speeches, like State of the Unions, have a short shelf life. Something new is going to come along in the next few days.”

Biden’s biggest hurdles are probably the focus on his age and trying to convince Americans that he’s been good for the economy, Johnson said.

“The economy is always the No. 1 issue,” Todd Belt, Political Management program director at The George Washington University, previously told The National Desk.

Johnson agreed.

“I expect the economy to be a massive focus of the conversation,” he said. “It almost always is, especially in cycles where we have negative numbers to talk about, no matter when those negative numbers existed. So, the economy may be getting better now, but that's not going to be enough to shake off those negative feelings that people have had for the past few years.”

Friday brought another strong jobs report.

And the U.S. economy grew a surprisingly strong 3.2% last quarter as inflation pressures eased and consumers kept spending.

But folks are still feeling the cumulative strain of higher prices.

Bankrate Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride recently told The National Desk that overall household expenses are 20% higher now than they were four years ago. Food prices are up 25% during that span.

Johnson said Biden’s speech was a mix of “greatest hits of modern Democrats,” as the president talked about abortion and health care, along with noteworthy attempts to try to reach out to the middle of the electorate.

There were even nods to disaffected Republicans, he said.

“We're talking about an election that is probably best described as a coin flip,” Johnson said.

Polls out this week show Biden and former President Donald Trump in a dead heat.

An Emerson College Polling national survey shows them tied in a hypothetical, though essentially guaranteed, general election rematch this fall. Each got 45% in that survey, with 10% undecided.

An Economist/YouGov Poll showed Trump up two percentage points.

An I&I/TIPP Poll showed Biden up one percentage point.

“Every small subset of voters that (Biden) can pick up in important locations could matter here,” Johnson said.

Belt previously said immigration is an “activating issue for Republican voters, much less so for Democratic voters.”

Meanwhile, Democratic voters are likely to rally around the issues of abortion access and “the issue of democracy” this fall, Belt said.

Johnson said there's been a sense over the past few weeks that maybe there's an opening for Biden on immigration that wasn't there before the bipartisan Senate immigration bill got scuttled.

Biden has blamed Republicans for playing politics with immigration and bowing to Trump’s wishes to keep immigration unfixed so it can stay a campaign issue.

And Biden showed in the State of the Union speech that he’s trying to appeal to the middle on that essential and divisive issue.

The word “illegal” when talking about immigrants has become sort of taboo within the Democratic Party, Johnson said.

And, yet, Biden used it Thursday night in an exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene shouted at Biden during the speech about Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan national who unlawfully crossed into the U.S. in September 2022.

Biden held up a white button with Riley’s name.

“Laken Riley,” Biden said. “An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That's right. But how many of thousands of people being killed by legals?”

Johnson said Biden’s feisty response to Greene and fellow Republicans during the immigration portion of the State of the Union might be a preview of the campaign to come.

“Is that, you know, just Joe Biden being Joe Biden? Is that a symbol of him trying to sort of capture the middle ground or send a signal as to where he's at on immigration over the next seven months or so?” Johnson said.