Reactions to the State of the Union Address

Chris Cillizza: “For his allies and even many liberals who had grown sour on him, it was a triumphant speech in which both his own soaring confidence and his dismissal of his political rivals was fitting and appropriate. For his detractors, the speech was everything they loathe about him: cocky, combative and forever campaigning. Regardless of where you land on that confident-to-cocky spectrum, one thing was very clear tonight: Obama isn’t planning to go quietly over his final two years in office. Not quietly at all.”

Annie Lowrey: “Tonight, we saw an Obama like the one we saw on the campaign trail – fired up, optimistic, discursive, happy-hearted, and historical. Tonight, we saw an Obama who decried Washington, but still seemed convinced in hope and change. Tonight, we saw Obama thunder, trumpet, and staccato-shout his policies, despite the nonexistent odds they have of passage. And the fact that the economy has turned around so much seemed to give him hope that the middle class would start feeling better, even if Washington never helps.”

Jonathan Chait: “Republicans have formulated plans to benefit working-class Americans directly, but all these plans have foundered on the problem that Republicans have no way to pay for them… Thus the blunt quality of Obama’s plan: he will cut taxes for the working- and middle-class by raising an equal amount from wealthy heirs and investors. Obama’s plan is not going to pass Congress, of course. Probably nothing serious can pass a Congress that still has no political or ideological incentive to cooperate with the president. The point is not to pass a law. It is to lay out openly the actual trade-offs involved.”

John Fund: “All of the proposals enjoy majority support in polls — although that support tends to fall after people weigh the price tag.”

Byron York: “Just as remarkable, against the backdrop of the Democratic electoral carnage of his years in office, was that the president’s most memorable line of the night was a bit of ad-lib bragging about his own election victories.”