Dr. V with his SOTU postmortem

Dr. Vallicella offers his thoughts on Trump's State of the Union address.

Vallicella remarks on Nancy Pelosi's petulant ripping-up of a copy of Trump's SOTU speech. It's an obnoxious gesture, to be sure, but the right can't take the moral high ground here: Representative Joe Wilson, in 2009, shouted "You lie!" at then-President Barack Obama during Obama's address to a joint session of Congress. That was equally obnoxious, and Wilson ended up being officially reprimanded by the House of Representatives. Now the question is whether Nancy Pelosi will be reprimanded for her action. With the Dems in control of the House, I doubt it. But Pelosi's gesture carries its own karmic punishment: she has very publicly demonstrated not bravery and defiance but pettiness and stupidity. Moderates watching her—a prominent face of the Democrat party—will be repulsed by her infantile behavior and will veer Trumpward. But Nancy doesn't seem to realize any of this; like many on the left these days, she has no impulse control and can't seem to stop herself from harming her own cause. Styxhexenhammer666 thinks the current Democrat party needs to be burned to the ground and then give rise to something better—say, a JFK-style party that actually responds to the needs to real Americans and not to the vanishingly small-but-vociferous minority of shouty Twitter twats who disproportionately dominate public discourse but have little actual influence on Joe and Jane Normal. I agree: the Dems need to be burned to ash with a flamethrower* so that something better—smarter—can rise in their place.

Styx on SOTU and Pelosi and independent voters:

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*To be fair, many testicle-free Republicans also ought to be incinerated for their cowardly lack of principles and inability to stand up for themselves.