SOTU was a really bad look for Democrats

The Democratic strategy hinges on one hope: that the American people hate President Donald Trump as much as they do. They don’t. Consequently, their refusal to stand or clap, even during moments that every American should have supported, was a really bad look for the Democrats.

The president is measuring success differently

There’s no doubt a lack of respect coming from Trump has made his administration easy to hate. He takes on positions Progressive Democrats despise, along with being generally non-presidential on Twitter demeanor. The stories about him, driven by an unhinged and unreasonable media, has driven Trump’s approval numbers into the ground.

But average Americans don’t watch the news media 24/7, and while they’ll react to the notion that Trump is unlikable by the media’s standards, when they see him give a speech that seemed reasonable and measured, followed immediately by imagines of some Democrats not even willing to stand in honor of Otto Warmbier’s family, it sends a strange message.

When the president calls on us all to be united or touts the fact that the vast majority of us will benefit from higher take-home pay, we see Nancy Pelosi looking like Trump just kicked a puppy.

Democratic reaction (or lack thereof) to a speech that 75 percent of CBS/YouGov viewers approved of won’t make sense to the vast majority of people who are low-level consumers of news. That makes Democrats look pathetic and childish. If they didn’t want to be there, they should have stayed home. But they showed up — and looked foolish the entire time.

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