A Big Night — but Will It Matter?

President Biden was not even halfway through his 68-minute State of the Union speech when Simon Rosenberg, the rare Democrat strategist who is bullish on Biden’s re-election prospects, fired off a note to the readers of his Substack newsletter.

“The President is Kicking Ass!” it read (though with many more exclamation points attached). The Biden campaign soon reported that the three hours surrounding the prime-time speech were the most lucrative fund-raising hours of the president’s re-election campaign so far.

The rousing speech was, at least for Democrats worried about Biden’s re-election prospects, a welcome success — and on a night when it mattered. There will be only one more moment before Election Day when Biden can be assured an interrupted block of time to speak to such a large audience of voters: his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in August.

Yet the rules for campaigning are changing in this era of splintered media markets and political polarization, in a contest between two candidates who are so familiar to the electorate and disliked by so many voters. These big-ticket moments are not the reliable move-the-needle events that they once were. Undecided voters can be targeted precisely in many ways, with TikTok the most au courant example.

This election is going to be decided by a sliver of voters in a mere handful of states. There is little reason to think that many of them spent 68 minutes on a Thursday night watching Biden talk to Congress.

“Doubt it will move vote with swing voters: Too early,” said David Plouffe, who was a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. “But for those with concerns about age, his vigor last night should help create a permission structure for them to vote for him.”