The State of the Union is a constitutional requirement. Article II, Section 3 mandates the president report to Congress on the state of the nation. For most of American history, members of both parties showed up to hear it regardless of who was president. Sure, a handful of protest absences here and there was nothing new. But what Democrats are doing this year is something else entirely — and it's embarrassing.
Rather than sit in the chamber and act like adults, dozens of Democrats are skipping President Trump's State of the Union address and spreading themselves across five separate counter-events. There's the "People's State of the Union" near the Lincoln Memorial, organized by left-leaning activist groups MeidasTouch and MoveOn. There's the "State of the Swamp" at the National Press Club. I’d name the rest, but what does it matter? Democrats have become so invested in their resistance to Trump that they feel they have to skip the State of the Union to prove how resist-y they are to the far left.
House Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t amused. "Democrats are going to host — count them — five separate counter events, rallies of some sort, they call them, in lieu of tonight's address," Johnson said. "For all of these theatrics, it doesn't matter how many little gatherings they have or where they stand or how high the volume is on the microphones, they have nothing to offer, nothing but their TDS agenda, the Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it's on full display."
That's a fair summary of where the Democratic Party is right now. Instead of showing up and doing the work their constituents sent them to do, they're holding rallies, making speeches to the far left base, and patting each other on the back for their resistance. Johnson called it "the same tired playbook they've run for a decade,” and he’s right.
There's something fundamentally broken about lawmakers who skip a constitutional event en masse to protest the one they skipped. Johnson hammered that point directly. "It's shameful that they would boycott an address. We don't do that. Republicans don't do that," he said. "Our constituents want and need us to be here. Every member of this House represents over 750,000 people. They're disenfranchised if you're not sitting in the seat to be a part of the role and the responsibility of Congress."
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Even Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries seemed to grasp the political danger here — at least initially. He told his caucus to either sit in silent defiance or stay home, explicitly warning them away from the kind of unruly outbursts that defined last year's address, when Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) had to be escorted from the chamber mid-speech. The message was clear: don't make a scene inside.
I guess there were enough Democrats who felt they couldn’t control themselves in the chamber and are thus skipping it entirely. They couldn't manage to be adults about it. When your leadership has to issue guidance telling so-called adults, elected members of Congress, how to behave at a national address — and they still can't pull it off — that tells you everything.
And tonight, with President Trump at the podium and a full Republican caucus in their seats, that contrast could not be sharper. One party is governing. The other is holding organized tantrums.
"All they can say, all they can tell you about is how they oppose President Trump and thwart his agenda and shut down the government and protest everything, from the president's joint address to basic immigration enforcement, and they obstruct any meaningful progress for the sake of obstruction," Johnson said.
At some point, opposition for the sake of opposition stops looking like principle and just looks like a party with nothing left to offer but hatred.
