President Donald Trump did something entirely new in his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday evening. Playing to one of his greatest strengths, which is that he is a gifted populist showman, he simply put on a populist show. It was an address of record length, yet it was not the “laundry list” that so many of these presidential speeches are. It was a theater production, bringing in a long line of military, sporting, and civilian heroes to honor, whose presence was calculated to reflect glory onto the president, his administration, and his party.

The calculation was also that Democrats would look sour and seem less proud of their country and its people. He didn’t leave that to chance, calling them “dirty rotten liars” and “cheats” among other things. The technique is hardly refined or sophisticated, but it may have worked. The Left refused to support several allusions to the notion of American sovereignty. This was predictable and made Democrats look bad. They looked worse for heckling by leftist Squad members, one of them sporting a badge with the vulgar words, “F*** ICE” on it, showing that they can stoop at least as low as Trump can.