Now, this is rich:

Here’s what we know about President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night: It will include some news — as in new challenges aimed at Congress — and enough rhetoric about economic growth and job creation to sound familiar to most Americans who worry about continued 8 percent unemployment.

The president’s speech, described by White House officials as an expansion of January’s inauguration theme of “opportunity for all,” will kick off a week of campaign-style Obama travel designed to pressure GOP lawmakers to bend to the wishes of [WHAT THE DEMOCRATS CLAIM IS] a majority of Americans — or risk their election-year wrath.

Yeah, I had to fix that article a bit: I’m a little surprised, though. Usually Real Clear Politics is admirably even-handed about these sorts of things. Maybe the author is new?

Anyway, I would like to remind Mister President of two numbers that may have escaped his notice: 234, and 228. The first number represents the number of Republican Congressmen who won re-election despite the fact that Obama did, too; and the second represents the number of Congressional Districts that Mitt Romney won. Which leads naturally enough to the next question: why, precisely, is Barack Obama expecting to scare precisely the group of people who have already survived Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ displeasure? 2012 wasn’t 2006 or 2008, after all. It was an election where the electorate apparently decided that, sure, this entire ‘Republican stubbornness’ thing was working for them*. You can hardly blame the GOP for taking the electorate at their word.

Besides: what’s the President going to do, anyway? Make a speech? Has that ever worked? – Because I can’t think of a particular case offhand where Obama making a speech has really worked. Well, worked for him; state-party Republicans have been finding his efforts to be of great help, all across the land…