“It was spectacle as survival strategy,” the New York Times reports.“In his State of the Union address, President Trump didn’t bother to introduce a raft of new policies — unusual in a midterm election year with control of Congress on the line. He did not seem concerned with making the case that he gets it when it comes to the issue Americans are most worried about. ‘Affordability,’ he said, was part of a ‘dirty, rotten lie’ perpetuated by the Democrats.”“Instead, with the slashing style of a natural campaigner and the instincts of a onetime reality television producer, he spent the better part of two hours baiting the ranks of incensed Democrats in the chamber and endeavoring to define them to the electorate as ‘sick,’ unpatriotic and utterly out of step with the values of most Americans.”