The State of the Union address occupies a supremely weird position in American politics. It's required to at once contain the soaring aspirations of a campaign speech and the wonky detail of a meaty policy speech. Presidents are expected to walk a tightrope between appeasing their base and appealing to the sensibilities of all Americans, including the roughly half that likely would never vote for them. They have to extol America's greatness and still point out the many areas in which America needs work. It's pretty much an impossible task.

For the last six years, President Obama has had to bring a certain grimness to the State of the Union. He had a Great Recession to deal with ("our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken," he admitted in 2009) and a slow recovery to explain (in 2011, his speech was filled with awkward calls to "win the future," because even though America had "broken the back of this recession," it still faced "challenges that have been decades in the making"). Last night, though, even in front of a Congress packed to the rafters with Republicans, Obama was able to give his first real optimistic State of the Union address, and he did a fine job with it. Early in the speech, Obama said "the shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong," which is a long way from the 2012 presidential race, when he had to thread a difficult needle by saying the economy was improving while admitting it was nowhere near recovered yet still assuring everyone that everything was proceeding according to plan.

Obama laid out an ambitious agenda of paid sick leave, an increased minimum wage, improved broadband, community college access for everyone, and increased taxes on the top 1 percent. It sounded good. It sounded like something we should aspire to. Frankly, I wonder how the 2014 elections might have turned out if Democrats around the country ran on this platform, rather than the centrist mishmash they presented to the American people. But Council Member Kshama Sawant was right to point out in her socialist response to the State of the Union that most of these plans won't see the light of day this year. The Republican Party will ignore them, or malign them, or grind them into paste. Why, then, did Obama spend so much time talking about them?

Because that's what State of the Union addresses are for. Obama was providing a vision for the country, for his party, and for the Democrats who'll be running for his job over the next two years. He was giving them something to fight for, and articulating those causes directly to the American people. He ensured that income inequality will be a topic of debate for the next year. He moved a discussion about the rising costs of higher education back into the public sphere. He shamed our piss-poor internet infrastructure. That's what politics is all about.

Additionally, President Obama forced the Republicans to demonstrate their position as the Party of No. Here's an incomplete list of things Republicans refused to applaud last night: equal pay for women, the end of torture as an American interrogation tactic, easier access to community college, tax breaks for the middle class, a higher minimum wage, affordable childcare, the rejection of "offensive stereotypes of Muslims," and the "condemn[ation of] the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender." That's some cartoon villain bullshit, right there. They basically refused to cheer for anything but straight white Christian businessmen.

And Iowa senator Jodi Ernst's rebuttal didn't help that perception of the Republican Party, either. Ernst awkwardly tried to rebrand the Keystone Pipeline as the "Keystone Jobs Bill" (even though the bill would only "create" 35 permanent jobs), which only served to further cement the idea that Republicans are in the pocket of Big Oil. She talked about cutting the size of government, which, to a lot of Americans who happen to work for the government, sounded like the sound of more layoffs on the way. She talked about cutting regulations, which sounds to ordinary people like Congress getting too friendly with lobbyists. It's the same tired message Republicans keep pumping out, even though the national conversation has changed significantly over the last five years.

Florida representative Curt Clawson's Teabagger rebuttal was even worse, because it didn't have the discipline of Ernst's short speech. Instead, Clawson ranted about small government and staying out of bad wars at the same time that he proposed fortifying our borders and hunting down enemies abroad. Gone are the days when Teabaggers pretended to care about fiscal responsibility above all; now they're just for everything George W. Bush said he was for, and it's impossible to discern a difference between them and the mainstream Republican Party. Clawson's speech to me sounded a lot like the farting cadence of a deflating balloon; if it wasn't the Tea Party's last gasp, it sure did a fine impression of it.