During parts of his address to a joint session of Congress last night, Donald Trump sounded like a comic book villain. Referencing the assassination attempt he survived last summer, he said that he believed he’d been “saved by God” in order to inaugurate a new “golden age.” He said the United States needs Greenland for its national security and that “we’ll get it one way or the other.” He directed a number of schoolyard taunts at the opposition party, including referring to a sitting US senator (Elizabeth Warren) as “Pocahontas” to her face. Meanwhile, his supporters frequently interrupted even mundane utterances with boisterous applause and chants of “USA! USA!”

Early in the speech, Trump claimed that last November’s election “was an electoral mandate such as has not been seen in many decades” and that he had “won the popular vote by big numbers.” In reality, Trump won a plurality rather than an absolute majority of the popular vote, and in both absolute and proportional terms his margin of victory was much narrower than Biden’s had been four years earlier. In response, Texas congressman Al Green stood up and shouted, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” He was dramatically ejected by the sergeant at arms amid more shouts of “USA! USA!”

Green’s impulse to emphasize that Trump is an unpopular president pursuing destructive and deeply unpopular economic policies made sense. It’s far more challenging to understand the official Democratic response, delivered by my former congresswoman (and now Michigan’s junior senator) Elissa Slotkin.