On Wednesday, Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, on the eve of his first 100 days in office, followed the Academy Awards with a small, physically distanced gathering that, given the US president’s love of trains, might have switched to a railway station too. His 65-minute speech, the most important since his inauguration 99 days ago, could be summed up with three Bs: Big (in ambition), Boring (at times) and Bipartisan (or maybe not so much, judging by Republican grimaces). The new age was best summed up in a single image: behind “Uncle Joe”, the 78-year-old white man at the lectern, sat two women, Vice-President Kamala Harris and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi – both from deeply liberal California. “Madam Vice-President,” Biden said. “No President has ever said those words from this podium … and it’s about time.” Harris and Pelosi exchanged glances above their masks. That led him to Wednesday night’s once unthinkable menu of grand plans for coronavirus relief, building infrastructure and helping families, measured not in billions but trillions of dollars. In the choice between going big and going bipartisan, big is winning, remaking America with government at the centre. “My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” he said, effectively sounding the death knell for Ronald Reagan’s low-tax logic that has been Republican religion for four decades and within which even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama operated. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.” “The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America,” Biden said. “And it recognises something I’ve always said. [There are] good guys and women on Wall Street, but Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. And unions build the middle class.” He talked about green energy and corporate tax reform and described healthcare as “a right, not a privilege”. Democrats were delighted by it all, rising to their feet and clapping with such enthusiasm that it almost compensated for their diminished numbers. Republicans joined in when Biden warned of the threat posed by China (“deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world”) and struck some Trumpian notes about American products made in America. “There’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.” But they were silent, stony faced and riveted to their seats on many of the applause lines. Senator Lindsey Graham frowned, a hand to his chin. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, clapped limply if at all. Hours earlier, perhaps seeing Harris and Pelosi in his mind’s eye, McConnell had warned: “Behind President Biden’s familiar face, it’s like the most radical Washington Democrats have been handed the keys, and they’re trying to speed as far left as they can possibly go before American voters ask for their car back.” “Boring, but radical,” was the verdict of Senator Ted Cruz who, as if to prove it, looked like he was dozing off. Nick Note: Happy May day. It was the worker bees whose hands built Americas infrastructure. But that would have not been possible without the engineers, Financiers and the managers. To discourage and worse yet disparage the innovators, investors and the private side means you have a government run system that will be full of grennie winniee fairy tails, graft and waste run by the most inept corrupt idiots on the planet. This has been tried before it does not work. Its the californication of America