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Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 3:40 AM UTC

The Democratic response

President Bush's State of the Union was nothing special, but the Democratic response was itself no barn-burner.

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Topics: War Room, Jim Webb, State of the Union,

Well, the results are in, and here’s what we know after the State of the Union and the Democratic response — Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas, is no Jim Webb. Sebelius delivered this year’s Democratic response, and all due respect to the govenor, she almost certainly won’t inspire the kind of reaction Webb got last year, when the Virginian was a newly seated Senator.

Webb delivered a bombastic speech he’d written by himself, one many commentators agreed had overshadowed the president. Sebelius, on the other hand, stuck mainly to platitudes, especially about her hope that the two parties would come together in a spirit of bipartisanship, and she offered little in the way of concrete policy ideas. “In these difficult times, the American people aren’t afraid to face difficult choices. But, we have no more patience for divisive politics,” Sebelius said. “In spite of the attempts to convince us that we are divided as a people, a new American majority has come together. We are tired of leaders who rather than asking what we can do for our country, ask nothing of us at all. … On behalf of the new American majority — the majority of elected officials at the national, state and local level, and the majority of Americans, we ask you, Mr. President, to join us.”

Update: Marc Ambinder reports that Sebelius will be endorsing and campaigning with Barack Obama tomorrow.

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.

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