Some people who watched the Democrat response to the president's state of the Union address last night said it was a ridiculous attempt to reinvigorate failed policies with empty rhetoric.

Other people said it was powerful and intelligent because they didn't want anyone to find out they were actually watching the fantastic four on AMC when they're clearly too old to enjoy movies with characters named Mr. Fantastic and Victor Vandoum.

But what you may not realize and wouldn't care about if you did is that the speech that was delivered was actually a second draft that was hurriedly assembled after a first version was thrown away.

The Daily Wire has exclusively plucked that first version from a flaming dumpster. It reads in part, quote,

Hi everyone, many of you are probably looking at me right now and thinking wow she's pretty hot for a governor of Michigan and I agree. But you might still wonder what can she have to say in defense of Democrat policies when president Trump has restored the job market boosted the stock market killed some major terrorists and signed some new trade deals just since January.

Well, it's a good question and the truth is I really got screwed when they gave me this thankful task but is having a good job anywhere near as important as ensuring that a transgender woman can be called by the right pronoun in the few years he has left before he kills himself.

And sure before Donald Trump took off as some of you may have been unemployed to the point of despair and addiction but could you really understand your white privilege without a Democrat president constantly explaining to you.

And yes, Trump has restored the military and showed up our borders but does that make up for the fact that he wanted Ukraine to investigate the unbridled corruption of one of our incredibly boring candidates was at this point apparently the speech writer was fired.

For some reason trigger warning I'm Andrew Clayvin and this is the Andrew Clayvin show.

Well, that was an amazing state of the union speech mostly because the state of the union is amazing just as January Trump and America have had more major triumphs economically, no materially and politically than I can remember ever being packed into a single month before.

And there was lots of Trumpian showmanship and weepy drama all of which was great but buried deep in the speech was one upbeat statistic that maybe moved me more than anything else.

That's the fact that American deaths by despair by drugs and alcohol and suicide have dropped for the first time in three years.

The fall in American life expectancy due to those deaths by despair was for me an inarguable rebuke to the leaders and elites of the Obama years.

The drop in life expectancy was peculiar to America among the first tier countries and it was centered in the industrial Midwest, central Appalachia and Northern New England all the places where jobs were disappearing due to globalization.

Those were the jobs President Obama told us we're not coming back. The ones he said Trump would need a magic wand to resurrect which tells us several things.

Our elites were so trapped in their self-serving theories they forgot to look at the actual results of their actions.

No one knew this epidemic of despair was going on until researchers stumbled on it. They were so confident they were the best in the brightest.

They forgot to question themselves and they were so enamored of their own elitism they turned their backs on ordinary people who they find deplorable let's face it.

But even more important is this all these leftists Bernie and Warren and Biden all of them every one of them they talk endlessly about giving people health care, giving them welfare, giving them guaranteed incomes but they don't understand the things that matter meaning purpose the dignity of work and self-reliance things the government can't give but can only protect.

The left's infantilizing paternalism is bad for our health both physical and mental. It's founded on a misguided idea of life that elevates material goods and material pleasures sex and money basically above the true goods and true pleasures love and meaningful work that make life worth living.

It's not up to them to take care of us. It's up to them to stop taxing and demonizing and destroying the means and methods by which we take care of ourselves.

Governments are instituted among men to secure our rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's an our declaration of independence.

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