For the Record: Jan. 12

Happy State of the Union day! Are you ready to play For the Record's version of the presidential speech drinking game?*

ONE DRINK when Obama says the following words: Accomplish, auto industry, environment, health care.

TWO DRINKS for the following words: Future, guns, immigration, prison reform.

FINISH ALL OF THE ALCOHOL in your house if the president says to Congress, “What, are you guys actually still here?” or if he ends his speech with a mic drop.

*The wise and benevolent e-hamsters who publish this newsletter remind you to drink responsibly. And if you’re not down with getting blasted on a work night, just sign up for Team FTR. We’ll bring you everything you would have probably wanted to drink over, right to your inbox, for FREE. No cheap hangover. We promise.

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH

As you probably surmised, tonight is the president’s final State of the Union. But instead of giving Congress a laundry list of stuff they’ll never do, he’s going straight to the people to talk about “the big things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for our kids. The America we believe in.” (Darn it! Martin O’Malley was going to use that line as a campaign slogan. Ah, well. Back to the drawing board.)

Anyway, so Obama is basically using the speech to lay out his agenda for the next president. And while he isn’t planning to endorse anyone in the primary, the president clearly thinks it’ll be a Democrat. Because let’s face it: We already know that none of the Republican candidates are going to do what Obama wants on gun violence. Or immigration. Or anything else he is expected to mention tonight. Still, it’ll be fun to see the reaction from presidential candidates as Dems try to ditto what’s been said and the GOP tries to burn it, burn it with fire.

DON’T BURN THAT SPEECH YET

Then again, maybe candidates shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what Obama might say. A new Paste BN/Rock the Vote Millennial Poll found that the vast majority of people under 35 are right there with the president on renewable energy and universal background checks, among other issues. But before you go thinking that millennials are all a bunch of tree-hugging liberals, it’s more nuanced than that. The survey, which is part of Paste BN’s One Nation initiative, underscored that the people who will soon be running this country are more practical than partisan. They consider themselves more conservative on the economy and foreign policy but more liberal on social issues.

MORE FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

• Why isn’t Congress sitting in bipartisan pairs anymore for the State of the Union speech? “Hugging the opposition appears to be politically fatal” (Paste BN)
• A sign of campaign announcements to come? John Kasich’s in but Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina are off the main stage Thursday for Republican Debate 6: The one where viewers wonder why there are STILL this many candidates on stage (USA TODAY) 
• Republican official files a complaint against Bernie Sanders’ wife and her financial dealings with a local college; Sanders camp calls it “recycled, discredited garbage” (Burlington Free Press)
• Nevada brothel owner rejects “whoring” himself for money in U.S. Senate race, decides to run for state Senate instead. Despite the irony of his quote, the dominance of outsiders this year means he just might be right (Reno Gazette-Journal)

SPOOF THE TRUTH

If Sean Penn can track down El Chapo, what other things can government learn from Hollywood directors? CNN created a spoof State of the Union speech using storytelling techniques from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” director Wes Anderson, and actually, it’s not bad. Maybe if more political speeches were storyboarded this way, we wouldn’t need drinking games to get through them.