funding our elections. >> for more than two years covid has impacted every decision in our lives and the life of this nation. because of the progress we've made, because of your resilience and the tools that we have been provided by this congress, tonight i can say we're moving forward safely back to a more normal routine. >> i've got a great panel to talk about this, here in d.c., nbc's yamiche alcindor, and garrett haake, matthew dowd founder of country over party, and robert gibs served as white house press secretary in the obama administration. great to have all of you. yamiche, i think this is a key part of his reset, we have been talking about for weeks and weeks and weeks, thematically, unity amid crisis, it's tough to turn a state of the union into something. does the white house feel like they moved the needle at all. >> when i was talking to democrats ahead of this speech, what they wanted was president biden to give a speech that