Millions of Americans have never heard a Trump speech. Remember that MSM demonized Trump during the election so most Democrats and Independents took MSM at their word and assumed that Trump was a monster.
When Trump was elected, his victory speech was at 3:30 in the morning and most people had gone to bed. When Trump was inaugurated, only those who voted for him bothered to hear his speech as it was on a workday.
So last night's prime time speech was the FIRST time that millions of people ever heard Trump speak. And most of those people are now saying "not a bad guy."
This is the worst fear of the Democrats' realized and the main reason they were so on edge last night. This was the very first time that President Trump got to actually use his bully pulpit to get his message out to America unfiltered by MSM.
That doesn’t explain the professional punditry(both left and right) praising the SOTU speech that was more or less the same speech he’s delivered 50 times already. I still don’t get that angle.