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Barack and Michelle Obama closed out the Democratic National Convention’s second night by pitching Kamala Harris as an heir to their political legacy. And they derided Donald Trump as a “racist” egomaniac who’d squandered his own presidency, and needed to be kept out of power.
“This convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible,” the former president said in his closing remarks, an echo to the convention address that launched his national career 20 years ago. Harris’s parents had “crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America,” evoking the story he’d told Democrats in that same 2004 speech about his Kenyan father coming to a “magical place.”
“I’m fired up!” Obama told the crowd, setting up one of the signature chants of his 2008 and 2012 campaigns..
Appearing on stage not long after his wife, the former president made a tribute to Joe Biden, his one-time vice president, and said “one of my best” decisions as the party’s nominee in 2008 was picking Biden, before hailing Biden’s own achievements as president.
But Obama quickly pivoted to attack Trump, breaking out the Democrats’ favorite new refrain — ”weird” — to say he had a “weird obsession with crowd sizes.” He glanced quickly at his hands, a joke about masculinity and a reminder that Democrats were no longer worried that anti-Trump ridicule might backfire.
“America is ready for a new chapter,” he said, “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
Obama ran through Harris’ record as a prosecutor, adding that she had “pushed me and my administration hard,” after the subprime mortgage crisis to help people who lost their homes in the fallout, later saying that Harris would work to bolster the middle class as president.
On Tim Walz, Obama said “he knows who he is, and he knows what’s important.” Together, he said, they had a vision to ensure all Americans could “get along with each other,” and deliver for everyone.
“Yes she can!” Obama said, sparking an immediate chant in the crowd — another echo to 2008.
“We will build a country that is more secure, more just, more equal, and more free,” he said, leaving to a standing ovation.
Speaking immediately before his speech, Michelle Obama was welcomed by her own standing ovation and rapturous applause from the audience in Chicago, the Obamas’ hometown. Her speech recalled the same spirit of 2008, starting with a declaration that “hope is making a comeback!” But she also gave voice to the collective “mourning” Democrats had been feeling, an oblique nod to how far the party’s fortunes — and optimism — appear to have changed since Biden left the race.
The former first lady also drew many links between her own life and Kamala’s history: “Her story is your story. It’s my story. It’s the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life.”
“There is no other choice than Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” she said, painting a picture of Harris as the polar opposite to Donald Trump, while also warning that he could revisit many of the same tactics he used to attack the Obamas in the past. She threw out a quip about how the presidency was a “Black job,” recalling Trump’s terminology, which came up in a contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists earlier this summer.
Above all, she urged Democrats to channel their emotions into action.
“Michelle Obama is asking, no I’m telling you all, to do something!” she said at one point.
Ultimately, the major theme of the primetime speeches was drawing a contrast between the future that Harris offered as opposed to Trump, and, aside from a tribute by Obama, brief or no references to Biden by name.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff spoke of Harris’ ability to take America forward: “America, in this election, you have to decide who to trust with your family’s future. I trusted Kamala with our family’s future. It was the best decision I ever made.”
Also speaking on stage Tuesday were Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Grisham, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Appearing early in the evening, Schumer set up an immediate contrast between “Trump’s American carnage” and the future Harris might offer. To deliver it, Schumer said, a Democratic majority in the Senate would be crucial: Democrats currently hold a two-seat majority and 34 seats are up for election in November, 23 of which are held by Democrats or Independents.
Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, applauded Harris’ economic agenda, calling it a plan for “an economy that works for all of us,” before repeatedly using the term “radical,” a word often used to attack the left by Republicans, to describe Trump and the GOP’s policies.
It was a big tent at the convention. While Sanders, a socialist and icon among the party’s progressive wing, denounced the “billionaire class,” Pritzker, heir to a massive family fortune, followed that speech by using his wealth to poke fun at Trump.
“Take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity,” the Illinois governor said.
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Harris has received significant support and advice from Obama over the years, and especially since July, and has tapped several key members of his former staff to serve on her campaign, including his 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe and adviser Stephanie Cutter, “cementing the former president’s imprint on her political operation,” Reuters wrote. She’s also echoing elements of his strategy, and has tapped the energy of the young voters who propelled Obama’s career.
Harris was an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 campaign, and the two have maintained a strong relationship since that could make him an effective campaigner for her. “He will not be talking about someone he doesn’t know,” David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser, said.
Notable
- The March on the DNC saw fewer protesters come out Monday than they’d hoped, Semafor’s David Weigel reported from Chicago, but the protests highlighted the Democrats’ Gaza problem and the different factions vying for different, sometimes overlapping, sometimes diverging, outcomes.
- Tracing Obama and Harris’ friendship and overlapping careers back, the pair met in 2004 and now, twenty years after Obama made his infamous address to that year’s convention and catapulted himself toward the presidency, he could help bring some of the energy of 2008 to her campaign, The Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote.
- The race is still close, CBS News noted, despite the enthusiasm for Harris among the party — a reality Michelle Obama acknowledged in her speech — with very few voters considered to be persuadable potential Harris voters.