Former US President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on August 20, 2024.
Charly Triballeu/AFP via Getty Images
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Charly Triballeu/AFP via Getty Images
The NPR Network will be reporting live from Chicago throughout the week bringing you the latest on the Democratic National Convention.
Barack and Michelle Obama, Chicago’s favorite power couple, declared “hope is making a comeback” with Vice President Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket
The former president and first lady headlined the second night of the Democratic National Convention, delivering a message of exhilaration at the possibility of electing the first woman in history to the White House – and the critical importance, they added, of preventing former President Donald Trump from securing a second term.
“We want something better. We want to be better,” Obama said. “And the joy and excitement we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.”
They also warned, from firsthand experience, of the battle ahead to elect Harris – a path marred by what the former president called the “bluster, bumbling and chaos” of Trump on the campaign trail.
“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” Michelle Obama said of Trump’s campaign in 2016. “His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.
“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” the former first lady quipped to raucous applause.
‘Her story is your story’
Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday in Chicago.
Brynn Anderson/AP
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Brynn Anderson/AP
As the opening act to her husband’s keynote address, Michelle Obama was welcomed by a raucous crowd that cheered her loudly throughout her remarks.
The former first lady said hope has, until recently, been in short supply.
Her own feelings of dread about the future were compounded, she said, by her own personal grief – the loss of her mother, who passed in May.
The last time Michelle was in her hometown Chicago, she said, was to memorialize Marian Robinson.
“I still feel her loss so profoundly,” Michelle Obama said. “I wasn’t even sure I’d be steady enough to stand before you tonight. But my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty I feel to honor her memory, and to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future.”
The sense of “hard work, humility and decency” instilled by Robinson in her, she said, was also instilled in Harris by her own mother, who immigrated from India at the age of 19.
“She’d often tell her daughter, ‘Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something!’” Michelle Obama said.
Harris set about to do just that, she said, as a district attorney, as attorney general of California, and as vice president of the United States.
“She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency, and she is one of the most dignified – a tribute to her mother, to my mother, and probably to your mother too, the embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country,” Michelle Obama said.
“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,” she added.
That story stands in sharp contrast, the former first lady said, to the story of former President Trump – a tale she described as “failing forward.”
She took jabs at Trump’s inheritance of generational wealth and his business failures – a marked departure from someone who during the 2016 Democratic convention said, “When they go low, we go high.”
“If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead,” Michelle Obama said. “We don’t get to change the rules so we always win.”
That also means that Americans have to “put our heads down” and power through the “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies” she said Trump will spread on the campaign trail.
“As we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt,” Michelle Obama said. “Let us not forget what we are up against.
“So consider this to be your official ask,” she said. “Michelle Obama is asking, no, telling you, to do something!”
‘We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos’’
Former President Barack Obama hugs his wife Former first lady Michelle Obama during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday in Chicago.
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Morry Gash/AP
Former President Obama, too, warned of what to expect from Trump on the campaign trail.
“The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size,” he said while making measuring gestures with his hands. “It just goes on and on.”
“The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day,” Obama said. “From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.”
Watch his full remarks:
But Obama described Americans as a people growing wise to Trump’s antics.
Trump’s bag of old political tricks – spreading an “us and them” mentality – “has gotten pretty stale,” he said.
“We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos,” Obama added. We’ve seen that movie. And we all know that the sequel’s usually worse.”
America is ready for a new chapter, Obama said, led by “President Kamala Harris.”
Obama declared Harris is ready for the job. He said she spent her career as a prosecutor fighting for victims of sexual abuse and, fighting big banks and for-profit colleges, and as vice president, helping to cap the price of insulin and lower health care costs.
“She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower,” he said. “She’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.”
And in Walz – “I love this guy,” Obama said – Harris has found the perfect running mate, he added.
“A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired old debates that keep stifling progress, because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we’re all better off,” he said.
The former president also paid homage to his vice president, President Biden, who he said “history will remember … as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger.”
In closing, the former president quoted former President Abraham Lincoln, who on the eve of the Civil War, called for a restoration of “‘our bonds of affection.”
“An American that taps into what (Lincoln) called ‘the better angels of our nature,’” Obama said. “That’s what this election is about.”
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