CHICAGO ― Former President Barack Obama delivered a lofty speech in support of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, hailing her as a visionary leader with the experience and values to help the country “move past some of the tired old debates that keep stifling progress.”
Harnessing Democrats’ sense of excitement about Harris, Obama presented the Democratic presidential nominee as a natural heir to his optimistic first presidential bid.
After explaining how the country needs a president committed to empowering workers in “this new economy,” Obama said, “Kamala will be that president.”
Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Yes she can!” ― a play on the Obama presidential campaign slogan, “Yes we can.” Obama heard it and repeated it. “Yes she can!” he said. “Yes she can.”
The crowd was electric from the moment Obama walked on stage ― in part because he was preceded by former First Lady Michelle Obama, who arguably gave the most rousing speech of the night. The one-two punch of the Obamas ― both Chicagoans ― fit with the spirit of a convention that has sought to conjure the effervescence of Obama’s early candidacy, but subtly break with the pandemic, inflation and anxiety over President Joe Biden’s age.
Michelle, who has never run for public office, remains one of the Democratic Party’s most gifted speakers. Her focus on “hope,” a core theme of her husband’s two campaigns and presidency, set the stage for his subsequent speech. He opened with an affectionate joke about her speaking abilities.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up!” he said. “I’m feeling ready to go ― even if I’m the only person stupid enough to speak right after Michelle Obama.”
Erin Hooley via Associated Press
With uncanny ease, Obama combined encomiums to the compassion and experience of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, with biting takedowns of former President Donald Trump, and poetic musings on the nature of the American experience as it has interacted with his own family life.
“As we gather here tonight, the people who will decide this election are asking a very simple question: Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future; about my children’s future…about our future together?” he asked. “One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over that question.”
The 44th president got a particular rise out of the crowd with his veiled suggestion that Trump’s fixation on crowd sizes might reflect an insecurity about the size of his male organ.
“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he said, prompting laughs as he pretended to measure something with his hands.
Obama characterized the contest between Trump and Harris as a fight over the future direction of the country ― whether Americans would submit to Trump’s zero-sum, fear-based vision, or a politics of shared national sacrifice between people of different backgrounds. As an example of Democrats’ more uplifting and compassionate approach, he talked about how Michelle’s recently deceased mother Marian Robinson, who died in May, had reminded him of his own grandmother, a white woman from a small town in Kansas.
“On the surface, the two of them didn’t have a lot in common,” Obama said. “And yet, they shared a basic outlook on life ― they were strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regardless of the barriers that they encountered … they still went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakable foundation of love for their children and their grandchildren.”
He described the two women as embodiments of our common national bonds, mirrored by figures in the lives of Harris and Walz, “who weren’t famous or powerful, but who managed, in countless ways, to leave this country a little better than they found it.”
“As much as any policy or program, I believe that’s what we yearn for ― a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other,” he added. “A restoration of what Lincoln called, on the eve of civil war, ‘our bonds of affection.’ An America that taps what he called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ That is what this election is about.”
The former president made a point to honor Biden, too, whose role in the convention has been bittersweet as his political career comes to an end. He said picking Biden as his running mate in 2008 turned out to be one of his best decisions as president.
“Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers,” Obama said. “And as we worked together for eight years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts and experience, but his empathy and his decency.”
He celebrated Biden’s legacy as president before delicately addressing the elephant in the room: that Biden dropped his bid for reelection amid Democratic panic that he couldn’t defeat Trump in November, and cleared the path for Harris to step up.
“And at a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality, we needed a leader who was steady, and brought people together, and was selfless enough to do the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country,” Obama said. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”
And with that, the former two-term president said it’s time to move forward.
“Now the torch has been passed,” Obama said. “Now it’s up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake: It will be a fight.”