Barack and Michelle Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, delivering speeches to show support for Kamala as the Hope for Americans.
Michelle Obama, the former first lady was greeted with one of the loudest, longest rounds of applause as she took the stage on Tuesday.
“Hope is making a comeback,” she said, echoing the theme of her husband’s 2008 presidential run.
The former first lady spoke to the optimism that Harris has created since she became the Democratic nominee and described her as the best choice to lead the nation, based on both her experience and her character.
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“My girl Kamala Harris is more than ready for this moment,” Michelle Obama said. “She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency, and she is one of the most dignified.”
She spoke of the middle-class backgrounds and values she shared with Harris and painted a sharp contrast with Trump, noting that they would never “benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”
Michelle Obama urged the audience to keep their eyes on the prize. Obama told Democrats to avoid the “foolishness” of waiting to be asked to act and made a personal appeal for everyone to “do something” between now and Election Day.
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“Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great now. We’re loving it. They pack arenas across the country. Folks are energized. We are feeling good,” she said. “But remember, there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome.”
She laid out the stakes, and the challenges, facing Harris as a Black woman seeking higher office in starker terms than any other convention speaker to date. Obama alluded to the years Trump spent spreading the false, racist birther conspiracy theory against her husband.
“We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth,” she said of Harris. “My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.”
She also took a jab at Trump’s June debate claim that migrants are stealing “Black jobs.”
“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs,” she said.
The former first lady called on Democrats to work hard to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” she said.
Then, the former president — in a speech that evoked memories of his emergence into the American political consciousness and his winning campaigns — said that the “vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided.”
“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said.
Obama took swings at Trump, to be sure — trying to deflate the figure that has so dominated American politics since Obama left the stage.
“Here is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama said.
But he also urged Democrats not to direct similar rancour at regular Americans.
“If a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people,” he said. “We recognize that the world is moving fast — that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.”
The former president also put a new twist on the familiar story of his own family — comparing his grandmother, a White woman from Kansas who helped raise him, and his mother-in-law, a Black woman from the south side of Chicago who died earlier this year.
“They knew what was true. They knew what mattered,” Obama said. “Things like honesty and integrity, kindness and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have.”
Then, he drew the connection to Harris — pointing to her Indian mother and Jamaican father, who immigrated to the United States.
“Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, or somewhere in between, we have all had people like that in our lives — people like Kamala’s parents, who crossed oceans because they believed in the promise of America,” he said.
Their speeches closed a night during which Democrats had sought to introduce Harris in more personal terms to Americans who are only now learning about the vice president, just a month after she ascended to the top of the party’s 2024 ticket.
It set the stage for the two closing nights of the convention: Wednesday night, when the party’s vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will take the stage, and Thursday, when Harris will close the gathering as the final sprint to Election Day begins.
