CHICAGO – Former President Barack Obama delivered a celebratory speech Tuesday in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, praising her as a visionary leader with the experience and values that can help the country move beyond “some of the old, tired debates that consistently get in the way of progress.”
Obama capitalized on Democrats’ enthusiasm for Harris and presented the Democratic presidential candidate as the natural heir to his optimistic first presidential candidacy.
After declaring that 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, “Yes she can!” – a reference to Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes we can.” Obama heard it and repeated it. “Yes she can!” he said. “Yes she can.”
The crowd was electrified from the moment Obama took the stage – in part because he was preceded by former first lady Michelle Obama, who gave arguably the most stirring speech of the night. The one-two punch from the Obamas – both from Chicago – fit the spirit of a convention that has sought to evoke the excitement of Obama’s early candidacy but subtly break with the pandemic, inflation and anxiety about President Joe Biden’s age.
Michelle, who never ran for public office, remains one of the Democratic Party’s most gifted orators. Her focus on “hope,” a core theme of both her husband’s campaigns and presidency, set the stage for his subsequent speech. He began with an affectionate joke about her public speaking skills.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m fired up!” he said. “I feel ready to go – even if I’m the only one stupid enough to speak directly after Michelle Obama.”
With uncanny ease, Obama combined paeans to the compassion and experience of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, with scathing attacks on former President Donald Trump and poetic meditations on the nature of the American experience and its interaction 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 is thinking about my future, the future of my children… our future together?” he asked. “One thing is certain: Donald Trump will not lose sleep over this question.”
The 44th President caused particular excitement with his veiled suggestion that Trump’s fixation on the size of crowds might reflect an insecurity about the size of his male genitalia.
“Here is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of nagging and complaining that has gotten even worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and this weird obsession with crowds,” he said, drawing laughter as he pretended to measure something with his hands.
Obama described the contest between Trump and Harris as a battle over the future direction of the country – whether Americans would submit to Trump’s zero-sum game, fear-based vision, or a politics of shared national sacrifice supported by people of different backgrounds. As an example of the Democrats’ more uplifting and compassionate approach, he spoke of how Michelle’s late mother, Marian Robinson, who died in May, reminded him of his own grandmother, a white woman from a small town in Kansas.
“On the surface, the two didn’t have much in common,” Obama said. “And yet they shared a fundamental approach to life – they were strong, smart, resourceful women full of common sense who, regardless of the obstacles they faced, went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakable foundation of love for their children and grandchildren.”
He described the two women as embodiments of our shared national ties, reflected in the lives of Harris and Walz, “who were neither famous nor powerful but who succeeded in countless ways in leaving this country a little better than they found it.”
“I believe that more than any policy or program, this is what we long for – a return to an America where we work together and look out for one another,” he added. “A restoration of what Lincoln called ‘our bonds of affection’ on the eve of the Civil War. An America that uses what he called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ That is what this election is about.”
The former president also made it a point to honor Biden, whose role in the convention was bittersweet towards the end of his political career. He said that choosing Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of his best decisions as president.
“Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we have become brothers,” Obama said. “And during our eight years working together, what I have admired most about Joe is not only his intelligence and experience, but also his empathy and decency.”
He paid tribute to Biden’s legacy as president before carefully addressing the obvious: Biden had abandoned his candidacy for re-election in the face of Democrats’ panic that he could not defeat Trump in November, clearing the way for Harris.
“And at a time when the other party had become a personality cult, we needed a leader who would stand firm, bring people together, and be selfless enough to do that rarest thing in politics: put his own ambitions aside for the good of the country,” Obama said. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great peril. 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 was time to look forward.
“The torch has now 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’s going to be a fight.”
