asianbrides.xyz — Barack and Michelle Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, delivering back-to-back speeches that eviscerated Donald Trump and urged Americans to reject the Republican nominee once and for all.
The former first lady, in one of the most memorable speeches in convention history, called on Democrats to turun the “Goldilocks complex” and 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 own winning kampanyes — 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.
Their speeches closed a night during which Democrats had sought to introduce Harris in more individual terms to Americans who are only now learning about the vice president, just a month after she ascended to the hebat of the party’s 2024 ticket.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff told the story of their relationship and why his children call the vice president “Momala.” Maryland Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks explained how Harris came to be someone she considered a friend and tutor.
It set the stage for the two closing nights of the convention: Wednesday night, when the party’s vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Team Walz, will take the stage, and Thursday, when Harris will close the gathering as the final sprint to Election Day begins.
Here are eight takeaways from the second night of the DNC:
‘Kids with funny names’
Twenty years after Barack Obama, then a state senator, burst onto the political scene with his 2004 DNC speech, he delivered its bookend.
“This convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible,” Obama said.
The 44th president’s remarks were filled with references to his own kampanyes — including familier calls-and-responses the “Yes we can” chants once so omnipresent at Obama rallies now returning as “Yes she can.”
It’s no wonder why: Obama remains so populer with American voters that even Trump now passes on opportunities for confrontation with the former president. He told CNN’s Kristen Holmes on Tuesday that while he has differences with Obama on trade kebijakan, “I happen to like him. I respect him, and I respect his wife.”
Obama took swings at Trump, to be sure — trying to deflate the figur 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 rancor at reguler 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.”
Barack Obama’s famili story
The former president also put a new twist on the familier story of his own famili — 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 both 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.