In boosting Kamala Harris at DNC, Obamas go high and low

CHICAGO — Barack and Michelle Obama used their star power to lift up Vice President Kamala Harris — and eviscerate her opponent.

Representing Democrats’ modern version of political royalty, the former president and former first lady brought a raucous Chicago crowd to its feet with their distinctively soaring rhetoric. But compared to past speeches, these were different.

“When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama famously said during her 2016 Democratic National Convention speech. On Tuesday, they did both.

Both praised Harris Tuesday as someone uniquely capable of connecting with the American people and deserving of a groundswell of support, issuing calls to action for Democrats to get out to the polls this November.

“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours. As president, she won’t just cater to her own supporters, punish those who refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of every American. That’s who Kamala is,” Barack Obama said.

“We cannot afford for anyone to sit on their hands and wait to be called upon. Don’t complain if no one from the campaign has specifically reached out to ask for your support. There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness. You know what we need to do. So, consider this to be your official ask: Michelle Obama is asking you, no I’m telling y’all, to do something,” Michelle Obama said to cheers in her speech introducing her husband.

Beyond promoting Harris, they also touted a vision of a country united, where citizens give each other the benefit of the doubt and can even learn from each other.

“Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some books somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do,” Barack Obama said. “To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices.”

They also held nothing back in going after former President Donald Trump.

Both criticized Trump in sweeping terms, with Michelle Obama calling his style of politics “small,” and questioning ” Why would we accept this from anyone seeking our highest office?” and Barack Obama saying that Americans “do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos.”

But they also went after Trump in specific ways that were both cutting and, at times, below the belt.

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs?'” Michelle Obama said in likely the most memorable line of the night, referencing Trump’s claims that immigrants are taking jobs away from Black citizens.

And Obama knocked Trump for his “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” measuring out his hands in a way that some on social media interpreted as a reference to genitalia size.

Each time, the crowd roared.

Democrats hailed the speech, arguing it’s just what the doctor ordered.

The speeches were “great bookends,” said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who worked on Obama’s campaigns. “Instead of making Trump big and ominous, they made him small and petty and his gripes old and tired.”

“This was just a grand slam,” added veteran Democratic strategist David Brand. “I just think that they prosecuted the case against the convicted felon so marvelously and showed that America needs to get back to normalcy and away from the chaos that is Trumpism.”

The tone of the speeches, both optimistic and critical, inspiring and combative, underscored precisely where the Democratic Party finds itself this year.

The party is jubilant over Harris’ rise to the top of its ticket, particularly after President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate left Democrats feeling hopeless about their electoral chances in November. The United Center this week, like the party base, has been electrified.

“I am feeling fired up. I am feeling ready to go,” Barack Obama said, echoing an old campaign slogan. “I am feeling hope because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible. Because we have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her.”

But lingering fears of a Trump comeback loom over the euphoria, with attendees repeatedly bringing up the 2016 election cycle, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, another historic female candidate who Democrats were confident would win.

“People saw what happens when voters are complacent. Complacency handed us Donald Trump,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, D, told ABC News Tuesday.

With that fear, Democrats are leaving nothing to chance, unwilling to dull their rhetorical knives’ edges in the face of what they describe as nothing short of a risk to democracy in the form of Trump’s comeback bid.

“We’re talking about people who beat police officers with sticks and the American flag on Jan. 6 trying to steal a free and fair election. I’m sorry, I totally reject that,” Brand said when asked about if the Obamas’ rhetoric violated the rule of going high and not low.. “I don’t have patience for that argument about their feelings.”