Obama's debut as a Democrat 20 years ago. He returns to campaign for Kamala Harris

When Barack Obama took the stage in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, his 43rd birthday was only a few days away and his election to the U.S. Senate was still months away.

As a state representative from Illinois, he had an unusual profile to be the keynote speaker at a presidential convention. But the self-described “skinny kid with the funny name” captivated Democrats that night by going beyond the usual address to candidate John Kerry and instead introducing the nation to his “politics of hope” and his vision of “a United States of America” ​​that will not be defined or destroyed by its differences.

Kerry lost to Republican President George W. Bush in November. But Obama etched himself into the national consciousness and began a remarkable rise that brought him to the Oval Office barely four years later. And now, eight years after leaving the presidency, Obama returns to the DNC on Tuesday night as an elder statesman with a different mission.

In his political hometown of Chicago, the country's first black president will honor President Joe Biden's legacy after he leaves the race while championing another historic figure: Vice President Kamala Harris. It's set to be a significant moment as she faces former President Donald Trump in a matchup that features the same cultural and ideological fissures Obama warned about two decades ago.

“President Obama is still the lodestar of the party,” said Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, who credits the 44th president with helping her become her state's first black lieutenant governor.

Except for Harris herself on Thursday, Stratton said, no voice is more important this week in galvanizing Democrats, reaching independent voters and convincing moderate Republicans than Obama.

“He knows how to cross the finish line,” she said.

Laying the foundations

Obama's two decades in public life were marked by groundbreaking speeches, and his work is characterized by a broad tone and a diverse scope – a series of choices as he tries to find the right balance for Harris, who is seeking to become the first woman, second Black person and first person of South Asian descent to be president.

In 2004, Obama took advantage of an invitation from Kerry and then-Democratic leader Terry McAuliffe to mix lofty themes with stories, humor and his biography as the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.

“Let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” Obama told delegates and a national television audience.

McAuliffe, however, remembered Obama as an obvious rising star. “I knew him … had done events for him” when he was running for the U.S. Senate, McAuliffe said in an interview. Still, no one could have predicted Obama's appearance and the reaction – because he had never stood on such a stage before.

“It was an electrifying moment,” McAuliffe recalled. “It obviously laid the foundation for his success as a candidate and a nominee in 2008.”

In 16 minutes – shorter than a typical nomination acceptance, inaugural or State of the Union address – Obama told his origin story, summarized the 2004 election and talked about Kerry and his running mate John Edwards. Obama's policy statements were brief, but his sweeping indictment of divisive politics struck a chord.

“There is no liberal America and no conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is no black America and no white America and no Latino America and no Asian America; there is the United States of America,” he said in perhaps the most memorable passage. “Are we engaging in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”

Two and a half years later, Obama took up this motto again when he launched his presidential campaign in front of thousands of supporters outside Springfield, the capital of the state of Illinois. His campaign slogan: Hope and Change.

Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, the first black man to hold the office in the state, recalled observing that winter landscape as a high school student. “That was the moment it clicked for me,” Davis said, and later “it helped me believe that I could accomplish what I accomplished.”

A different tone

If idealistic, even nebulous, themes brought Obama to the White House, it was tough politics and ice-cold realism that got him through.

In March 2008, then-candidate Obama was pilloried for his friendship with his black pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had criticized the country's history of white supremacy. The subject of the controversy was, among other things, a video clip in which Wright shouts “God damn America” ​​from the pulpit of Obama's home church.

This time, high-flown rhetoric was not appropriate. Obama composed a nearly 38-minute handwritten speech explaining his relationship with Wright in the context of U.S. history and race relations in the early 21st century.

“I can't deny him any more than the black community can,” Obama said, rejecting Wright's “view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong in America above everything we know is right in America.”

The speech, titled “A More Perfect Union,” was full of nuance – a risk in presidential politics. But it worked.

Obama's speech at the convention in August was undoubtedly marked by his trademark promises of hope and change. The venue and the crowd – 84,000 people at the Denver Broncos football stadium – confirmed his celebrity status. But another highlight was Obama's attack on Republican candidate John McCain. After weeks of resisting Democratic demands to attack the Vietnam War hero, Obama denounced the Arizona senator as a rubber stamper for the outgoing Bush administration, out of step with most Americans and weak on the world stage.

“You know, John McCain likes to say that he would follow (9/11 mastermind Osama) bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he wouldn't even follow him to the cave where he lives,” Obama once said.

It would be a preview of Obama's most blunt speech, his appearance at the virtual Democratic Party Convention in 2020. Speaking on behalf of his former Vice President Biden, Obama portrayed Trump as fundamentally unfit for office. It was the most scathing indictment by any of his predecessors against a sitting president in modern US history.

“This administration has shown that it will destroy our democracy if that is what it takes to win,” Obama said nearly five months before Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent Biden from being certified as the 2020 election winner.

Weight of history

McAuliffe said Obama's role on Tuesday was, in part, to amplify the message of several presidents: Biden spoke on Monday and President Bill Clinton speaks on Wednesday.

“They're going to talk about what happens when a Democratic president comes to power,” McAuliffe said, particularly the economy. Now it's Obama's turn, McAuliffe said, to endorse Clinton as “chief explainer” – a reference to Clinton's speech at the 2012 convention when Obama was seeking re-election. The idea, McAuliffe said, is to set up Harris as the natural Democratic successor.

Stratton herself said she expects the man she has experienced to resonate with both voters and the masses. She volunteered on Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and remembers the then-president visiting his campaign's Hyde Park office in Chicago on Election Day.

“He was funny and down-to-earth” as he shook hands with volunteers and then began calling voters himself, she recalled.

Four years earlier, Stratton and her four daughters were among the crowds in Chicago's Grant Park when Obama delivered his first victory speech. “Strangers were hugging and crying,” she said. “We saw this black family come out and know they were on their way to the White House. It was a remarkable moment.”

On Tuesday, she said, Obama has an opportunity to pressure Trump, speak directly to American voters and recognize the significance of Harris' moment.

“He was a historic candidate and president. He knows what it's like,” Stratton said. “There will be this wonderful moment when the first black president passes the baton.”