The Obamas are ready to fight

During Donald Trump's crude and chaotic first presidential campaign in 2016, Michelle Obama offered a mission statement for the Democratic Party that was also a succinct summary of her family's political project: “When they go low, we rise high.” A decade and a half earlier, Barack Obama had established himself as a major figure when he declared at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: “There is no liberal America and no conservative America, there is the United States of America.”

None of these statements seem to hold true today. The country is more divided than it has been in generations, and when Republicans go under, Democrats are ready to react snippy and insult the Republicans of Donald Trump and JD Vance. The party has changed during, or been changed by, the Trump years.

At the Democratic Party convention in their hometown of Chicago last night, the Obamas showed that they too are willing to get their hands dirty, but that they have not given up on their rosier vision.

Barack Obama mocked Trump at the start of his 35-minute closing speech. “The childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he said, making a not-so-subtle hand gesture. “The other day I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who runs his leaf blower outside your window every minute of the day.”

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But Obama also tried to build an argument for Harris (and against Trump) from the perspective of freedom – a concept more commonly associated with conservative politicians but one that Democrats have tried to reclaim this year.

“We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make choices about our own lives – how we practice our faith, what our family looks like, how many children we have, who we marry,” Obama said. “And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different from ours. That's OK!”

He called for more tolerance, not only as a counter-argument to Trump's authoritarian impulses, but also towards critical voices on his own side. “When a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don't automatically assume they are bad people. We know that the world is moving fast,” he said. “Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace that we hope they will show us.”

While he acknowledged that this kind of language “can feel pretty naive” given the prevailing view among both Democrats and Republicans that every election is of existential importance, he also said that most Americans already live by these values, regardless of their political leanings.

Obama's role in the Democratic Party is changing. President Joe Biden may be the party leader and Harris the designated successor, but Obama showed his enduring strength this summer by knocking Biden out of the race and making Harris his successor. “In my opinion, he is the party leader,” Kimberly Bassett, the secretary of state for the District of Columbia, told me at the convention as we waited for the speech. Obama also paid a more eloquent tribute to Biden's presidency than any other speaker on Monday, on a program aimed at burnishing Biden's legacy.

Obama filled the role that former President Bill Clinton had played for him in 2012, when Clinton delivered a speech at the convention that made the case for a second Obama term better than he had done before. Now Obama relayed those arguments. “A popular and respected former president who has the credibility to say, trust me, this person can do this job, and who can, to use Clinton's phrase, 'brag about them,'” David Litt, an author and former Obama speechwriter, wrote to me in an email.

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Still, Obama's speech may not have been the most memorable of the night. Michelle Obama has never shown any interest in running for office; by all appearances, she doesn't enjoy politics. But her speech last night showed why Democrats can't stop yearning for her to run for president one day. When her husband said he was “the only person stupid enough to speak directly after Michelle Obama,” it hardly sounded like a joke.

She drew big laughs when she said of Trump, “Who's going to tell him that the job he's trying to get right now might be one of those 'black jobs'?” She fired up the crowd, warning against self-destructive perfectionism. “As soon as something goes wrong, as soon as a lie takes hold, we can't wring our hands,” she said. “We can't get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is right.” And she reiterated that she still believes in her old message. “Let me tell you, playing down is never the solution,” she said. “Playing down is the opposite of what we teach our children. Playing down is petty. It's unhealthy. And quite frankly, it's unpresidential.”

The truth is that while the Obamas aren't quite as stuffy as they were eight years ago, they and the rest of their party aren't quite as mad at Trump. No one can match Trump's penchant for insults, and only other Republicans are trying. Democrats, however, have concluded that Biden's rather lofty rhetoric about Trump hasn't worked, while Harris and Walz's attempts to devalue Trump through ridicule are succeeding.

Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to Barack Obama, told me he saw a continuity between the Democratic Party before Trump and Obama's approach today. “One thing he has done well throughout his career is articulate a progressive patriotism and show how to remain positive while still drawing a sharp, values-based contrast,” Rhodes wrote in an email. “I think that's something he actually has in common with Harris-Walz in some ways – he doesn't come across as grim or angry and has always displayed joy, humor and a sense of solidarity that was sometimes missing in the Trump years, when Democrats were often more motivated by fear and anger.”

The general mood at the convention was euphoric—Democrats seem to be having a hard time believing how much better their prospects look now than they did a month ago. But they can't quite escape Trump's shadow. Over the past two days, I've heard elected officials and delegates say the current moment is the most exciting they've seen in the party. For anyone who witnessed Obama's rise, that's a bit unbelievable, and the electrifying response to his speech was a reminder of his immense star status. But when I asked Lorie Longhany, a delegate from New York, she insisted it was true.

“I was really excited in 2008, but I think because of the Trump administration and the fear of another Trump administration, the excitement is building because we have something worth fighting for,” she told me.

And as for the Obamas, they showed last night that they, too, are ready to fight.