Barack and Michelle Obama lit up the DNC. It was the same, but different, than 2008. | Opinion
It was the same, but different.
That’s how I felt Tuesday night after watching Barack and Michelle Obama address the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The last time I saw Barack Obama speak in person was at another DNC. The year was 2008, the place was the Denver Broncos’ football stadium, and there were 84,000 cheering fans on hand as he accepted the nomination as the first Black presidential candidate of a major party.
I watched that speech with the Kansas delegation to the DNC to record the event in a Wichita Eagle blog (remember blogs? They were all the rage at the time).
To duplicate the experience, I again watched with the Kansas delegation Tuesday, as the Obamas made the case for their current presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.
It was the same, but different.
In Denver, I knew I was witnessing history. What I didn’t know was that I was also witnessing what would turn out to be the high-water mark of Democratic politics in the 2000s.
After that convention, Democrats were all about hope, and change, and the talk was of a permanent Democratic majority that would lead the country in a new and more progressive direction. Obama’s followers were both motivated and assured by his signature slogan, “Yes we can.”
But the reality turned out to be very different. After Obama won the presidency, Republican congressional leadership solidified behind an ironclad policy of blocking every Obama action — even when he advocated for an idea that they originated — like the Affordable Care Act, which was modeled on a Massachusetts plan constructed by Obama’s 2012 opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney.
Republicans who tried to work with the incoming president were denounced as RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — and shoved aside or out.
As the opposition crystalized and hardened, it spawned the candidacy of Donald Trump, who narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and four years later narrowly lost to Obama’s onetime running mate, Joe Biden.
Harris is the latest branch off the original Obama coaching tree, and in this convention, she’s trying hard to restore that 2008 tide of optimistic and energetic cooperation.
She might pull it off. She might not. We’ll probably know more on Thursday when she makes her acceptance speech.
She’s got a hard act to follow.
On Tuesday, Obama threw some serious shade at Trump:
▪ “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago” (which was how Trump announced his presidential candidacy). It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid he’ll lose to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.”
▪ “The other day I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.”
As the speech went on, Obama pivoted to his 2008 self — urging Democrats to see opponents as fellow Americans to be convinced, instead of enemies to be conquered.
“We need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process,” he said. “After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. 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.”
It was the same, but different.
Sixteen years is a long time and of the 39 Kansas delegates I watched the speech with Tuesday, only one was a veteran of 2008 — state Rep. Barbara Ballard of Lawrence, the home city of the University of Kansas and an island of deep blue in a sea of red.
I asked her what she thought:
“You know, his speaking style is very personal, and he uses, you know, analogies that I think tied it all together,” she said. “And I think you could tell by the applause he received and how he had tied it in with part of a little bit of his campaign, ‘Yes, we can’ and how all of this can occur.
“But, but I think (Tuesday) was just as exciting, and for most of those people, they they knew what to expect. It was just how he was going to deliver it and how he was going to put it all together, which is totally different than what he was doing before (in Denver), because he was making a case for the other person (Harris) who’s going to be accepting the nomination.”
It was the same, but different.
Sitting in front of Ballard was a South Carolina delegate, Melissa Watson, also a veteran of the “Yes we can” convention.
Her take was that Michelle Obama, who spoke just before her husband, gave the better of the two speeches.
“I’m a teacher, right?” she said. “For me, and this is the teacher in me, it was like, this is the best argumentative essay ever. She reels you in. She gives the point-counterpoint, she argues both sides and presents why we’re better.”
Energy definitely rippled through the standing-room-only crowd as Michelle Obama was onstage, especially when she ruthlessly skewered Trump for his bizarre statements to a convention of Black journalists that Harris only recently became Black and that illegal immigrants are stealing “Black jobs.”
“For years Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” she said. “See, his limited narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking highly educated successful people who happen to be black. I want to know . . . who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?”
“Who can ever say somebody was better than Barack Obama?” Watson asked. “But the way that they laid out America, it was an America that we all want to be a part of. It’s an America we all want to strive towards. And I think we’ve missed it for the last few years, you know? . . . And holding all of us accountable for that, not just the president or the vice president or whoever, but holding us all accountable for taking responsibility for the way we shape this country, its ideals and the way we allow our country to be portrayed. It was just beautiful and amazing, just like it was in 2008.”
It was different, but the same.
This story was originally published August 21, 2024 at 7:09 AM with the headline "Barack and Michelle Obama lit up the DNC. It was the same, but different, than 2008. | Opinion."
