Chicago (AFP) – As deafening cheers greeted Barack and Michelle Obama, Democrats could have been forgiven for thinking they had been transported 16 years back in time. But in 2024, the former US president and first lady were devoting their crowd-pleasing abilities towards putting another trailblazer in the White House — Kamala Harris.
“I’ve got the same feeling as I did in 2008. I’m just excited and energized and just, I’m ready,” said Sherry McClain, a delegate from Alabama who watched the couple wow the Democratic convention in Chicago. “Obama just brought it home and I think she is bringing it home, the first female black woman. And we know we’re going to win on November 5th.”
While outgoing President Joe Biden got a long and emotional ovation from the crowd in his farewell speech on Monday, the reaction to the Obamas was closer to a frenzy. The pair, who still wield enormous influence in the Democratic party, were treated as returning heroes and had the partisan crowd eating out of their hands. It was perhaps Michelle Obama, 60, who got the loudest cheer of them both, an earsplitting roar as she took to the stage in Chicago, her husband’s hometown.
It wasn’t long, after all, since some in the Democratic party had been calling on her to stand as a candidate as the 81-year-old Biden began to show his age and lose ground to Donald Trump in the polls. And nostalgia was everywhere.
“America, hope is making a comeback,” she said, riffing on the famous buzzword of her husband’s campaign in 2008, and sparking another huge cheer. Her speech was short but forceful, filled with warnings of the danger of a second Trump presidency and calling on Democrats not to take anything for granted.
– ‘Brought the house down’ –
When the 63-year-old Obama himself spoke, there were chants of “Yes we can,” echoing another of the famous slogans that helped make him the first Black president in US history. But Obama knowingly followed it up by prompting the crowd to chant “Yes she can” — directing the energy towards Harris and her bid to become the first female and South Asian commander in chief.
After years of Donald Trump’s divisive bombast, and then the halting gaffes of the Biden era, Obama’s often soaring rhetoric was a reminder of times that many Democrats look back to fondly.
“The Obamas brought the house down tonight,” said Richard Brown, 61, State Representative from Missouri, carrying three of the blue “VOTE” placards that thousands of delegates had been waving. “Michelle Obama said it appropriately, and she said it right. Hope is alive again.”
Laurie Osher, 64, a Democratic supporter from Maine, said as she left the hall that the Obamas had been “fabulous” — especially the former First Lady. “He married well,” she quipped. “She really identified all the reasons why we can’t have Trump, and why Kamala Harris is the right person.”
© 2024 AFP
