The Return of Hope | La Presse

(Chicago) Michelle Obama had not reached the microphone before the entire United Center was on its feet.

“Do you feel like I do something magical tonight? It’s the return of that long-buried feeling. Hope is back.”

In this already overexcited amphitheater, the air has reached saturation point of enthusiasm.

Democrats have found their story to tell Americans. And no one could tell it better than Michelle and Barack Obama, arguably the two most popular figures in the Democratic Party.

Of course, they are both exceptional speakers. But they were also at the heart of triumphant campaigns that Democrats seemed to have mourned only a month ago. They stuck to essentially the same theme as in 2020: Donald Trump is dangerous, we must block his path. Nothing new on the horizon, just rehash.

A month later, they are not just a desperate defense project for democracy. They have gone on the attack. The theme is not “Hope,” the hope that Obama sold in 2008. It is “Freedom,” the freedom to choose, to have a chance.

“To be honest, I had mourned that hope, I felt in my gut a fear of the future,” Michelle Obama said. She spoke for millions of Americans, and even more so for American women.

Because once again, the main thrust of the speeches was women. Michelle Obama spoke about her mother, Marian Robinson, who died on May 31.

“The last time I came to Chicago was to bury my mother and I didn’t know if I could stand on this stage tonight,” the former first lady said.

It is to honor her memory and the teachings of the one who “allowed her to find [sa] “It was in her own voice” that she spoke, she said. She then drew a comparison between her mother, from Chicago’s South Side, and that of Kamala Harris, an Indian immigrant who arrived in the United States at age 19.

“Kamala and I grew up on the same foundations. We are the embodiment of the story we tell ourselves about this country.”

Barack also spoke at length about Marian Robinson. “Probably never has a mother-in-law been more loved by her son-in-law,” he said, before drawing a parallel with his grandmother, a white woman from Peru, Kansas.

Both worked jobs below their abilities, for little pay, without complaint and never losing faith in “the unfulfilled promises of this country.” Both devoted to the future of their children.

That’s what Kamala Harris is offering: a reconnection with that faded American dream. A renewed optimism. An antidote to fear and bitterness.

This speech particularly affects American female voters, who are the ones who have moved the polls the most in favor of Kamala Harris.

There were a few scathing lines against Donald Trump, the best of which probably came from Michelle Obama: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s looking for right now might be one of those black jobs?” (an allusion to Trump’s frequent claim that illegal immigrants were stealing “black jobs”).

But if the fire in this amphitheater took hold, if the delegates had goosebumps, it was not only because of the quality of the speeches or the love they have for the Obamas.

This is because Harris is able to embody the continuity of this “hope”, to renew its content with his style.

Unlike Trump’s neo-Republicans, Democrats love their former presidents and their former leaders. While Republicans have made a clean slate of their past. Neither George Bush nor Mitt Romney or John McCain were invited or mentioned at the Milwaukee convention.

Among the Democrats, the Obamas are huge stars, the Clintons are still immensely popular, in addition to being high-level speakers. A convention would be incomplete without Bernie Sanders, in top form Tuesday night at almost 83 years old, and on track to be re-elected for another six years in the Senate.

Joe Biden, for his part, was not chosen to inflame the crowds, but to put out the fires lit by Trump. He is loved in his party, highly respected. But a second Biden campaign, even without the disastrous debate, was shaping up to be as dull as possible.

Neither the Clintons nor the Obamas could have made up for this enthusiasm deficit without Kamala Harris. There are limits to proxy campaigning.

The parallels ring true. There are connections between the stories of Barack and Kamala, “those kids with weird names that Democrats pick,” as Obama puts it. outsiders of power who had a career in public service, he the first black president, she the daughter of immigrants. Both reached the highest positions in the State.

Yes she canObama said.

Both stressed the work that needs to be done in an election that will be decided by a handful of votes in a few polling stations in a few key states.

“But the good news is that Americans do not want to live in a bitter and divided country,” Obama said. As so often, he returned to Abraham Lincoln, chosen here in Chicago 164 years ago to save the Union. He who spoke of “the better angels of our nature.”

This is the narrative that the Harris campaign is proposing: a better, more cheerful country is still possible.