Along with an entertaining roll call of states and delegates (yes, that was Lil Jon representing Georgia and singing “Turn Down for What” to a crowd that was very lit), night two at the DNC continued with a display of stars from the Democratic party — including arguably two of its brightest: Barack and Michelle Obama. The Obamas brought their star power, impressive oratory, and quite a few zingers to build on the momentum for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, after the full-throttle energy of the convention’s night one.
URL Original Content: Day 1 of the DNC was surprisingly inspiring – here are our takeaways
But first, delivering remarks were hometown leaders Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Sen. Tammy Duckworth; the latter underscored the Republican party’s targeting of reproductive freedom and the threat posed to families who rely on medical choices like IVF. Sen. Duckworth also castigated Trump as a “draft dodging coward,” continuing the trend of the convention’s speakers pulling no punches in attacking the Republican candidate for president.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff took the night in a more tender direction, describing Kamala Harris as an empathetic person who revels in easy laughter as a “joyful warrior” – characteristics that indeed have come up in conversation about Vice President Harris, both lauding and critical.
Read more: Capital B – How Harris and Walz Are Trying to Shift This Election’s Vibes
Michelle Obama, looking reliably fashionable in braids and a structured suit by Monse, framed the Harris-Walz campaign as a “chance to vanquish the demons of divisions, fear, and hate,” declaring that “hope is making a comeback.” Seemingly gone are the days of ‘when they go low, we go high’ as the former First Lady threw shade by calling Trump out directly and indirectly — making references to people who “fail forward,” are beneficiaries of “the affirmative action of generational wealth,” and even dropping a crowd-pleasing bon mot about him being in the running for what “might just be one of those black jobs.” Michelle ended her well-received remarks by telling her fellow Democrats that, “we can’t indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing all we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
But the main event of the night was the appearance of the 44th president of the U.S., Barack Obama, whose history-making run Harris hopes to follow as the first Black and South Asian woman president. Giving kudos to his own former vice president, Joe Biden, Obama acknowledged that the “torch has been passed,” before going in on Trump as, essentially being a whiner.
“There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, [and] this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama quipped to loud laughter from the crowd at the United Center. “We do not need four more years of bluster, and bumbling, and chaos — we’ve seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter…and Kamala Harris is ready for the job.”
URL Media is in Chicago covering the DNC 2024, follow us on our website and on social media @url-media for community centered, on-the-ground reports all week!
