There was one glaring omission from Michelle Obama’s 20-minute Democratic National Convention speech Monday night — Kamala Harris.
That’s because the former first lady recorded her rousing speech before Joe Biden selected Sen. Harris of California as his running mate.
The speech was delivered remotely like all others at the DNC because of the coronavirus pandemic, and The Associated Press reports it was filmed before Harris was named last week as Biden’s VP candidate, indicating the choice was so close to the vest and down to the wire that even the Obamas were not in the loop.
In her speech, Michelle Obama eloquently praised Biden and emotionally denounced Trump’s policies.
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said.
“It is what it is,” Obama added, quoting Trump’s recent remark on coronavirus deaths.
“Right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another,” Obama said.
“They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protesters for a photo-op.”
She said that by contrast, “Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents. Joe knows what it’s like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own. His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.”
Obama’s husband, former President Barack Obama, shot to national prominence with a 2004 Democratic convention speech, which spring-boarded him into contention for the presidential nomination in 2008.
The former first lady urged people to vote as though it was 2008.
“This is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden,” she said.
Michelle Obama also addressed her well-known saying that “when they go low, we go high” and said she still believes it.
“Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, ‘When others are going so low, does going high still really work?’” Obama said. “My answer: Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.”
