CHICAGO — Former President Barack Obama delivered his most animated speech in nearly a decade, trying to pass his political legacy on to Kamala Harris and taking aim at Donald Trump.
Obama, who had largely stayed in the background as other Democrats tried to remove President Joe Biden from the list, suddenly found himself in the spotlight Tuesday night, as he and his wife Michelle closed out the second night of the Democratic convention here.
Obama declared “the torch has been passed” and praised Biden, while sharpening the contrast between Harris and “a man whose performance, let’s face it, has become pretty boring” from the former president.
“America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story,” Obama told the crowd. “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
Obama’s speech served as a transition of sorts between Biden’s farewell address on Monday night, which focused on his and Harris’ accomplishments over the past four years, and the final two nights of programming focused on the revamped Democratic ticket.
It also cemented his role as perhaps the party’s most effective and beloved messenger, along with Michelle, who delivered a stirring speech that connected the enthusiasm that Harris’ weeks-long campaign had generated with the same hope that inspired her husband during his historic first campaign.
The former president, who spoke at the scaled-down Democratic convention four years ago and hit the road ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, has largely stayed out of the spotlight over the past two years. Aides hope that limiting his public appearances will make his occasional returns to the stage more meaningful and give his words more weight.
Before a packed arena where several delegates were on their feet during his 35-minute speech, Obama lambasted the Republican nominee as “a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he went down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s a constant stream of whining and grievances that have actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” he said.
“The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size,” he said, holding his hands inches apart in a joke about anatomy over crowds. “It just goes on and on. I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who runs a leaf blower outside your window every minute of the day.”
Harris, he claimed, is “not the neighbor who operates the leaf blower, but the neighbor who comes quickly to help when you need help.”
Obama, whose relationship with Harris goes back 20 years, discussed her biography and work as a prosecutor, senator and vice president, casting her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as politicians who “have stayed true to the central story of America.” Obama seemed enamored with Walz’s biography, joking about the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s time as a football coach and flannel shirts that “don’t come from a consultant — they come from his closet and they’ve been through some stuff.”
This is the second time the nation’s first Black president has urged the nation to elect a woman — and in both cases, however different, it meant bypassing Biden. After urging his vice president not to challenge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016, Obama offered only a cursory public defense of Biden following his rocky debate performance in June and privately encouraged others in the party who were pressuring him to step aside.
Obama opened his speech by praising Biden’s character, presidency and decision to step aside after a long career in public service. “We needed a leader who was tenacious, who brought people together, and who was selfless enough to do the rarest thing in politics: put aside his own ambition for the good of the country.”
Harris herself, who watched Biden’s speech Monday night from a luxury box at the United Center here, did not attend Obama’s address. Instead, she and her running mate rallied supporters in Milwaukee, filling the same arena where the Republicans had held their convention a month earlier.
When Harris returned to Chicago just before taking the stage, Obama expanded on Harris’ central campaign theme, contrasting Democrats and Republicans on freedom.
“For them, one group’s gain is another group’s loss. For them, freedom means allowing the powerful to do whatever they want, whether it’s firefighters trying to organize a union or poisoning our rivers or evading taxes like everyone else has to do,” Obama said, explaining that Democrats subscribe to “a broader idea of freedom.”
As he concluded his speech, Obama referred to the recent loss of Michelle Obama’s mother, as she did in her own speech, and reminisced about his own mother, presenting them both as “strong, smart, resourceful women” who worked hard and “knew what was true and what mattered.”
He presented Harris and her candidacy as someone cut from the same cloth: a strong woman who offers stability and a safe haven to a shaken and still polarized country.
“I believe that, as with any other policy or program, that is what we long for: a return to an America where we work together and care for each other. A restoration of what Lincoln, on the eve of the Civil War, called ‘our bonds of affection.’ An America that taps into what he called ‘the better angels of our nature.’
“That’s what these elections are about.”
