Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama rocked the Democratic convention Tuesday night in Chicago. Here are five highlights from their heartfelt speeches to the sold-out crowd.
“Hope is back” – Michelle Obama
“There’s something wonderfully magical in the air, isn’t there? You feel it here in this arena, but it’s felt all across this country that we love. A familiar feeling that’s been buried deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. The contagious power of hope,” Michelle Obama said.
“America, hope is making a comeback,” she added.
The hope it evokes echoes the iconic poster of Barack Obama that an artist designed during the 2008 presidential campaign.
“Black Jobs” – Michelle Obama
“You see, his narrow, limited worldview made him fear the existence of two successful, hard-working, educated black people,” Obama said.
“I want to know. Who’s going to tell him (Donald Trump) that the job he’s running for could be one of those ‘black jobs’?”
She was referring to comments Trump made during his last debate with Joe Biden, in which the billionaire said Biden’s immigration policies had cost black Americans jobs.
“Yes, she can!” −Barack Obama
“Yes, she can!”
This is what Barack Obama told the crowd, of course referring to his old slogan.
“The weird obsession with crowd sizes” – Barack Obama
“There are the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories. This strange obsession with crowd size,” Barack Obama joked from behind the lectern.
“I heard someone the other day compare Trump to that neighbor who runs his leaf blower by the window every moment of every day. Coming from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. Coming from a president, that’s just dangerous.”
“The sequel is usually worse” – Barack Obama
“Donald Trump wants us to believe that this country is irreparably divided. That there’s us and there’s them. The real Americans, who obviously support him, and the foreigners, who don’t. And he wants you to believe that you’ll be richer and safer if you give him the power to put people (in his administration) back in place,” Obama said.
“We don’t need another four years of bluster, incompetence and chaos. We’ve seen this movie before and we all know that the sequels are usually worse than the original. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a new story. We’re ready for President Kamala Harris,” he told the cheering crowd.