I hope that Barack Obama is cool with being the second best orator in his household.
Remember 2016, when Michelle said that the wisest course of action was to turn the other cheek? That “when they go low, we go high”? Well, the hell with that. On stage last night at the Democratic Convention, she basically said that whenever Trump and his MAGA minions go low this fall, the proper response is to drown them in their own mud.
Bring it, girl!
Unlike Trump, who inherited money from his racist father, “most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” (I want that on a T-shirt.) “If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”
She frequently went high, of course, urging voters to usher in a new era of “decency and humanity…respect, dignity, and empathy,” but she’s clearly in sync with her resuscitated party’s willingness to engage in rhetorical bloodsport, to eviscerate MAGA at every turn. For years she and her husband took shit from Trump’s lowlifes – she was slimed as anti-American, mocked for promoting healthy foods (healthy foods, for crissake), and ridiculed by MAGA racists as “an ape in heels” with a “gorilla face” – and she’s not taking it anymore. Nor, she said, should we.
“For years,” she said, “Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear (the Obamas). His limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him, that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
That line brought down the roof. A nice twist of the knife on Trump’s hard-wired belief (as he himself said recently) that low and entry-level jobs are Black by definition. “It’s his same old con,” she continued. “His same old con – doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”
Trump surely pines for the days when First Ladies – especially Black ones – were seen but not heard. (His own First Lady refuses to even be seen with him.) Eight decades ago, nobody expected a spouse like Bess Truman to talk politics in public, much less deliver a convention stemwinder. Indeed, Bess lamented her First Lady gig: “We are not any of us happy to be where we are, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”
But the world has changed, and it’s all hands on deck to thwart a restoration of the (fake) good old days. Michelle referenced Project 2025, Trump’s restoration blueprint: “Cutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies, the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did – those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers and daughters. Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books – none of that will prepare our kids for the future. Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love, look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better. Instead, it only makes us small…Going small is never the answer. Going small is the opposite of what we teach our kids. Going small is petty. It’s unhealthy. And quite frankly, it’s unpresidential. So, why would any of us accept this from anyone seeking our highest office? Why would we normalize that type of backward leadership?…We deserve so much better.”
And we’ll get what we deserve only by doing the work to make it happen. Michelle is fed up with the Democrats’ penchant for intramural whining, for seeking the perfect at the expense of what’s possible, for feeling existential dread when the going gets tough. And over the next 76 days, it will get tough.
“Remember,” she said, “there are still so many people who are desperate for a (Trump win), who are ready to question and criticize every move Kamala makes, who are eager to spread lies, who don’t want to vote for a woman, who will continue to prioritize building their wealth over ensuring that everyone has enough…So folks, we cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right…There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness…We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
It’s great that Kamala and the Dems are bringing the joy; as Michelle acknowledged last night, “We are feeling good.” But joy won’t be enough; whenever Trump goes low, it’s imperative to go for the jugular. To quote Howard Beale in Network, we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.