The best convention speech I’d ever heard – Ted Kennedy’s in 1980 – was delivered at the first convention I ever covered. Madison Square Garden literally thrummed. But last night, without even a live audience, Michelle Obama was better. And hers wasn’t a speech, per se. It was fervent heartfelt conversation across the kitchen table. I didn’t just hear it. I felt it. I felt I was living it.

The coronavirus has rampaged through our life rituals, but arguably one upside is the eradication of excess convention hoopla. Compelled to retool their mode of communication, Democrats are taking advantage of necessity to hone their election year message for the captive home audience, to replace bombast with intimacy. Nobody last night did it better – nobody is likely to do it better – than the former First Lady. There’s a reason why her memoir has been on The Times best-seller list for 86 weeks.

Granted, she had some competition – most notably from Kristin Urquiza, a grieving Arizonian whose dad was killed by the virus. She best captured the failed incumbent’s criminal negligence: “There are two Americas – the America that Donald Trump lives in, and the America that my father died in…My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump. And for that he paid with his life.”

Michelle Obama built on that. She framed the big picture of a wounded nation and gave it human scale. Her words, excerpted here, don’t begin to capture the power of her intimate presentation. It was how she used her words, her tonal nuance, to channel virtually every emotion that we Americans outside the Trump cult have been feeling these last three and a half years, and most notably in these last five months – frustration and fear, exasperation and fury, buoyed only by our fortitude and our hope of better days ahead.

I can’t speak for how or whether she affected you. But it felt like she was speaking directly to me, and quite possibly to you, when she said (among other things):

I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency. And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues, a devotion to facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen—and an abiding belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this country has meaning and worth. A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job…

Because whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy. Empathy. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately…

Like so many of you, Barack and I have tried our best to instill in our girls a strong moral foundation to carry forward the values that our parents and grandparents poured into us. But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.

They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.

They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens “enemies of the state” while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. 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 protestors for a photo-op.

Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation. A nation that’s under-performing not simply on matters of policy but on matters of character. And that’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating, because I know the goodness and the grace that is out there in households and neighborhoods all across this nation.

So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. 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. It is what it is.

Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention. But enough of you know me by now…So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it…

Look, we have already sacrificed so much this year. So many of you are already going that extra mile. Even when you’re exhausted, you’re mustering up unimaginable courage to put on those scrubs and give our loved ones a fighting chance. Even when you’re anxious, you’re delivering those packages, stocking those shelves, and doing all that essential work so that all of us can keep moving forward.

Even when it all feels so overwhelming, working parents are somehow piecing it all together without child care. Teachers are getting creative so that our kids can still learn and grow. Our young people are desperately fighting to pursue their dreams.

And when the horrors of systemic racism shook our country and our consciences, millions of Americans of every age, every background rose up to march for each other, crying out for justice and progress.

This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.

As Ted Kennedy declared in 1980, his voice rising as he punched each phrase, “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die!” Michelle Obama, delivering that same message, never raised her voice, but nevertheless she raised the roof.