Barack And Michelle Obama Are Fired Up: DNC Night 2
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And it is 11.16 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, August 20th, and the second night of the Democratic National Convention just wrapped with former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, headlining.

Mara, I expected to start this podcast off talking about the former president, but it really felt like Michelle Obama was the news coming out of tonight. No doubt about it. She stole the spotlight. She hit it out of the park. I can't think of a figure that is more beloved and even worshipped in the Democratic Party. The ovation she got was like no other speaker here. And even...

Barack Obama said something like, I'm the only person here stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama. But she did an amazing thing. I sometimes think about this convention as the political equivalent of speed dating. They have to define Kamala Harris as fast as possible. They have very little time to do it before the Republicans do it for them.

And she got right to it. I thought that my reaction when they both spoke was, wow, the communicators are back. And she gave a kind of master class in rhetoric and how to give a personal, emotional, moral speech that really told a story. She called Kamala Harris, my girl Kamala. She made this bond. She talked about how Kamala Harris and I

Both have similar mothers. They both have the same foundational values. And the other thing that I was struck by about Michelle Obama is, of course, her watchword last time was when they go low, we go high. Very above the fray, very nope, no more. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.

See, 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 that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?

It was such a moment because, I mean, this is the same Michelle Obama who, you know, would have been criticized so much if she was, you know, using this kind of rhetoric, talking this way, if she were in the White House. Inconceivable. Inconceivable. And for her to have this moment on stage, you know, as you said, Sue, like this was not a night where we were going to come out of it thinking, oh, Michelle Obama's speech was the speech. This was the speech. And to give her energy and say, you know, Kamala Harris and I were the same.

Kamala Harris, we have the same mom. We were raised with the same values. And then to take that and turn it to Donald Trump and go back and reference Trump's comments from just a couple weeks ago when he was speaking in Chicago at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference using this phrase, black jobs, which a lot of immigrants were coming to take your black jobs. And, you know, a lot of folks were just like, what is a black job? And he's used it before.

That wasn't the first time he said that. To me, the speech with Michelle Obama was like metaphorically when you talk about someone who's like pulling their hair back and taking their earrings out. Like it was a much more aggressive and political Michelle Obama. And this is something she has talked about a lot. She's talked about how she felt like she would present to the world as first lady, how she was constantly aware of blackness in the White House. She was so aggressive.

aware of what it meant to present to the country as the first. I mean, she has spoken so extensively about this. And tonight she seemed so freed of that. Much more liberated. And so comfortable. And frankly, like the crowd loved it. And to your point, Deepa, like that is not a speech potential first lady Michelle Obama could have ever dreamed of giving in 2007. And it was such a stark contrast to how she started in politics.

and yet how much more powerful she is in the Democratic Party. She's talked about that a lot. She's written about it in her memoir. She even talked about what it was like to be black at Princeton. You know, the constant kind of, you know, burden of trying to live up to who you're supposed to be. You talk about, you know, a Michelle Obama who gave a speech tonight that she would not have made, you know, maybe even eight years ago at the 2016 convention. This is not that Michelle Obama vibe. She said at the end, you know, the...

the vibes are good, right? You're feeling a lot of hope and change. You're feeling a lot of good stuff here with the last couple weeks of a Kamala Harris campaign. That's not going to be what the next 77 days are going to look like because Republicans and the other, the people on the other side of the aisle are going to attack Kamala Harris. They're going to distort her message. They're going to distort her story.

And I felt like when I was hearing Michelle Obama say that, it was like she has such an authority to speak on that because that's exactly what happened to her and her husband, Barack Obama, when they were in the White House. But she used that to say, OK, now I'm going to give you the ask. Do something. This is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right. To stand up, not just for our basic freedoms.

but for decency and humanity, for basic respect, dignity and empathy, for the values at the very foundation of this democracy. It's up to us to remember what Kamala's mother told her. Don't just sit around and complain. Do something. And of course, President Obama spoke tonight as well. We do not need four more years.

of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America's ready for a new chapter. America's ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.

It was also not at all subtle what the Obamas were trying to do tonight. There has been a lot of references among Democrats to feeling for the first time like they felt back in 2008. And that was a lot of the message tonight. Even at one point when Barack Obama was talking, he said, yes, she can. Yeah, but he was a little defensive, I thought. First of all, he gave a very powerful speech also. He connected very...

big themes and why democracy is important for our national security, etc. But he also said at one point, he said, I know this might sound naive. He's come under a lot of criticism for being the Kambaya president, you know, unity, no red states, no blue states, just United States. Well, look what happened after he left. The country is even more divided and polarized than ever. He said these ideas can sound naive, but they're still really important.

And I think that was the message that this convention wanted to hear. Not that it was sugar-coated or that the divisions and polarization don't exist, but that unity and purpose are still worth fighting for. I thought, you know, one thing we've been talking about a lot is the Harris-Obama relationship.

because it has gone back so many years, right? Like she endorsed him in 2007. He endorsed her when she was running for Senate in that California Senate primary. So there is a relationship here between the two of them that goes back decades at this point. But one thing I really noticed was when Obama started his remarks, he kind of mentioned,

the fact that he and Kamala Harris have a funny name, right? And share that. And it just really reminded me of 2019 when Kamala Harris was running for president for the first time. And she really talked about Obama a lot. Halfway through when her poll numbers were dropping, she wasn't doing too well in Iowa. She talked about caucusing for him in 2008 in the night before the Iowa caucus. And she knocked on a black woman's door. It was an 85-year-old black woman.

And she said, you know, you should come out. You should caucus for Barack Obama tomorrow. And this woman looked at her and said, they're not going to let him win. And she, at this event in Iowa, told the story of like how she saw that same woman caucusing for Obama the next day. And that people need to take a chance sometimes. And imagine, you know, a candidate, a president that they'd never seen before. And I felt like Obama's speech really brought that back. All right, let's take a quick break. More in a moment.

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And we're back. And just a reminder to hit the follow button for the show in your app if you haven't already. We'll be here all week, as they say. And there's much more to talk about what happened tonight, including the number of former Trump officials or never Trumpers who were given a speaking slot tonight.

Mara, these are not unusual voices. We've heard from a lot of Republicans who have distanced themselves from the party. What's the point of putting them at a Democratic convention? The point of putting them at a Democratic convention is to appeal to other Republicans who don't like Donald Trump. They were there to create what people call a permission structure so that other independent voters, Republican-leading voters, say, OK, I see people up there, the Republican mayor of Mesa or former Republican members of Congress who

And I can, you know, it's okay for me to vote for Kamala Harris. That's what the Harris ticket wants. Because unlike Donald Trump and the Republican Party, this is a convention that's trying to go beyond the Democratic base.

The Republicans don't really have to go beyond their base because they can win with a minority of votes. They can win with fewer votes than their opponent. That sounds kind of screwy, but that's how we elect presidents in this country. Donald Trump only needed 46 percent of the vote to win in 2016. I mean, I was at an event this morning with Jen O'Malley Dillon from the Harris campaign who said pretty much exactly that, that they need votes.

a wide coalition. This is not an election where they can just rely on the backbone of the Democratic Party to turn out their voters and we can all go home now. Like, that is not going to work. They never can. No, they never can. And especially this November, especially in this election. And I think that's where you really hear, especially on that issue of reproductive freedom, that they are hammering home again and again and again a line that Kamala Harris often says, and I wouldn't be shocked if we hear it from her on Thursday night, which is that you don't have to abandon your faith or your deeply held beliefs

to know that the government shouldn't have any place in just making decisions about what you can do with your own body. And it's that callback of saying, you have a place here even if you believed something differently beforehand or if you voted a different way beforehand. And so that is something that I think with all the Republican leaders on stage, with former Trump officials on stage, it's really sending that message to voters that you might not have been here before, but the door is still open. And that's why Democrats did better than anyone

anyone expected, including themselves in 2022. And of course, tonight there was Doug Emhoff, Harris's husband. Also known as Dougie. Also known as Dougie. He gave the time honored convention tribute that comes from the spouse. And he spoke of Harris in very personal and very affectionate terms. Those of you who belong to blended families know that they can be a little complicated. But as soon as our kids started calling her Mamala, I knew we'd be okay.

Ella calls us a three-headed parenting machine. Kamala and Kirsten, thank you both. Thank you both.

for always putting your family and the kids first. Deepa, what did you make of his speech? The thing that was really interesting for me to watch is, you know, I remember meeting Doug Emma for the first time in 2019. He is not a person who is looking for the spotlight. He is the person standing quietly in the back of the room, taking pictures of his wife so he can post them on his Instagram page later. He is not someone who is really made for a big stage like this. So this required a lot from him and a lot of rehearsal from him and a lot of work from him to deliver this message.

But I think he delivered it really authentically. And I think that is Doug Emhoff's superpower is that he shows up exactly how he is. And I think a lot of folks who are close to the couple that is Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris would say that he helps her show up as authentically as she is as well. People who can make fun of themselves as he did in all those dorky stories about them dating. Yes. Tim Walz does this too. Yeah. People who can make fun of themselves as they are.

That's a superpower in politics. It's like they're giving, like, lovable dad vibes. And that doesn't... It seems both partly authentic but partly a bit of a concerted strategy to say, like, look at us just typical American families. Yeah, but it didn't feel made up. That's what I mean. It clearly was emphasized for political purposes, but it had...

it had some kind of basis in truth. Basis in truth, and I will say it's not just good vibes, right? Like there's political nature of this too, which is like you hear Doug Emhoff talk about his fantasy football team. You hear him going to the NFL draft and going to these events. There are a group of voters out there, namely white men, who are not looking at Kamala Harris and saying, oh yeah, that's my kid. And there is a relatability that Doug Emhoff brings to Kamala Harris that she is going to need to bring in different voters. And wait till tomorrow when we hear from Coach Walt.

Coach Wall's bringing that same exact energy, but when he mentioned his fantasy football team on stage tonight, I was like, that was on purpose. There is a whole group of people there who find that relatable. There's nothing that's done here this week that's not on purpose. I do think, too, there is a little bit of the Harris-Emhoff family to me that is in that, like, we've come a long way, baby element of American politics in that it's a blended family. Kamala Harris has never had children. She is his second wife. She has stepchildren. A very common story in American families. Different fates.

but not something very common to the White House. Well, except for Donald Trump. Yes, but this is what I'm saying. What's become sort of normal and typical and okay, I think has changed very quickly in a short period of time. And it's almost a non-issue of what the makeup is of the family, of the first family these days, which is a very different turn than when Barack Obama ran in 2007 even. And what's really interesting to me is that Kamala Harris is not running explicitly to be the first anything. She's not...

focusing on her gender or her race. Hillary Clinton talked about that more than I think Kamala Harris has ever done on the trail. And it's obviously the fact that she'd be the first is obvious and inescapable, but that's not something that she is saying is the reason people should vote for her. I think Doug Emhoff might be embracing identity politics, though, because he seems very ready to be first gentleman.

First Jewish gentleman. Was it First Mensch? First Mensch was a sign that someone spotted him in the crowd. That's good. All right. More to come this week. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow night after night three of the DNC concludes in Chicago. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the Empire Politics Podcast.

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