The Obamas bring pure currents of hope and soul and optimism to Democratic convention

Chicagoans call the United Center “The House that Michael Built”, an ode to the roaring years when Michael Jordan, the basketball phenomenon, was a deity in the city and American cultural life. One of the catch lines about Jordan in the 1990s was: “The man does not live on earth. He just turns up on game days.”
That slogan held an undeniable truth about Michelle and Barack Obama in this same arena on Tuesday evening. At about quarter past ten, they embraced on stage, the Democrats’ golden couple, who both individually and together seem not so much like human beings as conduits for the voices and stories that spring from the essence of America, from the millions of immigrants, the slaves to the founding fathers and presidents and all the cyclical vows of aspiration and promise which define political convention nights like this. They seem blessed with a power of communication that is unearthly and beyond even their own understanding.
By then, Michelle Obama had already spoken. Just minutes into her address, it was obvious that she was delivering an electrifying endorsement of Kamala Harris that would rank among the unforgettable passages of Democratic electoral history. But she was also giving her party and the public a tantalising glimpse of the political leader she would have been if she had chosen that path. But no. This was a departure from an avowed return to private life. And it was a sort of homecoming, too, for Michelle Obama, who grew up a good 40 minute walk south of this arena.
“The last time I was here in my hometown was to memorialise my mother; the woman who showed me the meaning of hard work and humility and decency,” she told them.
“I still feel her loss so profoundly that I wasn’t sure if I would be steady enough to stand before you tonight.”
If this was a frail version Michelle Obama, it is frightening to imagine the power she could unleash in full firewater mode. There’s an inner sternness about the woman that can make her husband seem almost goofy in comparison. Her address was a celebration of Kamala Harris – “the steel of her spine; the joy of her laughter and her light;” “her unseen labour and unwavering commitment that has always made America great”. But it was also a glitteringly angry denunciation of Donald Trump, delivered in a way that sounded as though she had been suppressing her thoughts for many years.
Predicting that Harris’s opponents would do everything they could “to distort her truth”, she went on: “My husband and I sadly know a little something about this. 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 happened to be black… Who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?”
By then, she had Chicago and, for all those of us in the arena knew, half the world enraptured. All of Tuesday had been building towards this finale. You could feel the pulse quickening on the streets outside the United Center where the crowds were still thickening as dusk fell and the clock turned to 8pm and there were rumours of two-hour queues to get through the blanket of security. Many, it turned out, gave up and chased back to the city hotels to watch on television. It was an occasion that felt as if history was looping, circling and even if this speech could be nothing like as momentous or consequential as that break-out address by Barack Obama two decades ago, it was still an opportunity to witness something rare.
And inside the arena, the mood was giddy and restless too. There’s a kind of mercilessness to the honour of being part of this four-night parade of speech givers. The Chicago Bulls arena is vast and from the rooftop seats, emerging stars and seasoned practitioners alike look small and vulnerable as they cross the vast stage to the podium. The moment demands an inherent talent to project oneself to deliver what can, at best, stand as a jazzed up variation on the prevailing theme of the night.
“Strong Middle Class: Strong America” was the caption on the towering backdrop on Tuesday evening. And even the veterans of many, many conventions, from Chuck Schumer to Bernie Sanders, struggled to silence the excited chatter on the floor where the delegates sat. Sift through speeches of past conventions and you soon discover that the aspirations and the earnestness never change. To hold the crowd, to somehow magnify yourself in front of the thousands in the auditorium and the millions watching on television screens and phones across the country demands a distinguishing talent. And in the long memory of Democratic folklore, Barack Obama stands as a star of spellbinding oratory power.
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Yes, they applauded as Sanders told them, in the halting, imitable Brooklyn accent that evokes the 1950s: “When the political will is the-ah, government can effectively deliv-ah for the people of our country.” And they laughed when JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor and scion of the Hyatt hotel group delivered a deft quip at Donald Trump’s expense: “He claims to be very rich. Well, take it from an actual billionaire. Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity.” They were charmed by Doug Emhoff’s sweet, funny description of his life with Kamala Harris.
But all of that was just a prelude. They were waiting to see the Obamas. And it is worth recalling Barack Obama’s original coming, when he materialised before a stunned convention crowd in Boston in 2004 as the real, achieved thing. It’s worth remembering the incantatory power which formed the crescendo of his speech and sounded, at the time, like a preacher’s prayer spun around one clean, simple word.
“John Kerry calls on us to hope,” he said then, in reference to the Democrats’ nominee for president. “I’m not talking about blind optimism here – the almost wilful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!”
It is worth recalling that 20-year-old passage because Michelle Obama was not two minutes into her speech when she summoned that last word. “Something magical is in the air, isn’t it?” she said before identifying the source. “It’s the contagious power of hope.”
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In the minds of millions, something clicked. For one evening anyway, they were transported. Here he was again, the skinny, limby beacon of hope with the funny name, silver headed now but striding across the stage with a smile as wide as Michigan Avenue, somehow still cocksure and likeable and self-deprecating and superior all at the same time.
For once, Barack Obama had a tough act to follow, and he laughed as he acknowledged he is probably the only person stupid enough to follow Michelle Obama. But he is a master at this stuff, falling solemn as he paid tribute to Joe Biden. It was strange: Biden’s night was just 24 hours ago but the forward momentum of the Harris campaign is so forceful that it already seems like another time.
“Other than some common Irish blood Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers. And as we worked together for eight sometimes pretty tough years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts, his experience, it was his empathy and his decency and his hard-earned resilience, his unshakeable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot… History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. And I am proud to call him my president, but I am even prouder to call him my friend.”
Who knows how this was received as the Bidens sat watching in California. It must have been a strange moment. But a familiar one too as Obama held, well, anyone who was watching, spellbound with that eerie power he has to move from a folksy reminiscence of his grandmother and mother-in-law to an urgent invocation of Abraham Lincoln himself, the imperishable Republican figurehead. Now Obama asked for “a restoration of what Lincoln called on the eve of civil war, ‘our bonds of affection’…’an America that taps into what he called the better angels of our nature’…if we knock on doors, if we make phone calls, if we talk to our friends…”
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And on it went. The delegates were in a kind of trance. And then Barack Obama gave the Democrats the phrase, the key to all mythologies.
“Yes, she can,” he said just audibly enough for the mics to catch it so that it took a second to register before the crowd repeated it in unison.
“Yes, she can.”
“Yes. She. Can.”
The problem with magical nights is that they are just that: fleeting and beyond one’s grasp even as they occur. The sun must come up and the next day will bring a return to routine and normalcy. The problem now for the Democrats is that the rest of the convention cannot hope to match those pure currents of hope and soul and optimism the Obamas sent shooting through the cities and fields last night. It was an apparition, and it was beautiful and then it was over.