Only a politician as focused and high-minded as Barack Obama can make a joke about Donald Trump’s anatomy and it’s the other guy that looks crass.
That’s what happened tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as the 44th President of the Untied States addressed a fired up United Center on why the insecure 45th POTUS needs to be denied a return to the White House by Kamala Harris in November.
“He’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he wrote down his golden escalator nine years ago,” Obama said in his classic circumspect style of his Republican successor. “It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.”
Since being endorsed by Joe Biden when the 81-year-old current POTUS announced he was stepping aside in late July, the veep has seen her poll numbers steadily rise. Torpedoing a widely presumed GOP landslide coming out of Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance, Harris is now ahead of Trump nationally and in most battleground states in most polls.
To that, the nation’s first Black president Tuesday vehemently praised his “friend,” “brother,” two term vice president and current President Joe Biden as a savior of democracy. Obama was also clearly joyous in playing a part to try to secure the election of the first Black woman (and a long time protégé) to the presidency. Harris’ ascension gives Obama a rare second chance in American politics after he was unable to help Hillary Clinton seal the deal as the first female POTUS in 2016.
In the city that made his political bones, it was a bit of literal and figurative reunion of the former Illinois senator’s extended family with the likes of ex-White House photographer Pete Souza among many allies and staffers in the house.
That wasn’t the only throwback Barack Obama tossed to the admiring crowd, many of who remember his two-term presidency as a near modern Camelot. As he often does, the former president on Tuesday sought to appeal to America’s “better angels” and convince undecided voters to cast their vote for the Harris-Walz ticket this year. It is a clear contrast to Michelle Obama’s remarks, which called out the “Goldilocks” of the left and threw Blue meat to adrenalize the Democratic base up against Trump and for the current VP.
Still, there is no denying the ex-POTUS’s words tonight were very well received in the room — especially the line about Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes.” That quip was just the set-up for the former president’s hand gestures that implied the less than impressive private parts (if you believe Stormy Daniels) of the ex-Celebrity Apprentice host.
“It just goes on and on,” Obama went on about Trump’s craziness and cruelty. “And we all know the sequel is probably worse,” the well-known cinéaste ex-POTUS asserted of a Project 2025 backed Trump getting back in the Oval Office.
There was also a big reaction in the United Center at the end of Obama speech, when he went beyond the election at hand to address a sense of alienation and lack of community in the country. “We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then we wonder why we feel so alone,” he said.
One thing is for sure, Day 2 of the Ricky Kirshner produced DNC was a much more disciplined conclave than on Monday. Even with a performance by James Taylor and a film by Dawn Porter pushed aside, last night Joe Biden’s swan song speech was pushed out of primetime on the East Coast by a parade of easily forgettable speakers.
For a while there was a rumor that Harris was rushing back to the United Center on Tuesday from her rally with running mate Tim Walz in Milwaukee to join the Obamas and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff on stage. That did not occur as the VP stayed on her chopper to watch her husband’s speech and got back to the Windy City as the former POTUS was wrapping it up. – as she revealed on social media:
Closing out the day, Barack Obama stepped on stage at the DNC tonight to the music of U2 and left to a Bruce Springsteen song. It was exactly as planned, in more ways than one.
