Former US first lady Michelle Obama on Monday delivered a passionate condemnation of US President Donald Trump during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, declaring him “in over his head” and warning that the nation’s mounting crises would only get worse if he is re-elected over former US vice president Joe Biden.
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”
Trump pushed back yesterday, taunting on Twitter that someone should explain to the former first lady that he would not be in the “beautiful White House” today if it “weren’t for the job done by her husband,” former US president Barack Obama.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Michelle Obama, one of the nation’s most respected women, was the headliner at the first presidential nominating convention of the COVID-19 era. There was no central meeting place or cheering throng during the all-virtual affair on Monday night, but it was an opportunity for Democrats — and some Republicans — to rally behind Biden, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, who was Biden’s last standing rival during the Democratic primary, encouraged his loyal supporters to vote for the former vice president, saying the nation cannot survive another four years of Trump.
He backed Biden’s plan for tackling healthcare, one of their most substantive differences in the past. Sanders backs a Medicare for All plan, while Biden has called for expanding the current “Obamacare” law.
However, it was Michelle Obama who once again delivered an electrifying moment.
Wearing a necklace that said “vote,” she tapped into her enduring popularity among black voters and college educated suburban women.
She issued a stark warning to a country already navigating health and economic crises, along with a reckoning on racism.
“If you think things possibly can’t get worse, trust me, they can and they will if we don’t make a change in this election,” she said, as she issued a call to action for the coalition of young and diverse voters who twice sent her family to the White House.
Biden is to formally accept the nomination tomorrow near his home in Wilmington, Delaware. His running mate, US Senator Kamala Harris is to speak tonight.
Biden also won backing from former Ohio governor John Kasich, a Republican anti-abortion conservative who spent decades fighting to cut government spending.
Monday’s speeches were framed by emotional appearances from average Americans touched by the crises that have exploded on Trump’s watch.
Philonise and Rodney Floyd led a moment of silence in honor of their brother, George Floyd, the Minnesota man whose death while in police custody sparked a national moment of awakening on racial injustice.
“George should be alive today,” Philonise Floyd said.
Also speaking was Kristin Urquiza, an Arizona woman who lost her father to COVID-19.
“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said. “His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”
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