Former US president Barack Obama on Tuesday told fellow Democrats in Chicago that “the torch has been passed” to US Vice President Kamala Harris and that the US is ready for her to become president.
Obama, who was greeted with rapturous applause and cheers at the packed arena hosting the party’s nominating convention, said Harris would fight for Americans, and called her November poll rival, former US president Donald Trump, “dangerous.”
“Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting for people who need a voice,” Obama said.
Photo: AFP
Harris is “someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you,” he said.
“Yes she can,” Obama said of Harris, prompting the boisterous crowd to repeatedly chant the phrase, recalling Obama’s own “Yes we can” campaign slogan.
Before his stardust performance, his wife, Michelle Obama, told convention goers “something magically wonderful is in the air.”
Photo: AFP
“It’s the contagious power of hope,” she said, calling Harris “my girl” and saying that hope — another rallying cry of her husband’s successful 2008 campaign — “is making a comeback.”
His turn amped up the already buoyant mood in Chicago where US President Joe Biden delivered his own emotional speech late on Monday less than a month after ending his re-election bid.
Other featured speakers represented a broad swath of the party — from US Senator Bernie Sanders championing socialist programs to billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker mocking Trump’s wealth — and business leaders and Republican defectors were given center stage.
With the party united and Harris polling strongly, Democrats are making clear they believe they can defeat Trump.
Comparisons are already being made by Democratic faithful to Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, where a tidal wave of enthusiasm carried him to the White House.
Bullish delegates symbolically nominated Harris as their candidate in a boisterous roll call, following a paper exercise to confirm her as their standard bearer earlier this month.
“Thank you ... see you in two days, Chicago,” she said to delegates via video link from her event in Milwaukee.
Harris, who was received rapturously in the US’ third-largest city at her debut appearance before Biden spoke, traveled to Milwaukee on Tuesday for an event at the basketball arena where Trump attended the Republican National Convention just a month earlier.
The choice of the 18,000-seat arena is likely to rile Trump, who has been rattled that 59-year-old Harris, unlike Biden, is able to draw the kinds of crowds the Republican has long attracted to his events.
Additional reporting by AP
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