Michelle a bolt from the blue
Beam amid the dullness
Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s eloquent endorsement of Joe Biden stole the show on the first night of an all-virtual Democratic National Convention that at times seemed grim and hopeless.
Obama’s nearly 20-minute speech enlivened an otherwise disjointed two hours that awkwardly mashed Republican ex-Gov. John Kasich with socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Cuomo, who argued that “COVID is a metaphor” for a weakened country.
The night kicked off with a mashup of children across the country singing the national anthem.
“The past four years have left us as a nation diminished and divided,” said Eva Longoria afterward, the first of four actresses who will emcee, each on their own night. “America is better than this.”
Up next was a video montage of a group of activists, celebrities and politicians, including Joe Biden, reciting the preamble to the Constitution. Khizr Khan, the gold-star father of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, and Ady Barkan, a liberal activist, also appeared in the clip.
Then Biden’s grandkids recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
In between, Kasich gave a recorded message taped at a literal crossroad, followed by Sanders saying Biden would be a friend to progressives.
But the former first lady’s earnest and emotional message saved the evening for Democrats as she denounced President Trump as a degrading influence and touted Biden as a moral alternative.
Echoing her famous “when they go low, we go high” phrase, Obama pleaded, “Going high means standing fierce against hatred.
“If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can, and they will if we don’t make a change in this election,” Obama said in a prerecorded video address.
“If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”
Obama spoke of young people witnessing the coronavirus pandemic and “people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe.”
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.
“It is what it is,” Obama added, quoting Trump’s recent remark on coronavirus deaths.