First lady fires up Democrats, takes aim at Trump
Michelle Obama’s rousing speech marks turnabout from discord that overshadowed start of convention
The theme of the first day of the Democratic National Convention was “united together.”
For much of Monday evening, it seemed like a joke. And then Michelle Obama took the stage.
By turns fiery, steely and emotional, the first lady delivered a rousing prime-time appeal to inclusion, optimism and American greatness that doubled as the Democrats’ most effective call to action in support of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump.
“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves,” Obama said, “and I watch my daughters — beautiful, intelligent, black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.
“And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters — and all our sons and daughters — now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States. So don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great — that somehow, we need to ‘make it great again’ — because this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.”
Clinton, she said, never “buckles under pressure” or “takes the easy way out.” In a plea unmistakably aimed at Bernie Sanders supporters still unwilling to unite behind the nominee, she said Americans cannot “afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical.”
And in her most detailed indictment of Trump, Obama asked the country to elect a role model for their children. She spoke of teaching her daughters “that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country.”
Obama said “when someone is cruel, or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: When they go low, we go high.”
Obama’s address will not immediately heal a party still divided from a bitter primary. But it was a marked turnabout from the embarrassing discord of the early evening, when Clinton’s attempt to demonstrate party unity was ruined a vocal minority of Sanders devotees who booed every early mention of her name — and even booed Sanders himself for asking them to back her.
A text-messaged Sanders plea for calm quieted them down before prime time. But they were loud and visible enough, for much of a messy day in Philadelphia, to at least damage the Clinton effort to present a cohesive contrast to Donald Trump’s chaotic Republican convention last week.
Any possibility of comprehensive brotherly love was ruined by the WikiLeaks decision last week to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails that showed senior party officials had worked to undermine the Sanders campaign. Though Sanders issued a measured statement, the revelations inflamed the supporters who had long suspected foul play.
The fallout from the emails turned the opening moments of the fourday shindig into the kind of angry confrontation that marred the Republican proceedings in Cleveland. Widely disliked party chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has agreed to resign her post at the end of the convention, was heckled by Sanders supports in her own state’s delegation at the first convention breakfast, prompting her to agree to surrender her speaking role and leave town.
Sanders initially received an adoring reception at a speech to his delegates before the convention formally began. But much of the crowd in a hall at the Philadelphia Convention Center turned hostile when he asked them to line up behind Clinton for the general election.
“I thought he had a lot of good things to say. But we’re not going to listen to him when he endorses Hillary. It just makes us angry every time,” Washington delegate Dorothy Gasque, a grassroots organizer, said in an interview afterward. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I gave too much of myself into this, and I can’t vote for someone who’s corrupt.”
Steve Todd, a Pennsylvania delegate for Sanders and a civil engineer, said Clinton backers were mistaken to assume the automatic support of the Sanders army.
“I’ve been telling Hillary supporters for a year that this would happen. And they were like, ‘No way, whoever wins the primary just gets the support.’ I’m like, talk to some Bernie supporters,” Todd said.
The thousands of young Sanders loyalists walking the downtown streets before an evening downpour made it seem, to the untrained eye, as if it were him and not Clinton accepting the nomination on Thursday.
At protests around the city, dozens carried signs pronouncing the primary “rigged” and “stolen,” the former secretary of state a shady corporatist deserving of prison time.
The email scandal is imbued with international intrigue: cybersecurity experts believe Russian hackers were behind the theft of the emails. Seeking to divert attention from their contents, Clinton’s campaign emphasized the alleged Russian attempt to interfere in the election. But furious Sanders supporters said the party conniving is more impor- tant than the reason they came to light.
A small number chanted “lock her up,” the most popular Republican convention slogan. “Hill No” One woman, Indiana University Spanish teacher Robin Reeves, carried a sign with a drawing of a middle finger pointing up at the letters “HRC,” Clinton’s initials, and “DNC.”
The official convention began on a joyous note, with delegates at the Wells Fargo Center jamming to a Boyz II Men performance of “Motownphilly.” But the mood became acrimonious almost immediately. When the pastor delivering the opening prayer mentioned Clinton, some Sanders supporters launched into a raucous chant of “Ber-nie!”
They jeered the suggestion of a Clinton presidency. They jeered former congressman Barney Frank, a pugnacious Sanders critic.
Dozens of Sanders supporters ignored a moving speech about civil rights by black Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings to chant in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Comedian Sarah Silverman dispensed with the euphemisms: “To the Bernie Or Bust people,” she said, “you’re being ridiculous.”
The eruptions persuaded the Clinton campaign to make a hasty switch to the schedule they had just released, moving Sanders to the final speaking spot. The Vermont senator was originally slotted to speak before not only Obama and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren but actress Eva Longoria and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.
Booker brought the crowd to its feet with a shouted call for America to become “a nation of love.”
In addition to Sanders and Warren, the Clinton campaign packed the first-day roster with progressive politicians and they hoped would help persuade the Sanders left to surrender the fight.
“I’m proud to be part of a movement that’s going to beat Donald Trump, that’s going to help elect Hillary Clinton, and that’s going to help turn that idealism into a governing philosophy we can all be proud of,” said Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the first member of Congress to endorse Sanders.
The Democrats sought to depict themselves as a party far more representative of the country’s demographics than the Republicans, who offered up a parade of white speakers. The convention heard from Tina Kotek, the lesbian speaker of the Oregon legislature; Jason Collins, the first openly gay male athlete in one of the major U.S. team sports; and Adriano Espaillat, a Latino New York state senator who is vying to become the first congressman who was once an undocumented immigrant.
“Take that, Donald Trump,” Espillat shouted.