After last night

The DNC featured Michelle and Barack Obama as the keynote speakers at last night’s festivities. Time has posted the transcript of President Obama’s remarks here. I have posted the video below. Time assesses the transcript a “19 minute read.” On a feels-like basis, I would adjust the minutes to hours.

James Lynch and Brittany Bernstein have a straight news account of Mrs. Obama’s remarks here at NRO. Peter Savodnik contrasts the two speeches in an accessible Free Press column here. Mrs. Obama peddled Kamala, trashed Trump, and set the stage for her husband.

Both Mister and Missus are effective speakers in their own way. Indeed, they are star attractions, but one senses that the Mister (hereinafter referred to as “Obama”) is the director of the play. He has emerged from behind the scenes, not to tell us what he has done or how he did it, but rather to bestow his favor upon the new star. He wants us to believe…again…in hope and…joy. Not hope and change. But for climate change, of course, we weren’t to think too hard about change or why our current circumstances are unacceptable. We weren’t to think too hard about anything.

Watching Obama speak, I am always reminded why I dislike him so much. I resist his churchy cadence, his haughty tone, and his gauzy rhetoric — the gauzy rhetoric in which he buries his earnest leftism. He enunciates his words as though he is speaking to a slow child. He seeks to aggravate the ignorance of his audience. Although he is exotic in certain ways, he presents as an ancient type of the kind that gave democracy a bad name.

Early in his remarks Obama paid tribute to President Biden. He called him his friend. Friends don’t shiv friends. Obama never misoverestimated Biden and he doesn’t now. The director has directed him to exit stage left.

Enter Kamala Harris: “Now, the torch has been passed.” The passive voice conceals the hand of the director.

Obama then trashed Trump. He worked in the mockery that is attendant to his haughty tone. This must be for the rabid faithful.

The DNC crowd *definitely* picked up on the innuendo when Barack Obama joked about Trump's crowd sizes – then looked down at his hands.

Watch 👇https://t.co/wtL6IVOjo0 pic.twitter.com/eRWvparX9H

— POLITICO (@politico) August 21, 2024

Referring to Trump’s peccadillos, Obama said, “It just goes on and on and on.” Listening to Obama, I know the feeling.

What about the snake oil? This is what he came to sell:

America’s ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.

And Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion. As you heard from Michelle, Kamala was not born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got. And she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower. She’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse. As an Attorney General of the most populous state in the country, she fought big banks and for-profit colleges, securing billions of dollars for the people they had scammed. After the whole mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my Administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement. It didn’t matter that I was a Democrat, didn’t matter that she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa—she was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.

As Vice President, she helped take on the drug companies to cap the cost of insulin, lower the cost of healthcare, give families with kids a tax cut. And she is running for President with real plans to lower costs even more and protect Medicare and Medicaid and sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions.

In other words, Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours. As President, she won’t just cater to her own supporters and punish those who refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of every American. That’s who Kamala is.

If we’re ready for a new chapter, we should probably reflect on the last chapter. But Obama moved on to Tim Walz. He purports to love Tim Walz. At this point I’m beginning to think of the Duke and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn. Obama represents a very old American type.

Obama invoked the words of the Declaration of Independence without mention of the source material:

Together, Kamala and Tim have kept faith with America’s central story: a story that says, “We are all created equal.” All of us endowed with certain inalienable rights.

He did not specify the inalienable rights. He’s just not that into them. He finds the words of use, but he is a 1619 kind of guy. That is why he continues to seek the fundamental transformation of the United States.

He purports to support “a broader idea of freedom.” This is what he said:

Well, we have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work hard. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours. That’s okay.

What is he talking about? He doesn’t really say. This is the leftism that dare not speak its name. Obama’s idea of freedom is so broad that it won’t leave you alone and has to be shoved down your throat.