by Matthew Continetti
“Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” asked Michelle Obama at the top of her stemwinder speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. “You know, we’re feeling it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across this country we love. A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.” Hope and change: the twin themes of her husband’s winning 2008 campaign.
Michelle knew what she was doing. And she wasn’t the only speaker at the DNC who portrayed Kamala Harris as Barack Obama’s rightful heir. Obama himself did the same. Democratic heavyweights, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro, suggested that circumstances are ripe for a “Yes, We Can” repeat. They painted a picture of a bleak and divided country where personal rights are under threat and working families have trouble making ends meet. A country desperate for new leadership. A country like America in the autumn of 2008.
The convention’s goal was to revive the faded tropes of Obamamania and use them to aid Harris in November. Entertainment figures who appeared on stage and in the audience turned the proceedings into not just a political event, but also a cultural one. Harris has her own Shepard Fairey poster. Stevie Wonder, who rocked Mile-High Stadium when Obama was nominated in 2008, spoke and sang in Chicago. Oprah Winfrey campaigned with Obama at a critical point in his ascent. She endorsed Harris from the dais. “We won’t go back,” Winfrey told the adoring hometown crowd. “We won’t be sent back, pushed back, bullied back, kicked back. We’re not going back.”
Oprah, where have you been? If you watched the DNC, you would have come away thinking the current president is Donald Trump. More was said about him than any issue or policy. The Democrats charged Trump with insurrection, bigotry, misogyny, lawlessness, and cruelty. And that was just night one. Every night featured a segment on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy handbook Trump disavows. Not that Trump’s actual agenda mattered to the Democrats. He was blamed for all problems facing the country—the economy and inflation, the border and immigration, the uncertainty of abortion law.
The man who has lived in the White House since January 20, 2021, was hustled off the stage as soon as he finished his speech after midnight Tuesday and shipped to a ranch in California. From that point on, Joe Biden’s name was barely uttered. An occasional speaker would thank him, perfunctorily. Not for his public service. For withdrawing his candidacy. For endorsing Kamala Harris. She’s the one they’ve been waiting for.