Obamas energize second night of DNC, endorsing Kamala Harris while warning of tight race ahead

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Barack and Michelle Obama sought to connect Kamala Harris’s historic presidential candidacy to Mr. Obama’s own trail-blazing victory more than a decade and a half ago, before delivering extended mockeries of Donald Trump on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The former president and first lady capped a Tuesday evening roster designed to show the ideological breadth of opposition to Mr. Trump, ranging from leftist senator Bernie Sanders to Stephanie Grisham, Mr. Trump’s former White House press secretary.

But the party’s insistence on squeezing as many people as possible onto the program pushed Mr. Obama’s speech to 10 p.m. local time – 11 p.m. in major eastern swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia – running the risk that the convention would fail to reach key voters.

Ms. Harris, the biracial daughter of immigrants, is aiming to become the country’s first female president.

Standing before an electrified crowd at the United Center in his adoptive hometown, Mr. Obama, the country’s first Black president, cast the momentum behind Ms. Harris as analogous to his own.

“We need a president who actually cares about the millions of people who wake up every single day to do the essential, often thankless work,” he said, to a deafening roar of cheers. “Kamala will be that president.”

Then, he added: “Yes, she can,” a chant taken up by the hall in an echo of his 2008 campaign slogan.

He cautioned, however, that Ms. Harris’s growing momentum should not be taken for granted. Since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket last month, the Democrats have abruptly spiked in the polls and their convention has evinced a consistently confident swagger.

“Make no mistake, it will be a fight,” he said of the election. “For all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country.”

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Then, he reeled off a string of humorous jabs at Mr. Trump, picking up on the snarky tone the party has recently adopted in a pivot from Mr. Biden’s more earnest warnings about the danger he says the former president poses to democracy.

“Here is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Trump, before making fun of “his weird obsession with crowd sizes” and comparing him to a bad neighbour who “keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.”

Michelle Obama hit back on long-running Republican attacks on herself, her husband and Ms. Harris by people claiming they had benefited from diversity programs.

“Most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. Most of us will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth,” she said, referring to Mr. Trump inheriting his real estate business from his father. “We don’t have the luxury of whining and cheating to get ahead. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”

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To shouts of “preach it!” from the audience, Ms. Obama needled Mr. Trump for feeling “threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who also happen to be Black” and accused him of “doubling down on ugly, misogynist, racist lies as a substitute for actual solutions.”

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Still, she said, “something wonderfully magical is in the air,” which she characterized as the “contagious power of hope” that was the slogan for Mr. Obama’s first presidential run.

Earlier in the evening, the convention spent an hour reaffirming Ms. Harris’s nomination with a state-by-state roll call that felt like an extended pep rally. Presided over by DJ Cassidy, clad in a blue satin suit and a boater hat, the proceedings swiftly turned into a dance party, including a performance by rapper Lil Jon amid the delegation from Georgia.

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Afterwards, Ms. Harris briefly beamed in from a rally in nearby Milwaukee. “Together, we will chart a new way forward – a future for freedom, opportunity, of optimism and faith,” she said, smiling.

The convention also pressed to reassemble the big-tent voting coalition that propelled it to victory four years ago by bringing together unlikely ideological bedfellows whose only common denominator is a desire to bar Mr. Trump from office.

In her speech, Ms. Grisham described herself as a former “true believer” in Mr. Trump, who used to spend her holidays at Mar-a-Lago with his family.

“Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them ‘basement dwellers,’” she told the convention. “He used to tell me ‘it doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’”

On one occasion, she said, Mr. Trump grew angry during a hospital tour that news cameras were paying more attention to people in the intensive care unit than they were to him. “He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth.”

As she spoke, a screen behind her showed her text exchange with Melania Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, when Ms. Grisham asked whether the White House could call for an end to the Capitol riot. “No,” was the former first lady’s succinct answer. “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth, she respects the American people and she has my vote,” Ms. Grisham said.

Another Republican, Tempe, Arizona mayor John Giles, accused his party of being “kidnapped by extremists and devoted to a cult” before accusing Mr. Trump of acting “like a child.”

Mr. Sanders, the self-described socialist Vermont lawmaker and former presidential candidate, meanwhile, was called upon to rally the party’s opposite ideological wing. “We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class,” he said.

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He vowed that Ms. Harris, if elected, would expand government health care for senior citizens and raise taxes on “oligarchs.”

Moments later, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker – the scion of a wealthy business family – made fun of Mr. Trump for having less money than him. “Take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity.”

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former military helicopter pilot who lost both her legs fighting in Iraq, made fun of Mr. Trump as a “five-time draft-dodging coward” for using medical reasons to avoid fighting in the Vietnam War.

Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, humanized Ms. Harris by describing her help parenting his two children. He called her a “joyful warrior” who has “fought against anti-Semitism.”

In an implicit reference to Mr. Trump, he said: “Cowards are weak and Kamala Harris can smell weakness. She doesn’t tolerate any BS.”

The timing of the lengthy evening, however, threatened to limit its reach, particularly in the case of the Obamas, who remain arguably the party’s most popular figures and strongest orators. Both could be crucial in motivating Black voters, whose high turnout the Democrats will need to hold on to the White House.

The scheduling was a similar dynamic that pushed Mr. Biden’s Monday speech past midnight in the eastern time zone.

The convention remained largely free of the pro-Palestinian protests that organizers had feared might distract from the message of party unity, though demonstrators did gather elsewhere in the city.

Protesters confront police outside Israeli consulate on 2nd night of Democratic convention

Protesters calling themselves “Behind Enemy Lines” demonstrated in front of the Israeli consulate.

Police lined the Madison Avenue block after a flyer was circulated by the group calling to “Make it great like 68″ and charging that “The criminals responsible for the genocide in Gaza are here, in Chicago.” The group had gathered for instructions outside of the downtown core near a fast-food parking lot.

At 8 p.m. the protesters assembled in front of the consulate. Briefly, counterprotesters gathered, separated by police in riot gear.

The protesters marched for several blocks after being forced away from the consulate, and then the police proceeded to kettle and detain them. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told a press conference on Wednesday that between 55 and 60 people were arrested, including three journalists.

With a report from Jack Rayner in Chicago