‘Hope’ Leads to ‘Joy’: Obama Looks Past Biden to Harris

CHICAGO — The most popular Democrat alive led his party on a nostalgia trip, repurposing all his old lines in service of a familiar cause and a new champion. On the second night of the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama rallied delegates to his heir-apparent.

Obama makes a speech

Obama began with a trademark. “I am feeling hopeful,” he said right after walking on stage. Then an update: “… because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names.” Barack Hussein Obama didn’t say the name “Kamala Devi Harris,” but he didn’t have to: Completely enraptured by Obama, the party faithful were further energized for Harris.

But before the night could go any further, the Joe Biden business had to be addressed.

Obama described choosing him to be his vice president all those years ago as “one of my best” decisions. He praised the “decency and empathy” of the man big enough to put “his own ambitions aside for the sake of the country.” He said he was “proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.” And then, after that obligatory homage, Obama turned the page on Biden.

Although Joe Biden is a beloved figure inside the convention hall, it’s also true that the delegates here – like Democrats around the country – have more affection for him now that he has decided to leave. This dynamic did not appear to be lost on Obama, who reminded the nation when he was president that progress does not travel neatly in a straight line. Rather, he would say, progress “zigs and zags in fits and starts.” The messy Biden exit certainly followed that kind of path.

A sudden elevation

The subsequent elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris, however, has been clean and sudden. “Now the torch has been passed,” Obama said, choosing to focus on the future. “Now it is up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in.”

He began his speech with a self-deprecating quip about being the only Democrat “stupid” enough to speak after Michelle Obama. And it was true that the former first lady electrified the crowd, but when Obama finished speaking it was also evident why he is widely considered the best orator on the left side of the aisle. Tuesday night, he delivered a speech that was the picture of elegance and efficiency. It was intended, in large part, to be a contrast with Donald Trump.

“We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie, and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse,” Obama said of Trump, the great unifying factor among Democrats. “America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”

Ease fresh wounds with a balm of hope – this appears to be the new Chicago Way.

Clinton’s defeat stung Obama

Obama has felt the sting of disappointment too, said Jesse Lee, who served as the former president’s director of progressive media outreach. Lee pointed to Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton as an example. It was a personal blow to Obama at the hands of Trump, who had advanced his career on the back of his oddball conspiracy theory about Obama’s birthplace. “You have to roll with the punches and keep fighting for what is right,” Lee said, comparing the two episodes. “That’s tough for Biden right now – as tough as it was for Obama the day after Trump was elected.”

“This doesn’t mean he doesn’t have sympathy for Biden,” the Obama aide added. “He does, but he has been through it.”

So has former first lady Michelle Obama. She called for civility eight years ago at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, famously saying about Republicans, “When they go low, we go high.”

Back in her Chicago hometown at the 2024 convention, Michelle Obama updated that guidance.

“Going small is never the answer,” she said. “Going small is the opposite of what we teach our kids. Going small is petty. It’s unhealthy. And quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”

Abrupt removal of a friend

Sharp barbs followed, such as when she said that Harris knew how most Americans “will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” It was a cutting reference to the fact that Trump got his start in business, in large part, with the help of his rich father. She continued with another call-back, this one to a line the GOP candidate recently delivered on the campaign trail.

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” Michelle Obama said, while claiming that the Republican nominee was threatened by educated, successful black Americans. “Who is going to tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those ‘black jobs’?”

The former first lady made no mention of Biden during her remarks. She has reportedly expressed frustration in private over how that family treated her close friend Kathleen Buhle, the ex-wife of Hunter Biden. After a messy divorce and a memoir, Buhle was exiled from Biden-land, thus angering Obama, who then noticeably declined to lend her star power to the floundering president’s campaign. But she was on stage and in full force for Kamala Harris.

Sarcasm against Trump

After the Democrats’ abrupt switch from Biden to Harris, Trump has struggled to define his new opponent. The most recent strategy has been to make her progressive record a liability, and his campaign blasted her as “more radical than Obama.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who also spoke Tuesday night, replied to that line of attack by saying it “means they have nothing to say.”

Schumer told RCP that, while “Obama was a very popular president,” the vice president “is right down the middle in terms of caring about working people, doing real things to help them.”

An organization that tracks congressional voting records, GovTrack, once ranked California Sen. Kamala Harris as the “most liberal” member of the Senate before removing that description once it was apparent that she would succeed Biden as the nominee. As her party’s standard bearer, she has subsequently and quietly abandoned her more progressive policies, which include banning fracking and instituting a single-payer healthcare system in the United States. Those ideological zig-zags would normally be an impediment, but if they haunt Harris, they have not hurt her too badly. She leads Trump by 1.5 points in the RealClearPolitics Average, a significant reversal from Biden, who trailed Trump nationally and in every important swing state.

Power of an endorsement

Before Obama received his hero’s welcome, Pat Dowell explained the power of his endorsement of Harris. “We just know him,” said the delegate and alderman from Chicago’s 3rd Ward. “We know President Barack Obama, and we’ve seen his work.”

It is that familiarity with Obama, added Jacqueline Collins, a former Illinois state senator, that makes the transition to Harris so easy.

“Intellect, integrity, and civility,” Collins said, listing the things the two have in common before calling the pair “twins in that way.” Even the Obama and Harris trademarks are complementary. “Hope is what gives you the ability to have joy,” she said. “Because we have hope, there’s no despair.”

Obama returned to form delivering an invocation that borrowed from the speech he delivered two decades ago at the 2004 Democratic convention. “We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors,” he said, “because the vast majority of us don’t want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better.”

The Obama machine

While more than one delegate was brought to tears by his remarks, Obama has more to offer Harris than oratory. He has a political machine. It is busy humming on her behalf. Not only has he given her his blessing, but he has also fundraised on her behalf, offered advice and counsel, and dispatched senior alums from his operation to her campaign. Increasingly popular after leaving office, Obama will be her most influential surrogate in the weeks to come.

This convention provided an early preview. Obama led a Democratic chorus in a new chant, “Yes, she can!” When they booed the name of Trump, he interrupted with an impromptu admonishment, “Don’t boo. Vote.”

Perhaps most importantly, Obama warned the delegates suddenly buoyed by the good vibes post-Biden that they could still lose. “For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, for all the rallies and the memes,” Obama warned, “this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country.”

Happier times?

The dual addresses by the Obamas were a throwback to happier, pre-Trump times for Democrats, but the current leader of the party wasn’t there to see it. Biden left the convention and retreated to a vacation on the California coast. His was not the only notable absence. Kamala Harris was in Milwaukee Tuesday, a manageable afternoon’s drive from Chicago. This was reportedly a deliberate choice. “Obamas are still not on the White House good side,” a source familiar with all the principals involved told Fox News. “It would not be helpful to their relationships.”

The current president and his people still think that he could have won the rematch with Trump, though they deny reports of his bitterness. For the first time, Biden did the same in public. “All this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down,” he said, “it is not true.”

All the same, the pain brought by the zig-zagging progress may have made it too difficult for Harris, Biden, and Obama to gather in one place. While Obama closed ranks with Biden at first after the Atlanta debate, he eventually let it be known that he had serious doubts that his old friend could win. Word leaked out that he believed Democrats needed a new champion.

They have found one in Harris. It is her party now. Obama said so.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.