Obamas skewer Trump and laud Biden on DNC night two

Chicago

Night two of the Democratic National Convention began with a recurring issue for this convention — a logistics mess. The line snaking down the street to get into the convention hall stretched for blocks and blocks and blocks, with very few entrances into the building actually open. One person I spoke with waited in line for two hours to get into the United Center.

Inside the hall, the night’s festivities and order of business kicked off with the delegate roll call and votes, to a soundtrack provided by DJ Cassidy with each state getting its own song selected by the delegation, often showcasing a homegrown song. The highlight was a brief performance in the midst of the roll call from Lil Jon, part of the Georgia delegation, who graced the hall with a rendition of “Get Low” and sung the lyrics “Kamaaaaala to the Walz” in place of “to the window to the wall.” Noticeably absent from the performance were the next words in the song, “Till the sweat drop down by balls / All these bitches crawl / Y’all skeet skeet motherfuckers…” It’s possible Lil Jon simply couldn’t find a good way to weave that in.

Outside the main hall, anyone hoping for a drink (including your correspondent) at the DNC were disappointed. There’s no beer or wine being served in the general area, the privilege of cocktails being reserved only for the VIPs in the hospitality suites. The plebes in the main hall were forced into the indignity of drinking Pepsi products.

California governor Gavin Newsom was spotted outside the Calamos Investments suite, where a swanky lobbyist party was being held, and struggled to move down the hallways as he was mobbed for countless selfies with adoring fans hoping for a snap with a man whom most assume is a future president. Sadly Senator Mark Kelly, a VP prospect as recently as two weeks ago, walked by without anyone giving him much notice.

The theme of the night’s speakers seemed to be familial cringe, with story after story seeking to normalize a bunch of weird politicians in the hope people back home will point to their TVs and say “they’re just like us!” Doug Emhoff treated the crowd to a story about setting up his first date with the sitting vice president, with the requisite “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd like an Eighties sitcom. The cameras often panned to the family box, where his adorable parents, married for seventy years, sat beaming. Sitting alongside them was the nation’s second daughter/Brooklyn’s first daughter Ella Emhoff. She wore a tailored Thom Browne suit, a departure from the Bushwick chic outfit she wore yesterday that set the trads on Twitter into a tizzy.

The star of the night was Michelle Obama, who gave a soaring speech and brought the house down with several lines aimed at Trump:

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. 

“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be black. 

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

“Man, she’s really giving it to him,” I overheard a man nearby say to his wife.

“Going small is petty… it’s unhealthy… and quite frankly, it’s unpresidential,” she said midway through her speech, in what was clearly a call for more sofa coitus jokes from the Harris campaign. And in a line obviously aimed at the pro-Hamas crowd in the party, Michelle remarked, “We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right.”

Former president Barack Obama followed his wife, beginning with a stock joke about how hard it is to follow his wife — usually, it is a joke. Tonight, it was true. While it was a fine speech, it was a somewhat lackluster performance on the Obama scale for the notorious orator, his wife having been given the better speechwriter this go around.

In a Cain and Abel moment, Obama called Biden his “brother” and heaped praise on his former sidekick — rich given the reports that Obama helped orchestrate the defenestration.

The overarching message of the convention seems to be about moving on from the Biden era, rather awkward given that there’s still five more months of the Biden presidency.  

As the night ended, the process of ordering and finding an Uber proved to be the most efficient part of the convention — ordered, organized and easy. It’s almost as if they optimized for getting rid of people.