CHICAGO — Eight years ago, then-first lady Michelle Obama implored fellow Democrats to take an urbane approach to battling Republicans and their presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
“When they go low,” Obama told the 2016 Democratic National Convention crowd in Philadelphia, “we go high.”
That was then.
On the second night of this year’s Democratic convention on Tuesday, here in her native Windy City, the former first lady pivoted to a more direct confrontation with the Republican nominee that better aligns with Vice President Kamala Harris’ slogan: “When we fight, we win.”
“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,” Obama said of Trump’s treatment of her and her husband, former President Barack Obama.
Alluding to her hope that Harris will win — and Trump’s repeated use of the term “Black jobs” — she chided him. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” she said.
As she attacked Trump, she accused him of “going small,” which she deemed “unpresidential.”
“Why would we accept this from anyone seeking our highest office?” Obama asked.
Her evolution tracks with a Democratic Party that demonstrated a heightened taste for political bloodsport last month, when party elites successfully pressured President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election bid following a terrible debate performance against Trump. With Biden’s endorsement, and no competition, Harris easily ascended to the top of the ticket.
Jim Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and who viewed Michelle Obama’s Tuesday speech before it was delivered, said earlier Tuesday that the former first lady would take the new tack “to remind everyone how close we are” in the Harris-Trump battle.
If Harris is elected, she will become the nation’s first woman — and first woman of color — to win the presidency. Obama, the wife of the country’s first Black president, predicted that Trump will reprise attacks on Harris’ race and gender that have already been a feature of their early weeks as direct opponents.
“It’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better,” Obama said.
In an interview earlier Tuesday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who also grew up in Chicago, said there’s no conflict between taking the high road and fighting hard.
“I think we still go high,” Pressley said. “Still, we’re not afraid to mix it up.”
The Massachusetts congresswoman said Democrats can offer an aspirational policy agenda to the public and parry attacks at the same time.
“We will lob a response, but we’re not distracted or derailed by it,” she said.
In addition to delivering broadsides to Trump, Obama offered praise for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. She admonished Democrats to redouble their efforts on behalf of the ticket on tough days between now and the Nov. 5 election.
“If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in,” Obama said, “we’ve got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our faces, and do something!”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Tuesday that the former first lady is good at motivating Democrats to go to the polls.
“When she tells people to go out and vote,” Klobuchar said, “they listen.”
At the start of her remarks, Obama intertwined Harris’ bid to make history with her own husband’s 2008 campaign, which turned him into an embodiment of its “hope and change” slogan. Many Democrats have drawn the same parallel between his first bid for the presidency and the energy they have felt in the first few weeks of Harris’ campaign.
“America, hope is making a comeback!” Obama said.
“Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” she said. “Not just here in this arena, but spreading all across this country we love — a familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long. You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope!”
What Democrats really hope is that it ends with the familiar feeling of victory in November.
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