Former First Lady Michelle Obama‘s speech last weekend was a stark, dark rhetorical warning, not an ebullient hope-and-change sort of moment that the Obamas are known for.
Like her husband, the former president, who has also been contentious and foreboding on the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama voiced her frustration at the double standard at work in the consideration of Harris and her opponent Donald Trump.
The speech is worth noting because it echoes what Harris herself is saying about Trump in the final week of her campaign — that the GOP nominee is, as she said on Wednesday night on the National Mall, a “petty tyrant” while reminding her listeners that “the United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised.”
[CNN’s Dana Bash noted Harris’s focus on the contrast: “This speech was exactly what the Harris campaign hoped for. It was the contrast that they’ve been trying to make.]
Vice President Harris: The patriots at Normandy, Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall… They did not sacrifice only to see us cede our freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. In 7 days, let us turn the… pic.twitter.com/oCrGbk4EAg
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 30, 2024
In her own speech, Obama aimed straight at the autocratic modus operandi of Trump, and contrasted it with what she characterized as the electorate’s (and the media’s) higher bar for Harris’s conduct.
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs. But for Trump, we expect nothing at all,” Obama said, “no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
The former First Lady’s speech was a full-throated defense of the basic premise of women’s equality — under siege by the GOP, she says — and a plea for women to act autonomously at the ballot box. (Your vote is a “private matter,” she reminded women who live “in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion.”)
Obama’s rhetoric was also a plea directly to men to respect the position of women in society and the standing of women in their own lives. The double standard doesn’t just impact people in politics and manifest in different expectations for Harris and Trump, but is also a prevalent thing in homes across the nation, Obama asserted.
[NOTE: To frustrated men who are choosing Donald Trump as their weapon for retribution, Obama warned: “Your rage does not exist in a vacuum. If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter — we, as women — will become collateral damage to your rage.”]
Taking a stab at Trump’s resume and placing it against Harris’s high bar, Obama said:
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn. I hope that you’ll forgive me if I’m a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior. His obvious mental decline. His history as a convicted felon. A known slumlord. A predator found liable for sexual abuse. All of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”
Michelle Obama
Harris described essentially the same political dynamic in her own speech on the Mall, and pledged an effort at unification and inclusion that is anathema to Trump, saying: “I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make and to people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail, I’ll give them a seat at the table.”