We Can Go Back After All

The emerging theme of the Harris campaign is that We’re Not Going Back. But last night the Democrats did go back and in a spectacularly successful way.

Michelle and Barack Obama reignited the hope and sense of optimism about America that fueled their historic 2008 campaign. Since 2016 Democrats (and everybody else) had abandoned that point of view as naive. They didn’t think it would sell with an angry electorate that was responding to the grim message coming from Donald Trump. That put the party that believes in positive change — and in the positive role that a government can play in that change — in an awkward position. Trump promised to go back to an America that never existed and that was resonating. The party of the future didn’t quite know how to sell its message with an electorate that was being sold a sepia toned version of the past.

Last night the Obamas gave Democrats and America permission to go back to 2008, But it didn’t feel like regressing. It felt like reminding ourselves of who we once were and could be again. Not going back so much as reminding ourselves of another aspect of who we are that we had left dormant for too long.

I was surprised that both Obamas went so hard and so directly at Trump. I thought they’d leave that to others while they concentrated on the high notes. But their take downs hit the target so hard, were so well justified by his treatment of them, and were leavened with just the right amount of humor that it worked. I don’t doubt that this was very personal — just as Trump’s conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s citizenship status were. And they didn’t fail to talk plainly about Trump’s context. Michelle Obama got off the line of the night when she said that Trump was going for “one of those Black jobs.”

It was 20 years almost to the day that Obama delivered the keynote speech at the 2004 convention that launched his national political career. I was in the audience for that and it was electric. (The next morning I did a radio interview for a station back in Madison and I kept going on about how Barack “Osamba” had lit up the convention hall. The host kept trying to gently correct me and I kept messing it up. I eventually got it, along with everyone else.) It felt the same way last night. In the 20 years since that night in Boston I never heard Obama reach the same oratorical heights that he had in that speech. I think that was intentional. Taking office in the middle of what felt like it might be a second Great Depression. I think he decided to talk to the nation in the same plain, “I’m going to level with you” language of FDR. And then, of course, he spent eight years governing. And it’s true that you govern in prose and leave the poetry to the campaigns.

But last night, eight years removed from office, he was freed from the details. He could soar again and he sure did. His job was to remind us that we could, in fact, look forward again and do it with optimism for the future and then convey that spirit to Kamala Harris. On Monday night Joe Biden handed off the baton of the nomination. Last night the Obamas handed Harris the mantel of hope.

Add to all that Harris’ brilliant appearance in Milwaukee before a packed house — the very same house that Trump filled with his vitriol only weeks earlier — which was fed live into the United Center for awhile and you had a perfect night. If any party has had a night as successful as this one in the history of political conventions that would be news to me.

Barack and Michelle Obama infused the party — and any undecided Americans still able to listen — with hope. And it was more than just hope about a victory in November. It was hope for America.