Chicago. The Obamas are giving Kamala Harris a real boost on her way to the White House. The former president knows what is important now.
It was she who, over 20 years ago, organized a fundraising gala in San Francisco for the young politician who was then running for the Senate in Illinois: Kamala Harris.
It was also she who, in 2008, when the Democratic Party establishment backed former First Lady Hillary Clinton took up position when California’s district attorney flew to freezing cold Iowa to knock on doors in the farming state for presidential candidate Barack Obama and to do winter campaigning.
2012: Kamala Harris welcomes President Barack Obama at the airport in San Francisco. © picture alliance / AP Photo | cdittmar|File|Filed|7/19/2016 54251 PM, Eric Risberg
The 44th President of the United States, who today at 63 is the grey eminence and forerunner and thinker of his party, has these early Friendship Services by Kamala Harris will never be forgotten.
Barack Obama’s plea against Donald Trump
On Tuesday evening, the Democrats’ “greatest living orator” according to the New York Times returned the gestures. Nomination Party Conference In Chicago, which Harris will conclude on Thursday with the official acceptance of the presidential candidacy for the election in November, he made a powerful and passionate plea against Donald Trump and for the election of the first female president in the country’s history: Kamala Harris.
His handicap: Michelle Obama, his wife and former First Lady, spoke directly in front of him and brought the packed “United Arena” to unprecedented heights. Enthusiasm“There’s something wonderfully magical in the air,” said the 60-year-old, who enjoys superstar status in much of America. “Hope is making a comeback.”
Almost every sentence she says is interrupted by applause. Kamala Harris is “one of the most qualified people ever” for the highest office in the state, the mother of two calls out to the audience, attesting to her having a backbone of steel and the Caring genethat America so desperately needs right now.
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Donald Trump brutally dismisses her in two or three sentences. “For years he did everything in his power to make people afraid of us because he felt threatened by his limited, narrow-minded worldview by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated and successful people who also happen to be black,” she said, referring to her husband and herself.
Michelle Obama vows Democrats to fight hard
She accuses the Republican challenger She accuses him of backwardness across the board, calling him narrow-minded and unpresidential. And she takes aim at him.
Former US President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama. © DPA Images | Brynn Anderson
Trump had claimed a few days ago that illegal immigrants were taking jobs away from black people in particular. What he described as racism and was met with outrage. “Who tells him that the job he wants could be one of those black jobs?” the bestselling author quipped, referring to the half-Indian, half-African-American Harris, and received frenetic applause.
Capital Inside by Jörg Quoos, Editor-in-Chief of the FUNKE Central Editorial Office
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Like her husband later, Michelle Obama warns against assuming that Harris’ victory is almost certain in light of the positive polls. “It will be a very close election.” And the other side will leave no stone unturned to discredit Kamala Harris’s life record with lies and distortions. “Do something!” she thunders at the audience, “it will be a tough uphill battle.”
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Barack Obama: One question will decide the election – “Who will fight for me?”
Then the main act of the evening, gray-headed but alert and eloquent as he was 20 years ago. Back then, a gaunt senator from Illinois spoke at the party convention in Boston in Sommer 2004When John Kerry was offered the presidential nomination, he gave the keynote speech. Within 16 minutes, it was to lay the foundation for Barack Obama’s meteoric rise, which led him to the Oval Office four years later.
Barack Obama gives one of his most important speeches in Boston in 2004. © picture alliance / newscom | Nancy Stone
Obama did what decency dictates at the beginning. He thanked Joe Biden, his former vice president and current president, who on Monday evening Farewell speech “We became brothers. His unwavering belief that everyone in America deserves a fair chance impresses me to this day.”
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And then it was time to get down to business. The election, Obama said, would be decided by people who wanted to know the answer to one question: “Who will fight for me?” Donald Trump is not fighting for the whole of America, but only for himself and his “rich friends”. His successor is paralyzing the country with his “whining”, his “obsession with crowds” and his tendency to exclude. America does not deserve four more years of “boasting” and “chaos”. “We have seen this film. We know that the second part would be even worse.”
„Yes, she can”
Harris, on the other hand, has a genuine interest in the concerns of her fellow human beings. She has spent her entire life giving the people around her the same opportunities that America gave her, the daughter of Indian-Jamaican immigrants. “She will stand up for every American. She will be the president this country needs now.”
When someone in the audience, in a variation of an old Obama slogan „Yes, she can” Obama immediately joins in. Shortly afterwards, chants echo through the hall: “Yes, she can do it!” “Yes, she can do it!”
Obama is clearly worried about a different outcome. He expects the result to be extremely close. Only if “everyone tries harder than ever before” will it be possible to defeat Kamala Harris and her vice-candidate. Tim Walz to the White House. “Let’s get to work.”