All right, that’s it.

I know, we always say that “we watch the news, so you don’t have to.”   And I was resigned to watching the coverage of yet another DNC Convention.  I got through the first night, even President Biden’s wacky, angry, surreal, lie-filled late-night tirade, by thinking, “Well, at least I’ll never have to listen to anything THAT bad again!”

Then there was Tuesday’s coverage.  I’d been thinking that compared to Biden’s speech, Obama Night would at least be endurable.  It might even be kind of fascinating, as I’d predicted for the past three years that Michelle Obama would somehow end up as the presidential nominee, never considering that they would just leave the tentacles of the Obama machine in place and coronate the weakest candidate imaginable, exactly the way they would’ve coronated Michelle if she’d been “it.”  (Of course, it was always obvious they’d ditch Biden.  They’d never have let him debate Trump unless that was the plan.)  I was interested to see what Michelle’s reception in that Chicago arena would be like, and the crowd turned out to be every bit as energized and, yes, worshipful as anyone would have predicted.

Then, she started talking, and she excels at the podium.  Natural, personable, direct, with a well-crafted, beautifully read speech.  If she were the candidate --- and who knows what they offered to try to get her to do it? --- she would have been a daunting opponent.  At first, with the way she talked about upbringing, middle class values, moral compasses, mothers (her own mother died in May), fathers, grandparents, duty, America, prayer groups, National Guard units, family farms, “strengthening the fabric of this nation,” education, the rule of law (!), the ultimate payoff of hard work, and even “a palpable sense of dread about the future,” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  Had Michelle become a Republican?  She sounded as much like Michele Bachmann as Michelle Obama.

(And weren’t the extreme progressives in the DNC offended by her use of gender-specific words like “mother” and “father” and mentions of prayer, military, rule of law?)

Michelle reminded us “not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future.”  She said “anyone can succeed if given the opportunity.”  Her parents, she said, “hadn’t aspired to be wealthy,” just middle class.  But Michelle had not become a Republican.  What she was saying about work and values functioned as a lead-in for her trashing of Donald Trump and his years in business after enjoying “the affirmative action of generational wealth.”

“If we see a mountain in front of us,” she said, “we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”

Um, Trump didn’t have an escalator waiting for him.  He built escalators.

“In America,” she said, “WE DO SOMETHING.”  That’s right, Michelle.  And it’s what we find so appealing about Trump.  Name one thing Kamala Harris has done as Vice President.

“If things don’t go our way,” Michelle said, “we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead.”  Tell it to the Biden family, who grifted their way to millions.

Then she said this:  “We don’t get to change the rules so we always win.”  Tell it to Mark Elias and his Democrat cohorts who specialize in that very thing, going around the law to elect more progressives.  Also, Democrats DO change the rules in order to prosecute Trump and (they hope) lock him up before the election.

Okay, I thought, this kind of rhetoric comes with the territory; it’s a political convention, after all, and Trump is their political adversary.

Michelle went on to talk about “the contagious power of hope,” and of course there’s nothing wrong with hope and positivity, but it does tacitly admit that current conditions aren’t good.  And whose fault is THAT?  Are they just going to hope that if they elect Kamala, she’ll finally address some problems?

“No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” she said to huge cheers.  “No one.”  I couldn’t help thinking of the conservatives who get blacklisted and “de-banked,” the Google accounts that get flagged as “disinformation,” the conservative actors rejected by Hollywood, the white men who can’t get ahead at DEI corporations, the conservative Catholics targeted by the FBI, the peaceful pro-life protesters who’ve been sentenced to prison, the J6 rally attendees being investigated and tracked, and the Jews who now feel unsafe on college campuses.  The left is absolutely creating such a monopoly, controlling almost every major American institution:  media, academia, law, the corporate world, the “permanent bureaucracy.”

But her speech didn’t get truly monstrous until she pulled race into it, and it was then that I concluded that Michelle Obama, like everyone else who uses race to attack others, however subtly, is a racist monster.  They come in all colors.  And I have just had it up to here --- I am holding my hand as high as it can go --- with racist garbage, which is especially treacherous when it comes from someone skilled enough to impersonate someone who otherwise thinks much as I do.

This is what she said:

“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 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’?  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.”  Then Michelle went on to lie about the things he would do in office, saying he would “gut health care,” ban all abortion and even in vitro fertilization; ban books; and demonize children for “who they love.”

 But as ad as all that was, it was the toxic racist jab that made me want to throw something at the TV.  She didn’t come out and SAY that Trump referred to white supremacists as “fine people.”  No, she was able to be more subtle, knowing that other Democrat speakers, even the current President, were programmed to tell that lie all week.  She just said he “felt threatened” by successful black people.  Since when?  I think it would be easy to find plenty of highly successful black people who have never had that impression of him.  It would be great if some would come out and say that.

“In 77 days,” Michelle said during her wrap-up, “we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division and smallness of the past.”  No, Michelle, you have it wrong.  When you play the race card as you did on that stage tonight, YOU are contributing to that division.  YOU are exhibiting smallness.

Not everyone was taken aback by her racist comments.  Even at FOX NEWS, she got away with it, as the racism seemed to go past the commentators, at least in the immediate aftermath.  Bret Baier called her speech “amazing.”  Even Brit Hume was enthusiastic, calling it “extraordinarily impressive” and “just terrific.”  But that’s part of her gift for persuasion --- her ability to sneak in a toxic undercurrent like that and still remain likable.  It’s why she would’ve been a much more formidable candidate than Kamala, and why I’m relieved to be wrong (whew!) about her being on the ticket.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/do-something-read-the-full-text-of-michelle-obamas-speech-to-the-democratic-national-convention/3698924/

Epilogue:  I did eventually get around to watching President Obama’s speech, and I found a bit of unintentional humor in something he said:  “We don’t need four more years of bumbling and chaos.”

I assume he meant the four years of Trump, but he could have been talking about Biden.  Maybe in his own mind, he WAS; recall his famous quote:  “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.”  Consider also that Kamala was chosen VP to be an “insurance policy” for Biden; in other words, to be viewed as worse than Biden.  Until his mind completely slipped the track, she was seen that way.  She was a terrible presidential candidate in 2020, and a joke as VP.  Presumably she might “f--- things up” even worse than Biden did --- she’s off to a good (bad?) start with the awful choice for her own VP --- yet there were the Obamas praising her as they passed the torch to her.  Strange scene.

Editor’s note: Breitbart.com noticed Michelle Obama’s cynical use of the “race card.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/08/20/michelle-obama-plays-race-card-against-trump-threatened-by-successful-black-people/

They also pointed out her mischaracterization of the term “black jobs,” implying Trump was describing jobs only blacks should hold, like a maid in a 1940s movie. He actually had no racist intentions; he was referring to all the illegal aliens Biden and Harris has let in who are undercutting wages and taking away jobs black people hold now.