in his Washington Post column titled For someone who says she hates politics, Michelle Obama is a political powerhouse.
Let me put it simply by starting with his final two paragraphs:
Speakers tonight had no crowd to rouse, no applause to draw energy from, no way to gauge how their orations were being received. They had no choice but to trust in the words themselves — and their ability to deliver those words convincingly, with authenticity and passion.
Standing before a multitude, Barack Obama is masterful at inspiring minds and moving hearts. Looking into a camera lens and speaking to people in the privacy of their homes, as she did tonight, Michelle Obama may be even better.
Robinson gets to that point with a good overview of key points of the speech, as one can see with these two paragraphs near the top of the column, where she mentions Trump by name “for the only time” after what Robinson calls a “searing indictment” of Trump:
Finally, about midway through the 18-minute talk — by far the longest of the night — she called him out. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country…. He is clearly in over his head,” she said. “It is what it is.”
Surely not by coincidence, “it is what it is” are the very words Trump used in a recent interview to dismiss nearly 170,000 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus pandemic he so badly mishandled. It was epic shade.
Finally, about midway through the 18-minute talk — by far the longest of the night — she called him out. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country…. He is clearly in over his head,” she said. “It is what it is.”
Surely not by coincidence, “it is what it is” are the very words Trump used in a recent interview to dismiss nearly 170,000 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus pandemic he so badly mishandled. It was epic shade.
epic shade — that nails the quality of the impact almost as well as Michelle Obama nailed the speech.
Let me offer only one more, two-paragraph, selection from this terrific column:
The speech was less about Trump than about Trumpism — the chaos, the division and the “total and utter lack of empathy” that characterize his method of politics and governance. She warned that anyone who believes things cannot get worse is wrong. They can, she said.
“We have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it,” she said, and that means we have to be prepared to “stand in line all night” at the polls if necessary.
Robinson does offer why Michelle Obama reiterated her words of four years ago, about when they go low, we go high, as well as her explanation thereof.
He gives us some of her well-founded praise of a man she knows well, Joe Biden.
He talks in passing about the speeches of Bernie Sanders and John Kasich.
He concludes a paragraph in which he discusses the role of a speaker on the first night of a convention with this sentence praising Michelle Obama:
No one can accuse her of being some sort of antifa-loving revolutionary.
And now that I have given you some sense of this terrific column, let me end as I began, with Robinson’s final words:
Standing before a multitude, Barack Obama is masterful at inspiring minds and moving hearts. Looking into a camera lens and speaking to people in the privacy of their homes, as she did tonight, Michelle Obama may be even better.
Indeed.
Now go read the entire column.
