2 Obamas, 1 Latter-day Saint: Highlights from Tuesday night at the Democratic convention

Last month’s Republican National Convention — lauded widely for its logistics, its lineup, and its atmosphere — lacked one thing on display Tuesday night in Chicago: a beloved former president returning to endorse the nominee.
On the Democratic National Convention’s second night, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama offered the session’s two concluding addresses, drawing raucous applause from the audience and calling for “a return” to a more civil, compassionate era of politics.
“I believe that’s what we yearn for — a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other,” Barack Obama said.
Here are three highlights from the DNC’s Tuesday evening session.
John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, spoke before the Obamas. “I have a confession to make,” Giles said. “I’m a lifelong Republican, so I feel a little out of place tonight. But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican Party.”
Giles endorsed Harris earlier this month, in an effort to prioritize “the good of our nation” over “partisan politics,” he said at the time. He was one of several Latter-day Saints featured in a Deseret News story dealing with the “wrestle” some religious conservatives face ahead of the 2024 election.
“My hero, John McCain, taught us how to put country over party,” Giles said. “I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle: John McCain’s Republican Party is gone.”
The last time Michelle Obama was in her hometown of Chicago, she said, was for her mother’s funeral this spring. She wasn’t sure if she would have the strength to return for this week’s convention, she said.
“But my heart compelled me to be here because of the sense of duty I feel to honor her memory — and to remind us all not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us a better future,” she said.
Obama made several veiled references to former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president: Most Americans do not benefit from the “affirmative action of generational wealth,” she said, nor do they “get a second, third, or fourth chance” if they bankrupt a business.
“If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead,” she said. “We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”
Of the two candidates in the race, “only Kamala Harris,” Obama said, “truly understands the unseen labor and unwavering commitment that has always made America great.”
Michelle Obamas — who was replaced by Trump and former first lady Melania Trump at the conclusion of Barack Obama’s term in 2017 — said Trump “did everything in his power to make people fear us. His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.”
But, Obama said, Harris and Tim Walz provide an alternative form of leadership that will “lead with compassion, inclusion and grace,” she said. “But they are still only human. They are not perfect. And like all of us, they will make mistakes.”
It is incumbent upon all of us, she concluded, “to be the solution we seek. It’s up to all of us to be the antidote to all the darkness and division.”
Former President Barack Obama thanked President Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president. “As we worked together for eight sometimes hard years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts and experience, but his empathy and decency, his hard-earned resiliency, and his unshakable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot,” Obama said.
Obama said he honored Biden for doing “the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country.”
“History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger,” he said.
This year’s election, Obama said, is about “a very simple question: who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future, about my children’s future, about our future together?”
“One thing is for certain,” Obama continued. “Donald Trump is not losing sleep over these questions.”
When Obama elicited loud boos when mentioning Trump’s efforts to kill a bipartisan border bill in February because it “would hurt his campaign,” Obama waved his hand to silence the crowd. “Do not boo,” he declared. “Vote!”
Obama endorsed Harris’ economic plan and encouraged the audience to actively support her campaign.
“Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and laws in dusty books somewhere,” he said. “It’s the values we live by, and the way we treat each other – including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do. That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message.”