The Obamas, Clinton and DNC go hard, not high, targeting Trump
The Obamas officiated a new Democratic motto Tuesday evening during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago: “When they go low, we hit back. Hard.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, her husband Barack, and dozens of DNC speakers took her 2016 aphorism — “When they go low, we go high” — and tweaked it for meaner, leaner times.
In his keynote speech, former President Obama called former President Trump a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”
He listed off the Republican candidate’s “constant stream of gripes and grievances” that have only grown worse now that he’s “afraid of losing to Kamala.”
Pro-Palestinian Democrats face an emotional conundrum: feeling joy over Kamala Harris’ candidacy but despair over the horror in Gaza.
“There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes...” said Obama, who paused and moved his hands close together, connoting something small in measure.
The crowd erupted in laughter. MAGA clutched its pearls. Political pundits and satirists pounced with memes and posts such as “Stormy Knows.”
The party that chose decency and occasional piousness over pettiness in its 2016 and 2020 fight against Trump has abruptly changed course, referring to themselves now as joyful warriors who are ready and willing to fight fire with fire. The Obamas were Day 2‘s blowtorch of choice.
Tuesday the traditionally reserved Barack Obama threw more shade at Trump in just one speech than he has over the course of a decade. “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” he said.
As the DNC has shown, Democrats aren’t planning on a turn-the-other-cheek sequel, either.
Hand-wringing, sure. But now the Democrats are having fun, too.
Michelle Obama, who preceded her husband onstage, stepped up to the mike loaded with zingers about the man who spent the early part of his political career spreading birther lies about Barack, suggesting he was born overseas and not eligible to be president.
“I want to know who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs,’” quipped the former first lady in reference to Trump’s multiple assertions that undocumented immigrants were taking “Black jobs.”
She also made a point to draw class and opportunity contrasts between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump. “Most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” she said referring to Trump’s wealthy family lineage. “We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”
“If we bankrupt a business, or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. 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.”
But the Dems did change the directional flow of the insults unleashed on an hourly basis by Trump, turning them back on the former president in an act of political repurposing.
During opening night of the DNC on Monday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was greeted by a raucous crowd with a prolonged standing ovation. Clinton ran against Trump in 2016 and won the popular vote, but lost in the electoral college. Along the way, she endured some of the earliest and worst insults from the MAGA-verse, led by Trump calling her a “nasty woman” and implying she was dishonest with the nickname “Crooked Hillary.”
Former President Trump tried to weaponize Vice President Kamala Harris’ mixed-race background. His ploy backfired.
In her speech, Clinton contrasted 2024 Harris’ career milestones as an attorney with Trump’s legal troubles. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Clinton said. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.” The crowd erupted in chants of “Lock Him Up!” Clinton couldn’t help but laugh.
Call it the churn of the karmic wash, payback or simply politics, but the Dems boomerang approach appears to be working. Harris is up in the polls from where President Biden was before he stepped out of the race last month, and the party seems to be finally having some fun.
On Wednesday night, the DNC will hear from VP nominee Tim Walz, a jovial figure who has played a leading role in turning Trump’s attacks against him. He’s made better usage of the word “weird” than anyone thought possible in an age of trolls, dragging and viral insults.
In the Republican spirit of amplifying unverified information from unreliable corners of the internet, Walz referenced the absurd rumor about Republican VP candidate JD Vance having sexual relations with a sofa.
“I gotta tell ya, I can’t wait to debate this guy,” said Walz during a speech earlier this month at a rally at Temple University in Philadelphia. “That’s if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
The DNC’s new slogan: They go low, we go hard.
Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox three times per week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
