Michelle Obama gave the ultimate condemnation of Donald Trump.

Jeremy Stahl: Hi again, Jim. This felt like a story of two conventions to me. The first half was incredibly chintzy, low-key, and full of too many generics twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom lines to remember. The last 30-40 minutes when it came to anyone who ever worked for or drove on Amtrak was a close personal friend of Joe Biden, about Bernie Sanders who warned that we will all die if Trump is re-elected, and about Michelle Obama who said roughly the same thing. Basically the closing game – including Steven Stills and Billy Porter’s camp / dadaist closing rendering of “For what it’s worth” – was actually pretty gripping for these things, and almost everything that came before it was as painfully embarrassing as getting these events.

Let’s start with the good stuff. Sanders made the case that he deeply understood the stakes of loss to Donald Trump, possibly good enough to actually convince some of his supporters of the heated session. His closing line on Trump’s “authoritarianism” was devastating: “My friends, the price of failure is just too great to imagine.” He also made the substantive case for the Biden platform a truly progressive one, and once called frank progressive policies that are now mainstream Biden policies, such as the minimum wage of $ 15, universal pre-k, and lowering the age limit. of Medicare qualification. It was, as I recall, the only part of the night when someone actually talked about what Biden could do as president. It was, for me, the most effective part of the evening and the highlight. What did you think, Jim? Did he lose you when he compared Trump waves to Nero fiddling while Rome was burning?

Jim Newell: Jeremy! I am used to the put-downs of golf at this point.

I felt much the same. Parts of the first hour were… difficult. Okay, I get it, Democrats must first prove when they start a convention that they do not hate America, so that they get a bunch of Zoom people to sing the national anthem. But I felt like I was watching an introductory video at a tour of the Smithsonian Museum of American History narrated by Eva Longoria. As the event progressed, it settled into a paced groove, mingling into some well-done breather videos – all candidates of losers talking about losing to Biden, and then the Amtrak video, which was below the best of the hottest “Did You Know Joe Biden Rides a Lot” library of content – with compelling speeches about the hottest hot landscape that is Donald Trump’s America.

The lack of applause for the public – let alone the Zoom shots of random Democrats who are sometimes expected to clap unexpectedly – seemed to fit better when the message was dug. And Sanders put as much effort into scaring the craziness out of the viewers as he did cut wood. “Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country,” he said. He made you understand how dark a historical moment you were in: ‘I, and my family, and many of you, know the deceptive way in which authoritarianism destroys democracy, decency, and humanity. As long as I am here, I will work with progressives, with moderates, and, yes, with conservatives to save this nation from a threat that so many of our heroes fought and died to defeat. ” He was urgent. I missed that urgency in some of the other speeches. I suppose it’s necessary to have speakers about how Joe Biden is a nice person and all that, but Bernie was deadly serious about the moment in history seemed to really cut through.

He was not the last speaker to cut through the stake and leave the stakes so upright. Is what is it, Jeremy?

Jeremy: It’s what it is. Those are the words Donald Trump used to describe more than 150,000 deaths in the United States, more than any other country on the planet, of COVID-19. It’s the rule that Michelle Obama clearly referred to when she talks about how unwise Trump is to serve as president, especially now with a deadly virus still raging across the country. If Bernie’s speech was the perfect message of left-wing wing unity and warning of how close this democracy is right now to the downfall, Michelle Obama’s was Trump’s ultimate condemnation and all he has done. “Let me be as honest and clear as I can,” she said. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He’s had more than enough time to prove he can do the job, but he’s clearly in his head. He cannot fulfill this moment. He just may not be who we need him to be. It’s what it is. This was a very direct dismissal of Trump then Obama gave during his widely acclaimed conventional speech of 2016 and I think it will reach home for people who may be thinking perhaps this has not all been the case dat min.

In fact, she speaks directly to that group: ‘If you think things can’t get any worse. Trust me, they can; and they will if we do not make a change in these elections. If we hope to end this chaos, we must vote for Joe Biden, as our lives depend on it. ” Donald Trump is literally killing us was the most powerful and necessary message Democrats could convey Monday, and when they finally struck it, the man did it. It is also worth noting that the most effective part of the first half of the night was out Kristin Urquiza, a woman whose Trump-backed father died of COVID-19 after house-to-house orders were lifted early in Arizona. This was someone who could literally say “Trump killed my father” and that she did in principle. “My father was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said. “His only existing condition was to trust Donald Trump and for that he paid with his life.” How did the “Trump kill you and your loved ones” parts of the evening work for you?

Jim: Urquiza was the first moment of the night when I thought Democrats might net cancel the rest of the week’s schedule because it went so badly. The personal story was so devastating, but – trying to put it delicately – cathartic in a way. When I report to the Capitol, I hear Republicans so often respond to questions about the president’s tweets with “I do not respond to tweets” or “I have not seen the tweets” or “Trump is just trying to call you, he does not mean it. ”Urquiza showed how these words, so often dismissed as” That Trump is absolutely right, “can kill real people in the real world, as Michelle Obama would later bluntly say: be president is hard, and having Trump as president – Donald Trump! as president! – means being in an inherently insecure situation.

Speaking of misery, though, what did not work for you, Jeremy?

Jeremy: Trump Press Secretary Hogan Gidley’s description of the beginning of the night as “a Hollywood-produced infomercial” was not exactly wrong. In a real way, the production was at the beginning – from host Eva Longoria’s stilted transitional remarks, to the sly reading of the catchphrase of the evening “We the People,” to the instantly painful Bruce Springsteen music video about America “Rising,” to the banal remarks from Never-Trump Republicans – felt very clearly that it was not alive at the moment. However, they did get there in the end, and I think that’s all that matters.

Jim: The Never Trumpers went by pretty fast, and what will be most remembered is the images of John Kasich of standing at a crossroads while saying that America stood at a crossroads. I thought he was doing a decent job, however, essentially telling a slow-moving thought of a Biden-curious Republican or ex-Republican – even if it caused some inconvenience when he promised that Biden would not really listen to left – and try to give her the last little hug. Minister Andrew Cuomo’s speech made me uncomfortable in how much of it was PR to clean up his own record on COVID, but his words about how Trump saw what happened in New York and did not move to outbursts in the rest of stopping the land were spot-on. I enjoyed Sara Gideon talking about the rocks in Maine to introduce a performance by Maggie Rogers and then, oh shit, the camera pans and Maggie Rogers is there on the rocks too!

All in all, I expected from the afternoon that we would use this latest recipe to make most fun of what we saw. Ten minutes in, I’m really thought we would do that. And yet, they eventually managed to convert it into a relatively effective two-hour commercial.

Thanks, (Michelle) Obama.

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