Well played.
I spent my lunch break today watching both Obama speeches and, honestly, I liked Michelle’s even more than Barack’s. I think she has the breathing room to speak a bit more directly and down to earth to her audience, and she did just that. I loved how she talked brass tacks about some of the elephants (ha) in the room:
So no matter how good we feel tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle. So folks, we cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right.
Kamala and Tim, they have lived amazing lives. And I am confident that they will lead with compassion, inclusion and grace. But they are still only human. They are not perfect. And like all of us, they will make mistakes.
Here she’s speaking directly to those folks who let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (And more obliquely I suspect she’s also speaking to the pro-Palestinian protesters, without coming out and saying that directly.) This is an exhortation to keep up the momentum, energy and joy.
It’s up to us to remember what Kamala’s mother told her: Don’t just sit around and complain, do something. So if they lie about her, and they will, we’ve got to do something. If we see a bad poll, and we will, we’ve got to put down that phone, and do something. If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our face, and what? [Crowd chants back: “Do Something!”]
We only have two and a half months, y’all, to get this done. Only 11 weeks to make sure every single person we know is registered and has a voting plan. So we cannot afford for anyone, anyone, anyone in America to sit on their hands and wait to be called. Don’t complain if no one from the campaign has specifically reached out to you to ask you for your support. There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness. You know what you need to do.
This election is going to be close. In some states, just a handful — listen to me — a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner. So we need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt. We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us. Our fate is in our hands.
I couldn’t agree with that more. Just great stuff, reminding all of us to keep our eyes on the ball.
