CHICAGO—For most of the past decade—once Donald Trump established that he was not a novelty candidate but the leader of a slavishly devoted political movement—Democrats commonly have excoriated him as a figure of singular menace.
This rhetoric was nothing if not sincere. But the denunciations also gave Trump something he craved and used to powerful effect: They validated that he was a large and historically consequential figure. To call someone singular, even in his iniquity, is a way of building him up, even as the ostensible aim was to tear him down.
From a Democratic perspective, the results of this approach were mixed, to put it mildly.
In two extraordinary speeches to the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama offered a markedly different strategy.
Trump, in this telling, is less a diabolical genius than an irritating, grievance-obsessed buffoon—like “the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day,” as Barack Obama put it.
He is less a singular historical figure than a wearily familiar one—entirely at home in a long tradition of American demagogues who manipulate race, gender, and fear of other people to personal advantage.
The effects of Trump’s politics are not a laughing matter, the Obamas made clear, but Trump himself is—a whining, insecure loudmouth whose act has grown stale.
Both speeches were replete with lines trying to make Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s opponent seem pathetically small.
Both speeches—while filled with stinging one-liners that thrilled partisans inside the United Center—seemed plainly written with a particular strategic theory in mind about the reasons Trump has vexed Democrats, and about how to disempower him.
This theory is quite different than the one that guided President Joseph Biden during his years in office, exemplified by his speech to the same convention hall the night before. Biden typically assumes a grave and heavy tone when talking about Trump. “We’re in a battle for the very soul of America,” he declared on Monday.
The challenge was clear: Every American must decide which side they are on in a climactic battle.
The problem with this moralizing approach was that it fueled Trump’s contempt paradox. Trump’s outlandish language and behavior quite predictably draw expressions of contempt from his opponents. Trump’s most devoted supporters, by contrast, are drawn to their hero precisely because he generates such antipathy. They regard disdain toward Trump as disdain toward them—and reward Trump both for the contempt he conveys and the contempt he inspires.
In a critical passage, Barack Obama seemed to be trying deliberately to separate Trump himself from people who have voted for him before and might consider doing it again. In other words, he was trying to break the cycle of escalating contempt.
“That approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division. But it won’t work for us,” he said. “To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices; and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidate, we need to listen to their concerns – and maybe learn something in the process.
“After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”
Michelle Obama made her own pass on this theme—urging Democrats not to freak out that what seems such a self-evidently clear choice between right and wrong does not look the same way to other Americans.
In a passage that sounded like a coach lecturing a team, she warned: “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 faces, and do something!”
The consistent theme of both speeches was to reject the notion that Trump has divided Americans hopelessly into different camps. In fact, the only Americans they were prepared to cede to Trump were the wealthy. People who grew up as Americans struggling against prejudice or other hardships, as Michelle Obama said she and Harris did, “will never be afforded the grace of failing forward…We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” Barack Obama said Trump “wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends.”
The central question of the 2024 election, of course, isn’t what the Obamas think is the most effective way to confront Trump. The question is what Kamala Harris’s theory of the case is. But they did provide a template for making him seem more prosaic that might fit into larger case she and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz are making—putting less emphasis on the threat he poses to democracy than the one they say he poses to the middle class’s desire for economic security and a return to normality in civic life.
“The vast majority of us don’t want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better,” Barack Obama said.
Yet here is one more paradox: Trump has changed American discourse in essential ways. Barack Obama’s speech underlined the point. A former president, under traditional circumstances, would not describe another former president in scathingly personal ways.
Obama mocked Trump’s penchant for “childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size,” moving his hands narrowly together in a way that made his point unmistakable: Trump’s obsession with size must be infused with sexual insecurity.
For the moment, American political discourse is still very much in the Trump Era, as the Obamas well understand.
