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(CHICAGO) — Former First Lady Michelle Obama took center stage at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night alongside her husband, former President Barack Obama, and lent her massive political presence to support Kamala Harris.
The speeches mark a return for the Obamas to Chicago, where Michelle Obama grew up and Barack Obama began his political career.
“There’s something wonderfully magical in the air, isn’t there?” she said after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. “You know, we feel it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across the country. We love a familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.”
“Hope” was a central campaign slogan that characterized Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy in 2008.
“The anticipation, the energy, the excitement of once again standing on the threshold of a better day,” Michelle Obama continued. “The chance to defeat the demons of fear, division and hatred that have consumed us, and to continue to pursue the unfulfilled promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. America, hope is returning.”
Michelle Obama remains one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, despite her aversion to partisan behavior. Her standing within the party is so high that last year, when Biden was struggling in his campaign, she was floated as a possible alternative to his place at the top of the ballot.
A few days after Biden dropped out of the race, the Obamas endorsed Harris, emphasizing their 20-year friendship with Harris and saying she has the character and resume to rise to the occasion.
Her support was reinforced by a video released by Harris’ campaign showing a phone call between the vice president and the Obamas, which has been viewed millions of times on social media.
“I can’t make this call without saying to my friend Kamala: I’m proud of you,” Michelle Obama told Harris. “This is going to be historic.”
In her remarks on Tuesday, Harris will outline how ready she is to lead and “close a new chapter on fear and division,” according to a source. She will also talk about how everyone needs to do their part to elect Harris and Walz, the source said.
Michelle Obama has kept a relatively low profile this election cycle, and the DNC will be her biggest appearance in the race yet.
“Politics is hard. And the people who get into it – it’s like marriage, it’s like children – have to want it. It has to be in your soul, because it’s so important. It’s not in my soul. Service is in my soul,” Michelle Obama told Oprah last year.
Barack Obama was asked during a political fundraiser for Biden in California earlier this summer if any of his daughters would ever go into politics. The former president joked, “That’s a question I don’t have to answer because Michelle instilled in them so early on that you have to be crazy to go into politics. That’s never going to happen.”
Nevertheless, Michelle Obama has supported the Democrats since leaving the White House. She also leads the bipartisan initiative “When We All Vote,” which advocates for new voter registration.
During the 2020 campaign, she delivered a keynote speech at the virtual DNC praising Biden’s character and criticizing Donald Trump’s record on COVID, racial issues and other issues.
Echoing her famous 2016 mantra, “When they go low, we rise high,” Michelle Obama said at the last DNC that “to rise high means to take the harder path” and accept the truth.
“So let me be as honest and clear as I can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said in the 2020 speech. “He’s had more than enough time to prove he can do the job, but he’s clearly out of his depth. He can’t rise to the occasion. He just can’t be who we need him to be. It is what it is.”
ABC News’ Mary Alice Parks contributed to this report.
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