Democratic National Convention: Braids, small penises and democracy

It’s a classic trick in stand-up comedy to win over the audience: start by making fun yourself. “I’m the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.” That’s how Barack Obama started his speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), softening up the audience and his own wife in one shot. With his gray hair and tie, the former president showed off his crooner humor, joking that he hasn’t aged at all and affectionately mocking Kamala’s vice president, Tim Walz (who is three years younger than him) and his Midwestern dad look: you can tell that those flannel shirts weren’t put on by an advisor, he said, but that they are his and “they have done things.”

Michelle was dressed by a stylist, Meredith Koop, who has been with her from her time at the White House. And her deconstructed navy blue suit — arms in the air, lapels crossed, like an admiral of minimalist troops from the future who have come to annihilate tacky millionaires — won the Oscar for best costume. Because the Democratic convention, and American politics in general, has a sense of spectacle that is captivating even if you have no idea what a caucus or a swing state is. Oprah Winfrey and Stevie Wonder made appearances, but it is also the politics that we have seen in TV shows and movies, and you can consume the DNC as another audiovisual product. The best subplot of the campaign has undoubtedly been Ella Emhoff, Harris’s generation Z stepdaughter, who has left conservatives agape with her outfits that couldn’t be cooler.

In short, Michelle, with her hair sculpted in braids (which she did not dare to wear when she was first lady) was the epic heroine. She spoke about the death of her mother, the American dream, being Black and having hope, empathy and love. She also spoke about Donald Trump’s “ugly, racist and misogynist” lies, which seek to make America small, not great again, as his slogan says. “And small is petty,” she said, very loudly.

There were other speeches that were worthy of a movie: Hillary Clinton, with a hint of resentment, stressed that now that Trump is a convicted criminal, the glass ceiling she scratched in 2016 can be broken. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a suit and a boring hairstyle (she still has to be voted for), was tremendous, calling him a “two-bit union buster.” The lowest blows were left to Barack Obama, who described Trump as a whinger and conspiracy theorist, with a “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” while moving his hands as though measuring the length of a penis.

It is impossible not to imagine that room of strategists thinking about this movie-like plot twist in which Trump goes from being an evil genius willing to destroy democracy to being a petty, grimacing and self-conscious clown. He’s not a villain; he’s a joke. That is why the sharpest attack from Barack Obama went straight to the Hollywood heart of the matter: “We have seen that movie before,” he said, referring to a possible second term for Trump, “and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”

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