(AP/AFP) – Former US president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were welcomed to the stage with rapturous applause at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday. Barack Obama told the crowd that Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's presidential nominee, is "someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you".
Barack Obama told fellow Democrats in Chicago on Tuesday that "the torch has been passed" to Harris and that the United States was ready for her to become president.
Former president Obama, who was greeted with rapturous applause and cheers at the packed arena hosting the party's nominating convention, said Harris would fight for Americans and called her November election opponent Donald Trump "dangerous".
"Kamala Harris is ready for the job. This is a person who has spent her life fighting for people who need a voice," he said.
Obama called Harris "someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you".
"Yes she can," Obama said of Harris, prompting the boisterous crowd to repeatedly chant the phrase, recalling Obama's own "Yes we can" campaign slogan.
Before his stardust performance, his wife and former US first lady Michelle Obama told convention attendees "something magically wonderful is in the air".
"It's the contagious power of hope," she said, calling Harris "my girl" and saying that hope – another rallying cry of her husband's successful 2008 campaign – "is making a comeback".
The Obamas' turn amped up the already buoyant mood in Chicago where President Joe Biden delivered his own emotional speech late Monday less than a month after ending his re-election bid.
"In 2012 I got to vote for [Barack Obama], and everyone was pushing Michelle Obama to run for president, but now we have Kamala. So I just think that this is, in a sense, them passing on the torch," said attendee Tomara Hall, 35, from California.
Second Gentleman shares personal remarks
In deeply personal remarks, Harris's husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, told the convention that "she is ready".
"She brings both joy and toughness to this task," he said to cheers. "At this moment in our nation's history, she is exactly the right president."
With the party united and Harris polling strongly, Democrats are making clear they believe they can defeat Trump. The Republican nominee had seemed set to regain power in November's election until Biden upended the race by dropping out and endorsing his vice president.
Comparisons are already being made by Democratic faithful to Obama's historic 2008 campaign, where a tidal wave of enthusiasm carried him to the White House.
Bullish delegates symbolically nominated Harris as their candidate in a boisterous roll call, following a paper exercise to confirm her as their standard bearer earlier this month. "Thank you... see you in two days, Chicago," she said to delegates via video link from her event in Milwaukee.
Harris, who was received rapturously in Chicago at her debut appearance before Biden spoke, was in Milwaukee Tuesday for an event at the basketball arena where Trump attended the Republican convention just a month ago.
The choice of the 18,000-seat arena will rile Trump, who has been rattled that 59-year-old Harris, unlike Biden, is able to draw the kinds of crowds the Republican has long attracted to his events. Addressing both crowds simultaneously highlighted that she had filled the DNC and RNC venues.
Unique delegate roll-call
Still, it was not all serious on the second night of the four-day convention.
A symbolic roll call in which delegates from each state pledged their support for the Democratic nominee turned into a party atmosphere. A DJ played a mix of state-specific songs – and Atlanta native Lil Jon ran out during Georgia’s turn to his hit song with DJ Snake, "Turn Down for What," to the delight of the thousands inside the cavernous United Center.
Trump, meanwhile, was out on the campaign trail as part of his weeklong swing-state tour during the Democratic convention. He went to Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday and stood aside sheriff’s deputies as he labeled Harris the "ringleader" of a "Marxist attack on law enforcement" across the country.
"Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death," Trump said in one of many generalisations about an America under Harris.
Harris, meanwhile, cast the election in dire, almost existential terms. She implored Americans not to get complacent in light of the Supreme Court decision carving out broad presidential immunity, a power she said Trump would abuse.
She has also seized on Trump’s opposition to a nationally guaranteed right to abortion. "They seemingly don’t trust women," she said of Trump and his Republican allies. "Well, we trust women."
The vice president's speech evoked some of the same themes that underlaid Biden’s case for reelection before he dropped out, casting Trump as a threat to democracy. Harris argued that Trump threatens the values and freedoms that Americans hold dear.
Trump said he would be a dictator only on his first day in office, a quip he later said was a joke, and has vowed as president to assert more control over federal prosecutions, an area of government that has traditionally been left to the Justice Department.
Someone with that record "should never again have the opportunity to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States," Harris said. "Never again."