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.

Source: AFP