Democratic National Convention 2024: The Obamas bring the house down and Gus Walz proudly cries

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Aug 23, 2024 at 01:26 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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Image courtesy of Nils Huenerfuerst via Unsplash

Welcome to the latest edition of our weekly recaps! That’s right, we’re back again to keep you updated on everything interesting ahead of the upcoming 2024 US presidential election.This week we’ll be zooming in on the most important guests, speeches, and events at this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC), which took place this week from 19 August until 22 August 2024. Next to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz formally accepting their Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominations, a lot has transpired at the three-day political spectacle. So, let’s dig into it.

As expected Barack and Michelle Obama made a glorious return to their home state of Illinois and held back-to-back speeches at the convention.

Michelle’s speech was well-received among Democrats and quickly began circulating on social media, particularly for her subversions of Trump’s infamous “black jobs” term. The former president first used the term in the televised TV debate with the former nominee Joe Biden to refer to unemployment he allegedly lowered for the Black and African American population by creating more jobs for them than any other president. Totally bonkers by the way.

The new term was immediately ridiculed across the internet.

“I want to know, who’s going to tell him?” asked Michelle Obama in her speech. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” The zinger was answered with laughter and cheering throughout the convention centre.

Of course, Barack Obama also took the opportunity to take some shots at Trump:

“He is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” the former president said in his speech.

However, in his allusion to crowd sizes, Barack moved both of his hands close together and then slightly apart, as to insinuate that Trump might really be obsessed with the size of something else…

Barack and Michelle Obama’s speeches highlight how the rhetoric around Trump has shifted between the Biden and Harris campaigns. Instead of painting Trump as bad for democracy, the Harris campaign is more focused on depicting him as a weird, incoherent and self-interested fraudster.

And, according to the internet, this fun, light-hearted and more easily digestible approach is definitely working.

As the Minnesota governor Tim Walz formally accepted the Democratic nomination for vice-president on Tuesday night, the crowd roared and cheered towards the end of the speech which has been dubbed as a pep talk to the nation.

His son Gus was particularly moved and started crying and shouting “That’s my dad,” at the stage.

The family quickly bolted to the stage to give Walz a huge hug and the whole overt and heartwarming display of affection has also reached viral heights.

Of course, this made Gus a target for right-wing attacks. However, the majority of the internet wasn’t tolerating the attempt to belittle and insult a 17-year-old being proud of his dad.

It feels like the Democrats have finally found their stride with a campaign that is more focused on good vibes, potentially contributing to Harris’ lead in polling.

And to round things up, we have Ilhan Omar joining a pro-Palestinian protest outside. The congresswoman sat with members of the Uncommitted Movement, a nationwide campaign that began in Michigan and has won over 30 delegates.

The movement aims to use the party process to pressure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to broker an end to the war in Gaza.

“We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” one of their recent X (formerly Twitter) statements read.

The post and Omar’s decision to join the protest gained a large amount of traction because no pro-Palestinian or Palestinian American speaker was invited to the DNC.

The decision was condemned by many prominent Democrats and particularly young voters.

And that’s what you missed this week. See you next time for more news and hopefully more jabs at Trump’s expense.