In her livestreamed “closing argument” for Joe Biden, Michelle Obama addressed what she sees as the character disparity between the Democratic presidential nominee and President Trump while addressing the concerns of voters from key states that Hillary Clinton failed to win in 2016.
The gist of her argument was straightforward: “It’s a simple choice, really. A chance for a fresh start, or four more years of this.”
After deriding the president’s response to the coronavirus with claims that Trump “had every resource at his disposal … yet ignored all of the advice and failed to produce a plan to provide enough tests for worried families or protective equipment for our healthcare workers” while continuing “to gaslight the American people by acting like this virus is not a threat,” Obama moved the closing argument to the needs and fears of voters in battleground states such as “Pennsylvania or Arizona or Wisconsin or Florida.”
Specifically, Obama addressed the racial tensions and disparities that have incited months of protests after the police-involved killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and other similar incidents across the country.
“Let’s be very real,” the former first lady said. “America is divided right now, and a lot of people are being sold lies from those who wanna get rich or want to stay in power or sometimes both.”
“You’ve worked hard all your life, and for too long, you’ve watched the rich get richer,” Obama said. “You’ve lost your farms and your livelihoods to corporate greed. You’ve seen your beloved towns shattered by joblessness. You’ve watched families destroyed by drug addiction and mental-health challenges — all of this long before this virus hit.”
“And it is frustrating to hear some folks say that you’ve been the beneficiary of privilege, that the color of your skin gives you a head start,” she continued. “That is the reality for far too many hard-working, decent Americans. But right now, the president and his allies are trying to tap into that frustration and distract from his breathtaking failures by giving folks someone to blame other than them. … It is racist.”
Obama pivoted from her characterization of Trump’s response to the recent unrest, delivering an appeal to empathy: “I get it, but I also feel it. As a black woman who has, like the overwhelming majority of people of color in this nation, done everything in my power to live a life of dignity and service and honesty, the knowledge that any of my fellow Americans is more afraid of me than the chaos we are living through right now, well, that hurts. It hurts us all. It is a heaviness that sits on our hearts.”
Obama concluded her argument by telling people “to make our plan to vote this instant” and emphasized that Biden is a “trustworthy, honest, stable leader” with a “clear plan to control this virus and get our economy back on track.”
“We have all been working so hard to keep ourselves and our families afloat. And we deserve a president who will do the same,” she said.
