Something magical and wonderful is in the air. It's the contagious power of hope, she says about Harris and the Democrats' campaign to win the autumn's presidential election.
The Obama couple has star status within the Democrats and their speeches at the party convention in Chicago draw deafening applause. Michelle Obama is first out. Dressed in black, she tells that she didn't know until the very end if she had the strength to stand at the podium as she mourns her deceased mother.
This is to honor her. I don't take the sacrifices our elders make for us for granted.
"Do something!"
Michelle Obama is sometimes strict, sometimes gentle when she talks about the attitude of the parental generation: about goodness, engagement, and never sitting and complaining, but acting. A strategy that also works in election campaigns, she promises.
Do something! Do something, the audience chants.
Kamala Harris has grown up with similar values and, like many in the country, worked her way up in life, assures both Michelle and Barack Obama.
The USA is ready for a new chapter, for President Harris, says the former president.
She brings both joy and toughness. And she is ready for the job. She has fought her whole life for people who need someone to speak for them.
The second one worse?
Barack Obama has the audience in the palm of his hand when he plays with old slogans and questions Donald Trump's habit of giving rivals nicknames and the Republican's "obsessive focus on audience numbers".
We've seen the movie before. The second one is usually worse, he warns.
Despite the energy inside the convention, both he and his wife sense that tougher times are ahead, that the election campaign will be tough and even, and marked by lies.
Now it's up to us to fight for the USA we believe in.
Barack Obama also devotes a significant part of his speech to praising President Joe Biden, who was his vice president for eight years. To put the country before one's own ambition, as Biden did when he announced that he would not run for re-election, is one of the greatest things one can do, according to the former president.
Born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was a black man from Kenya. Was partly raised in Indonesia.
Has a degree in political science from Columbia University and a law degree from Harvard University. Worked with civil rights issues and at a law firm in Chicago before becoming a state senator in Illinois in 1997.
In 2004, Democrat Obama was elected to the Senate in Washington DC and in 2008, he was elected President of the USA. In 2012, he and Vice President Joe Biden were re-elected.
Is married to Michelle, who is a lawyer. The couple has daughters Malia, born 1999, and Natasha, born 2001.
