This Was the Convention of the Woman
Originally published by Jess Bidgood for the New York Times
When State Senator Cordell Cleare of New York watched Michelle Obama, the former first lady, speak onstage at the Democratic National Convention this week, she heard a call to action — “Do something” — that thrilled and galvanized the Democrats around her.
“Michelle Obama,” Cleare said, “dropped the mic.”
She had a more restrained review for Obama’s husband.
“President Obama gave good advice,” Cleare said of Barack Obama, who made his party swoon 16 years ago.
This year’s D.N.C., which will close tonight with the biggest speech of Vice President Kamala Harris’s career, has made it very clear that, as Democrats tell the story of their party, it’s women who stand at center stage.
Every night, women have outshined male party stalwarts — sometimes the ones they are married to — in a development that has highlighted the rising power of women in the Democratic Party and left some of the most famous men in politics seemingly playing more of a supporting role.
“You hear the eloquent voice of Michelle Obama. I thought Secretary Clinton gave one of the best speeches I’ve heard her deliver in her career,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a talented orator whose soaring speech on Monday you might have forgotten amid all the big-ticket women, including Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state to whom he was referring.
“A party is stronger and the whole country is better when we center the voices of women, when we hear from the entire electorate, and, quite frankly, our party is just doing a better job at that,” Warnock said.
It was Monday when Clinton electrified the convention center with a searing speech that cast her failed run for the presidency in 2016 as a step in an arc toward female equality. Two days later, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, his voice soft and raspy, offered a sober rejoinder about the dangers of former President Donald Trump that was indisputably less energetic.
On Wednesday, by the time Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was regaling the crowd with his Midwestern roots and attacking Trump, the most iconic speaker of the evening, Oprah Winfrey, was already long gone.