Michelle Obama gives the best convention speech ever. Seriously.

[ProSense]

Michelle Obama gives the best convention speech ever. Seriously.

by Kaili Joy Gray

This isn't exactly surprising:

One week after Ann Romney set a record for delivering a speech written at the lowest grade level in convention history by the wives of presidential nominees, Michelle Obama delivers a speech written at the highest ever grade level.

A Smart Politics review of prepared remarks delivered by the spouses of presidential nominees at national political conventions finds that Michelle Obama's 2012 speech to the DNC was written at seven grade levels above Ann Romney's as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.

Michelle Obama had, according to Very Serious Journalists, the "delicate task" of "helping her husband’s campaign reach out to women." Women already prefer President Obama to Mitt Romney, trust President Obama more than Mitt Romney, and, oh yeah, kind of really hate Mitt Romney. And everyone loves the first lady. So Michelle Obama's "delicate task" was pretty much to just be her awesome self.

And oh, boy howdy, did she nail it. In fact, she gave the speech Ann Romney was supposed to give—actually, needed to give—last week:

(Mitt's) biggest problem is that regular voters don’t like him as much as Obama. That's especially true of women, and that’s why the stakes are high for Ann Romney’s speech on the crucial opening night of the convention. <...>

Who better to reassure women that Romney is on their side than his attractive, personable mate of 43 years?

Except that didn't happen. Ann Romney's speech was supposed to make us fall in love with her husband, just like she did. She was supposed to explain to the baffled American electorate why he's not so damned unlikable after all. Turned out, Ann couldn't really articulate what's so great about her husband either:

I could tell you why I fell in love with him -- he was tall, laughed a lot, was nervous -- girls like that, it shows the guy's a little intimidated -- and he was nice to my parents but he was really glad when my parents weren't around.

Oooh. Mitt was tall and nervous and laughed. Swoon!
Compare that to Michelle Obama's description of the man she fell in love with:

You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate…to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door…he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he’d found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.

But when Barack started telling me about his family – that’s when I knew I had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so much like mine. <...>

And I didn’t think it was possible, but today, I love my husband even more than I did four years ago…even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met.

I love that he’s never forgotten how he started.

I love that we can trust Barack to do what he says he’s going to do, even when it’s hard – especially when it’s hard.

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as “us” and “them” – he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above…he knows that we all love our country…and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas…he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

Now, see, that's the genuine, heartfelt—not to mention incredibly eloquent—testimony of a wife who loves her husband, who can tell us exactly why she loves her husband, and can make the rest of the country fall in love with him all over again too. It was so good that even conservatives admitted they were in awe.

And all she had to do was be herself.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/05/1128023/-Michelle-Obama-gives-the-best-convention-speech-ever-Seriously

Tweets! (Michelle rocks!)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021271701

Ann Romney Tells Women, Young People To ‘Wake Up!’
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021275690



Note:

Kos Media, LLC Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified

[avebury]

1. It is hard to know if Ann Romney was presenting a speech at

the upper limits of her capabilities or if she was give a speech dumbed down to her audience. Michelle proved once again that she is a smart, articulate communicator. Too bad we can't have a debate between these two ladies. Unfortunately, the Republicans would probably end up complaining that Michelle Obama was being really mean to Ann Romney.

[Champion Jack]

2. I heard that Paul ryan wrote it for her...

[unblock]

3. ... in just under 3 hours!

[cali]

4. It was a great speech but best ever?

<snip>

We are the party. We are the party of the New Freedom, the New Deal and the New Frontier. We have always been the party of hope. So this year let us offer new hope, new hope to an America uncertain about the present, but unsurpassed in its potential for the future.

To all those who are idle in the cities and industries of America let us provide new hope for the dignity of useful work. Democrats have always believed that a basic civil right of all Americans is their right to earn their own way. The party of the people must always be the party of full employment. To all those who doubt the future of our economy, let us provide new hope for the reindustrialization of America. And let our vision reach beyond the next election or the next year to a new generation of prosperity. If we could rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II, then surely we can reindustrialize our own nation and revive our inner cities in the 1980s.

To all those who work hard for a living wage let us provide new hope that the price of their employment shall not be an unsafe workplace and a death at an earlier age.

To all those who inhabit our land from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulfstream waters, let us provide new hope that prosperity shall not be purchased by poisoning the air, the rivers and the natural resources that are the greatest gift of this continent.

We must insist that our children and our grandchildren shall inherit a land which they can truly call America the beautiful.

To all those who see the worth of their work and their savings taken by inflation, let us offer new hope for a stable economy. We must meet the pressures of the present by invoking the full power of government to master increasing prices.

In candor, we must say that the Federal budget can be balanced only by policies that bring us to a balanced prosperity of full employment and price restraint.

And to all those overburdened by an unfair tax structure, let us provide new hope for real tax reform. Instead of shutting down classrooms, let us shut off tax shelters.

Instead of cutting out school lunches, let us cut off tax subsidies for expensive business lunches that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich.

The tax cut of our Republican opponents takes the name of tax reform in vain. It is a wonderfully Republican idea that would redistribute income in the wrong direction. It is good news for any of you with incomes over $200,000 a year. For the few of you, it offers a pot of gold worth $14,000. But the Republican tax cut is bad news for the middle income families.

For the many of you, they plan a pittance of $200 a year, and that is not what the Democratic Party means when we say tax reform.

The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt--that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.

Finally, we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance.

<snip>

[ProSense]

5. It was a great speech, and the person is making a point based on the info,

Have to read past the title.

[Major Hogwash]

6. Women prefer President Obama to Romney by 16 percent in recent polls.

It was something like 54 - 38 in the poll that Sharpton quoted yesterday.

There is no doubt that Michelle is gorgelicious.
She's all that and more.
She's honest, genuine and she doesn't come across as a plastic storefront window mannequin like Ann did last week.

I think that when Michelle mentioned that she was worried at first about the effect that moving to Washington would have on her daughters, she really struck a nerve with a lot of people.
She already had a good life with Barack living in Chicago, as she said.
And she didn't want it to be spoiled.

That was what put the "human" in humanity to me.
It's obvious that Michelle is deeply concerned with treating people with respect and humanity.
Her whole speech was about humanity and treating people with dignity.
And it really came across in her speech last night.