Michelle Obama showed us exactly what’s at stake now

I think I’m supposed to question whether the Democratic Party can really stretch far enough in opposite directions to accommodate a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders and an estranged Republican like John Kasich, transcendently strange bedfellows who spoke and served as ideological poles on the opening night of whatever we’re calling this shrunken, not-in-Milwaukee, pandemic-warped political jubilee.

I should probably describe that warping, review the attendant adjustments and find fault here, there and everywhere, because that’s what we pundits do. We quibble. We naysay. We’re insufferable that way.

But this isn’t a time for business as usual. It isn’t a usual time. I’m not referring to the coronavirus per se, to the history-making selection of a Black woman as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee or to any one facet. I’m referring to the stakes of the days ahead. They’re immeasurable.

Never in my 55 years has the Democrats’ success mattered more for the welfare, the sanity — the future — of these United States than now, because never has the other fork in the road been a Republican president as profoundly amoral, fundamentally corrupt and flatly incompetent as the one seeking four more years.

Donald Trump has made clear that he’s willing to steal this election from Joe Biden if that’s the only way to “win.” He has in fact commenced that heist. He’s ready to smash all faith in our institutions and all pride in our democratic system and fashion a throne amid the wreckage. And he has a shockingly large number of accomplices — including most of the Republicans in Congress — cheering him on.

In the context of that, Monday night wasn’t something to be parsed or graded. It was something to rush toward and relish: a buffet for the starving.

Nowhere in Trump’s inner circle is there anyone with the gravitas and grace of Michelle Obama, because someone like her wouldn’t last a nanosecond there. Trump would find the example of her too threatening, the yardstick of her too diminishing.I want to savor her every word on Monday night, when she so beautifully distilled what’s wrong with Trump — “He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said — and so hauntingly defined what it feels like to live in Trump’s America.

“Kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another,” she said. “They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we really are and what we truly value.”

“What’s going on this country is just not right,” she added. “This is not who we want to be.” It was an excellent speech, gorgeously delivered, and that’s in large part because she recognized and maximized the fact that many Americans see her as someone less partisan and more practical than the conventional orator.

“We have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it,” she said.

That was the message of many of the speakers. Their words varied; their urgency didn’t. Usually when politicians adopt such dire tones, I want to reach for some bleach to wash the purple from their prose. On Monday night I just nodded.

Biden doesn’t have everything I wish for, but he has goodness, and for a country that needs to reclaim its decency, that’s not a bad place to start.

I don’t need to watch another second to know what’s what.