As it happened: Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders make opening pitch for Joe Biden - BBC News
Former US First Lady Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders are key speakers on day one of the Democratic National Convention.
Michelle Obama may hate politics, but she’s a natural at it.

A lot of politicians spoke at the camera during the “virtual” Democratic convention on Monday night. The only one who landed an emotional punch, however, was Michelle Obama.

She benefited, of course, from higher production values. While some of the appearances had the look of a bad Zoom meeting or a television infomercial, Obama was given a close focus and two camera angles.

But it was more than technical know-how that made her speech resonate. That came in her bittersweet acknowledgement that her “when they go low, we go high” line from 2016 may now seem a lot different for Democrats, who feel that “low” proved to be a winning strategy.

“Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanising others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else,” she said. “We degrade ourselves.”

“Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty,” she said. Going high means telling the “cold hard truth”.

And the truth, she said, is that Donald Trump “simply cannot be who we need him to be for us”.

“It is what it is,” she said, employing the same words the president recently used about the coronavirus death toll - a jab that was a subtle as it was devastating.

She drew a contrast between Trump, who she says lacks empathy, and Joe Biden, who – after a lifetime of loss, including the death of a wife, an infant daughter and adult son – knows “the anguish of sitting at the table with an empty chair”.

She reassured Americans who liked her husband’s presidency and miss it, that Biden would bring those days back. She warned, however, that it would require hard work. Victory couldn’t be taken for granted, she said, the way some may have done in 2016.

“This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another,” she said in conclusion. “And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.”