Barack and Michelle Obama support Kamala Harris and attack Trump: time to write a better history

To the billionaire, Trump threw sharp barbs: we and the majority of Americans, he said, 'do not have the affirmative action luxury of wealth passed from generation to generation. We don't change the rules to win. We work, we do'. And she denounced years of bias against the Obamas by Trump, 'he did everything he could to make people fear us'. It will also happen against Harris and she will have to be defended. He sounded the slogan: when something goes wrong, 'do something'. The 'do something' was echoed by the thronging delegates.

Behind the great speeches of presidents and former presidents, from Joe Biden first to Obama later, the Democratic Convention in Chicago made its mission clear: to mobilise thousands of delegates, activists and sympathisers for two and a half months of campaigning until November in a tough contest with Republican candidate Trump. It was a mission also highlighted by the so-called roll call of state delegations. A formality, because the votes had already been officially counted guaranteeing Kamala Harris the nomination. But the roll call turned into a call for enthusiasm, with delegation after delegation promising to break a new taboo, amid applause, slogans and music: the election of the first woman and first black woman in the White House.

The last state to speak was her home state of California - with Governor Gavin Newsom describing Harris as a tireless warrior for economic and social justice, women's rights, and freedoms for all. Harris accompanied by her vice presidential candidate Tim Walz linked up and thanked from Milwaukee, where she also flew in for a rally during the convention. She looked forward to addressing the packed delegates in the Union Centre and the country on Thursday night, in the formal speech accepting her nomination and truly launching the sprint to the election.

Obama was nevertheless a crucial figure in Harris's entire political parabola and may yet prove essential to his chances of success at the November polls for the White House against Trump. To give substance to the reasons for his candidacy: to his ability to recreate the broad transformative coalition that was Obama's for president. To give breath again to the optimism of 'Yes, we can'. Or to the message with which even before that, precisely twenty years ago in 2004, a young Obama would-be senator shocked the Boston Convention, the 'politics of hope' and of 'one America' not limited by its differences.

He was so effective in supporting the then Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, that his star was not tarnished by Kerry's defeat. Indeed, four years later, he surprisingly won the nomination and became the first African-American president of the US. Now he is ready to pave the way for the first black woman in the White House.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker did not hide the parallels with Harris. "She is a candidate who has mobilised the party in a way I haven't seen since 2008. I haven't seen that kind of energy at a convention since the Obama years'. The convention that nominated Obama in 2008 in Denver gathered 84,000 people.

The bonds between Obama and Harris, however, run deeper than images and stereotypes. They had met when their respective ambitions were almost unrealised. She was still a 39-year-old prosecutor in San Francisco. She was, in a sign of political courage, among the very first party officials to side with Obama in the 2007/2008 primaries, instead of the initial establishment favourite, Hillary Clinton. More: she flew to Springfield in Illinois for the official announcement of Obama's improbable candidacy and then travelled to Iowa on New Year's Eve to help him with the first caucuses. Obama has not forgotten. According to rumours, he offered her the chair of Justice Secretary during his administration.

What is certain is that as president he was instrumental in the election of Harris attorney general of California in 2010, orchestrating a rally for her in Los Angeles at the close of the campaign. "She is a great friend of mine, I ask that you support her," he said. Harris for her part remained active alongside Obama in his 2012 re-election hunt against Republican Mitt Romney: 'We need him to stay in the White House for four more years,' she said at the Charlotte convention.

Obama is now considered to be among the great architects of Harris's bid for the presidency. So much so that he has raised at least the initial resentment ofJoe Biden, who privately reportedly compared him to a 'puppet master' who pushed for his retirement. Albeit cautiously and careful to appear impartial, Obama is said to have given the green light when not encouraged Biden's compromising leaks of Democratic exponents and celebrities: among them Hollywood star George Clooney, who in an influential article described how in private - and not only in public - the 81-year-old president was no longer the same, inviting him to pass the baton.

Biden has other reasons for tension with Obama. He suffered his pressure in 2016 not to run for the White House, leaving the field open to Hillary Clinton. But at the same time he owes a lot to Obama, who rescued him as vice-president from previous unsuccessful attempts to run for the White House. And the rifts seem to be over today. Biden believes that Harris has always behaved correctly and has made him his heir. As much as of Obama. Both have said they will do everything in their power to ensure that, at the end of a campaign that will still last more than two months, she is elected the 47th President of the United States.