The focus of her speech was hope, a narrative flair referring back to her husband’s winning campaign in 2008. As a loyal Democrat from the first time I could vote in 1988, I felt the hope back then. And as the mother of two mixed-race children, I was moved by Barack Obama’s exhortation to be audacious enough to hope. My young boys were 8 and 6 years old. It did really mean something to me that they could look at him and see themselves, and perhaps intuit their own unlimited potential.

Both Obamas are truly gifted speakers. But somehow, Michelle Obama manages to connect in a more personal way, in “being real” rather than being leaderlike. She’s not untouchable. She’s smart and fun, someone you might want to spill tea with over cocktails. Even Barack Obama, who spoke after his wife at the DNC, said: “I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.”

But on Tuesday night, I was not swept up in emotion listening to Michelle Obama. I was definitely not connecting. I am no longer a loyal Democrat, not since COVID-19, when the Democratic Party tossed aside every principle that I thought they held. They censored our speech, violated our bodily integrity, and ran roughshod over our most basic rights — to congregate, worship, educate our children in the public schools, mourn, and mark the deaths of loved ones with funerals.

Instead of falling for the sermon, I analyzed every word. Within the first minute or so, Michelle Obama said:

“Hope is making a comeback! To be honest, I’m realizing that until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. Maybe you’ve experienced the same feelings … a deep pit in my stomach … a palpable sense of dread about the future.”

I felt that dread in 2021 when President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set guidelines making it all but impossible for public schools to open. But why has Michelle Obama felt a palpable sense of dread? Her party has been in charge, making the decisions that caused my dread. Was her dread caused by knowing that Biden was incapable of actually leading the country because he is feeble and old and mentally incapacitated?

Was it dread that we, the people, might dare to notice Biden’s impairment and decline to believe that this was “the best Biden ever”? And that we might choose to vote accordingly? Was it because the policies that Biden has implemented have caused record-high inflation, mass and untenable illegal immigration, and devastating learning loss among the nation’s most vulnerable students?

If that’s not it, then what? She didn’t explain it. We were just supposed to be swept up in the emotion of it all. I wasn’t.

She went on:

“[Kamala Harris] understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. … If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. … We don’t get to change the rules so we always win.”

Oh, really? What about the way that unsuccessful male athletes fail forward when they demand that sports’ governing bodies further the lie that transgender women are women and must be allowed to compete in women’s sports? When things don’t go their way, these mediocre male athletes insist that chromosomes have no bearing on athletic performance and the rules need to change so that they can win.

Will Thomas was ranked 554th in the United States in the men’s 200 freestyle and then failed forward upon switching over to the women’s category, becoming one of the top-ranked women’s swimmers at the NCAA finals in 2022.

And now, Hailey Davidson, a middle-aged transgender-identified male golfer who never made it further than a middling Division II player in men’s, is vying for a spot in the LPGA at “Q school”, putting this failed male golfer in the ranks of the best women golfers in the country.

And while insisting on rule changes to fail forward taking titles and prize money from hardworking female golfers, Davidson has the audacity to whine about women who take issue it: “I will never understand athletes who blame a transgender competitor on their own athletic failures. If you don’t take accountability for your failures, then you will never actually be good enough to make it.”

Was Michelle Obama talking about people like Thomas and Davidson? I don’t think so.

Now, this cheating has been enshrined in the education system. Biden’s Department of Education has rewritten Title IX to allow any second-rate male athlete who decides he’s a woman to compete in women’s sports. And if any female athlete notices the unfairness and has the audacity to say so out loud, she might be saddled with accusations of sexual harassment and “hate speech” and get herself kicked out of college, without any due process. So says the new Title IX, an erasure of the legislation’s original intention to protect women’s sex-based rights in the education system.

Michelle Obama went on to reference Trump’s goal of shutting down the Department of Education. She said this will not prepare our children for the future.

The Department of Education, in concert with the teacher’s unions and the CDC, shut our public schools down for the better part of two years. That’s what is hampering our children’s ability to be prepared for the future. The Department of Education didn’t even exist until 1979. I think we’ll be just fine if it doesn’t exist after 2024.

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The Democrats are shiny. They orate with panache, and they play Beyonce songs with her blessing. They produce the DNC like a Hollywood movie rather than an MMA fight.

But I’m not buying it. Despite Michelle Obama’s poise and charisma and fashion sense, I will not gush or get swept up in her message of false hope. The Democrats have been in charge for 12 of the last 16 years, including the most recent four. My dread is directed straight at them.