Michelle Obama will not attend Donald Trump’s Inauguration ceremony next Monday. As she did last week for Jimmy Carter’s funeral, she will send her husband Barack alone. Had she attended that ceremony in Washington National Cathedral, she would have had to sit elbow-to-elbow with Trump. And if her husband did so with the aplomb to which he has accustomed us, she would not have done the same, and therefore opted to continue her vacation in Hawaii.
The decision to skip these events cannot be dismissed lightly. At this point, it becomes clear that her absences are a statement of principle, a refusal to symbolically endorse a vision of the country she fought against for months during Kamala Harris’s campaign, and which she has clearly expressed represents her worst fear.
Obama attended Trump’s first Inauguration ceremony, as outgoing First Lady, on Barack’s arm. But then she confessed that the experience had been traumatic for her: “To sit on that stage and see displayed the opposite of what we stand for… There was no diversity, there was no color on that stage. There was no reflection of the broader sense of America.” She also recounted that after the ceremony she cried for over half an hour.
That was the Michelle who preached, “When they fly low, we fly high,” a Michelle who has changed over the years, however, and who showed up at the Democratic Convention in August dressed like an amazon ready for battle, with a black, almost armor-like top that evoked strength and determination, and a long braid that went down almost to her hips. That one–indeed this new Michelle–no longer seems disposed to conventional smiles and cheap shots but instead, responds by fighting, by taking action, by forcefully opposing truth to lies and insults: “Do Something!” had been her motto at the Convention.
Well, Michelle Obama is doing something by choosing not to do something—choosing not to join the party. She is acting through absence, turning a symbolic refusal into a political gesture. In the Democratic chats, hopes were immediately unleashed that this time the former First Lady would take the field personally, that she would become the standard-bearer of the party’s comeback, which after its November defeat is struggling to find a figure that commands gravitas on a national level.
Michelle 2028? She has always said she has no presidential ambitions. But it is hard to forget that right now no one in the party is as popular as she is, especially among young people, those who deserted the polls en masse in November.
It seems unlikely that the Obamas would want to undergo the torture of a presidential bid. However, at a time when the Democratic Party is looking for leadership and a symbol of resilience, Michelle Obama, with her eloquent silence and loaded choices, once again confirms herself as the voice of hope that refuses to fade away.
