Ted's a Liberal and Michelle's a Mom

That’s what we learned at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.

It was good to see Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) out there making what is probably his last major national speech. He gave us vintage Ted, railing at us in his hortatory style, and we were grateful for it, as the great liberal lion of our generation enters a twilight of age and disease. We honor Uncle Teddy in the autumn of his life.

Michelle Obama did what she needed to do, and did it well. She spoke as a loving daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Some have criticised this—and he knows who he is—as Michelle the Stepford Wife. Well, of course. Michelle Obama had to erase the early, angry Michelle, the stereotypical angry black liberal, and she did.

Conservatives should not sneer at this but take comfort. The fact is that when Democrats talk directly to the nation they must put aside their ugly liberal anger and their nasty liberal issues, and speak to the eternal verities.

The eternal verity for a woman is love. A woman is nothing without love, nothing without her relationships. Career, glass ceilings, and all that political tommy-rot, they are nothing. Even after a generation of non-stop feminist agitation from the heights to the obscurest corners of American life the wife of a presidential candidate still has to give a speech about herself as a lover, a lover of family, of husband, and of children.

That is not something to grumble about. It is something to celebrate.