-I am one of a handful of people living today
who have seen firsthand the immense weight
and awesome power of the presidency.
And let me once again tell you this --
The job is hard.
It requires clearheaded judgment,
a mastery of complex and competing issues,
a devotion to facts and history,
a moral compass, and an ability to listen.
And an abiding belief that each of the 330 million
lives in this country has meaning and worth.
You simply cannot fake your way through this job.
As I've said before,
being president doesn't change who you are --
it reveals who you are.
More than 150,000 people have died,
and our economy is in shambles because of a virus
that this president downplayed for too long.
It has left millions of people jobless,
too many have lost their health care,
too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities
like food and rent, too many communities
have been left in the lurch to grapple
with whether and how to open our schools safely.
As George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list
of innocent people of color continue to be murdered,
stating the simple fact that a Black life
matters is still met with derision
from the nation's highest office.
Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me,
"When others are going so low, does going high
still really work?"
My answer -- going high is the only thing that works,
because when we go low,
when we use those same tactics of degrading
and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise
that's drowning out everything else.
Going high does not mean putting on a smile
and saying nice things
when confronted by viciousness and cruelty.
Going high means taking the harder path.
It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top.
Going high means standing fierce against hatred
while remembering that we are one nation under God,
and if we want to survive,
we've got to find a way to live together
and work together across our differences.
So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can.
Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country.
He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job,
but he is clearly in over his head.
He cannot meet this moment.
He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.
It is what it is.
Now, I understand that my message
won't be heard by some people.
We live in a nation that is deeply divided,
and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention.
But enough of you know me by now.
You know that I tell you exactly what I'm feeling.
You know I hate politics.
But you also know that I care about this nation.
So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this --
if you think things cannot possibly get worse,
trust me, they can,
and they will if we don't make a change in this election.
If we have any hope of ending this chaos,
we have got to vote for Joe Biden
like our lives depend on it.