I imitation-live-blog Michelle Obama's speech.

I missed most of Michelle Obama's speech last night, and the good thing about that is that now I've got the text, and it's much faster to read and much easier to blog. So I'll imitation-live-blog:

As you might imagine, for Barack, running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother, Craig.

Why might I imagine that? What a strange first line!

And at six-foot-six, I've often felt like Craig was looking down on me, too, literally.

Michelle Obama is 6'6"?! That's a little grammar humor. But okay, I get it now. Craig was standing right there and he's really tall, and so she started off with some warm, casual family and sports talk.

... I come here tonight as a sister.... And I come here as a wife....

And I come here as a mom....

And I come here as a daughter....

My feminist alarm goes off, and I think of Hillary, the woman who would have come here as the nominee.

And, you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that... his family was so much like mine.

He was raised by grandparents who were working-class folks just like my parents and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. And like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities that they never had for themselves.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values....

She's reaching out to those middle-class white voters Obama needs to win over. Michelle is saying that her family shared the values of the demographic group she's trying to persuade, but she subtly points to what should be more obvious, that Obama was raised by middle-class white people.

In keeping with the campaign's (sometimes elusive) transracial theme, she doesn't say that her family is black and his primary caregivers were white. In fact, nowhere in the speech do we hear the words "black" — or "African-American" — or "white" — except for "White House." A search of the text for "race" turned up only "grace" (twice!) and "embrace," which felt very sweet.

And I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history, knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me, all of them driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work, the same conviction that drives the men and women I've met all across this country.

She's putting herself in her place, the place that the polls say she needs to be in, where she is not arrogant, not "entitled" and angry, and she loves America. At this point, she lists various kinds of people, people who work hard, who serve in the military, young people, and Hillary Clinton. And Joe Biden.

All of us driven by the simple belief that the world as it is just won't do, that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.

She's trying to repackage her erstwhile criticism of America into a respect for it, or at least for its hardworking people, and to use that as a premise for idealism.

And that is the thread that connects our hearts.

Who wrote that line? I can just hear them brainstorming about a way to put the message in really feminine terms: Let's see, there's childcare, cooking... sewing! Thread! And love, feeling... hearts! The thread that connects our hearts. Hey, that's a rather grisly image: sewn thoracic organs. No, no, don't worry about it. No one is that concrete. Maybe some inane blogger somewhere. Forget it. People will hear thread and hearts and feel all the love and connection.

That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack's journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.

More thread. And journey. It's always a journey. The current of history meets this new tide of hope. Currents and tides... hey, is that Teddy Kennedy's yacht? (I need to dig up the link to the Ted Kennedy video with its theme of The Sea. [ADDED: Here.])

And, you see, that is why I love this country.

That is the line she needed to say. I imagine it was the first line of the speech that was written and everything else was built around it.

In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. See, that's why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities, because I believe....

Wait. Doesn't her job pay $300,000 a year? And is there really something wrong with working in jobs that can't be labeled "public service"? She goes on to talk about Barack's choice to work in public service, which, of course, includes working as a state and U.S. senator and — if you'll elect him — as a President. This launches the part of the speech that resembles one of Barack Obama's own speeches. And then it becomes more intimate, with this image:

He's the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital 10 years ago this summer, inching along at a snail's pace, peering at us anxiously at -- through the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he'd struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her something he never had, the affirming embrace of a father's love.

As President, Barack can be our father too. And he will drive that Car of State very, very carefully, inching along. He'll grip that steering wheel at the 11 and 1 positions and peer anxiously in the rearview mirror. A strikingly conservative image, no?

And as I tuck that little girl in -- as I tuck that little girl in and her little sister into bed at night, you see, I think about how, one day, they'll have families of their own and how, one day, they -- and your sons and daughters -- will tell their own children about what we did together in this election.

And so the wife ends her day in proper feminine form, tucking in the little children. Somewhere, a Hillary supporter is weeping.