Michelle Obama gently buried her husband’s former worldview this week while delivering other “cold hard truths” to America. “We live in a deeply divided nation,” she told the Democratic convention on its first night. “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can.”

Barack Obama, of course, launched his national career on the opposite premise at another convention half a generation ago. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America,” Mr Obama said in 2004. “There’s the United States of America.”

Those words sound very innocent today. This year’s conventions seem to be happening in another country, as well as in separate nations. The virtual Democratic gathering depicts a rainbow America that will root out historic injustices.