Michelle Obama declared “hope is making a comeback” after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 candidate in a fiery address to the party’s national convention.

The former First Lady used her speech in Chicago to rally voters behind the 59-year-old Ms Harris shortly after she formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday night.

Striking an optimistic tone, Mrs Obama said there was something “wonderfully magical” in the air since Ms Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket last month.

“America, hope is making a comeback,” she said to a rousing reception from thousands of Democrats gathered at the city’s United Center. 

Describing Ms Harris as “more than ready for this moment”, she said the vice president was “one of the most qualified people ever to seek” America’s highest office.

In a nod to the historic nature of Ms Harris’ White House bid, she went on to say Democrats could not afford to “get a Goldilocks complex” or “indulge our anxieties” about whether America was ready to elect a woman of colour as Commander-in-Chief.

“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” she said.

She went on to warn that Donald Trump, the Republican candidate and her husband Barack’s successor on leaving office in 2017, would attempt to “distort” the truth in a thinly veiled reference to his racially charged comments about his opponents.

“My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this,” Mrs Obama said.

She continued: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.

“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be black.”

Referencing Trump’s claim that illegal immigrants were taking “black jobs”, Mrs Obama quipped: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘black jobs’?”

The comments prompted deafening screams of laughter from the crowd.

The former First Lady, who remains one of the Democrats’ most popular figures, repeatedly skewered the Republican candidate in her address, but rarely mentioned him by name.

She described how “most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward”, or “benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth” in a withering rebuke of the 78-year-old  former president and property magnate.

Her address came amid reports the Obamas were instrumental in backing calls for Mr Biden, the man who was her husband’s deputy for eight years, to withdraw from the 2024 race.

“There is no other choice than Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” she told the audience, describing how the party had embraced a “renewed sense of hope”. 

Polls show that Ms Harris’ entry into the race has dramatically shifted the polls, which had Mr Biden on course to lose before his exit on July 21. She now holds a narrow lead over Trump in several swing states.

But Mrs Obama warned while Ms Harris and her running mate Mr Walz were “packing arenas” and “folks are energised”, they faced an “uphill battle” against those “desperate for a different outcome”.

At one point, she warned that with just two and a half months until election day, “we cannot afford for anyone to sit on their hands and wait to be called upon”.

“There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness,” she said. 

In a grim portend of what a second Trump term would bring, she described him “doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies”; “gutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies” and “banning our books”.

She then introduced her husband, Barack Obama, who is still among the country’s most popular politicians seven years after quitting the White House.

The former president delivered the keynote address on the second day of the Democratic Party’s four-day convention, pronouncing America was “ready for a new chapter”.

But it was Mrs Obama, 60, speaking in her hometown of Chicago, who appeared to get the loudest cheers from the thousands who have descended on the city.

Her address followed several hours of speeches from the grandsons of Jimmy Carter and John F Kennedy, musical interludes and Republican critics of Trump including his former White House communications director Stephanie Grisham.

Tuesday’s programme also featured a speech by the person hoping to take on Mrs Obama’s former role as the first spouse, Doug Emhoff.  

The Second Gentleman introduced himself to the public and offered an intimate portrait of Ms Harris, whom he described as a “joyful warrior” but “tough as nails”.