Barack Obama Is Scared

His warning to America during the Democratic convention’s third night was existential.

Barack Obama didn’t try to inspire Americans tonight: He wanted to scare them.

The former president offered no thousand-watt smiles or soaring rhetoric as he exhorted voters to elect Joe Biden and warned them about the perils of giving Donald Trump another four years in the White House. In a stark, sober address from Philadelphia during the virtual Democratic National Convention, a man elected a dozen long years ago on a gauzy promise of “hope and change” found...