"I know it’s a campaign, but this isn’t about politics,” Michelle Obama said in a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday afternoon, as she responded to the latest news of Donald Trump’s treatment of women. “It’s about basic human decency. It’s about right and wrong.” She spoke with a passion that many feel, but few can deploy with such controlled, incisive force. And yet her speech was very much about politics—politics as the enterprise that the sordidness of this election may lead many to give up on, politics as a national inheritance, and politics as an ethical choice.

Obama started with what she had wanted to spend the last few months of her tenure as First Lady talking about: Let Girls Learn, an initiative for girls’ education. She had been inspired by the girls she’d met a couple of days earlier at a White House event; she had been feeling pretty good. “That was Tuesday,” she said, and the audience knew what she meant: it was before reports came out in which women talked about what it was like to have Donald Trump kiss and grab them against their will. And the audience had heard Trump call the women and the media outlets that printed what they said liars. This was in addition to an “Access Hollywood” video that came out Friday. Obama described watching that, too. "I can’t believe that I’m saying that”—she stopped, her voice catching—“a candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.” It was at this moment that her speech became something extraordinary.

"And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted,” the First Lady said. "So while I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.” Making normal campaign speeches is her job, but she was also describing the impulse that many Americans might have to just go about their normal jobs and pretend that this ugly moment isn’t happening, that this is indeed just a bad dream. But, Obama continued, it’s not so simple.

"This is not something that we can ignore. It’s not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season,” she said. People were afraid to let their children watch a Presidential candidate on television—“a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior.” That is another way of saying that politics was being made into a center of pain. Recounting Trump’s words, she said, "It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts.” It reminded people of "stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers,” about how hard work was never enough to protect a woman or to allow her to advance. That, too, fed the impulse to run away from politics—to shut it out. "Maybe we’re afraid to be that vulnerable,” Obama said. “Maybe we don’t want to believe that there are still people out there who think so little of us as women.”

But, she said, believe it. "New Hampshire, be clear: This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to—Democratic, Republican, independent—no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

She added, "I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. And I know that my family is not unusual.” It is unusual, in that her husband is the President—but the point was that there are still decent people in the political realm, something that many Americans have begun to doubt. She was married to one, and she said she knew another.

"Strong men—men who are truly role models—don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful,” she said. And then, setting up the transition to the person she had come to campaign for, she added, "People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together. And that is what we need in our next President. And let me tell you, I’m here today because I believe with all of my heart that Hillary Clinton will be that President.” Obama spoke not just of Clinton’s competence but of her character, in familial terms: "And, if any of us had raised a daughter like Hillary Clinton, we would be so proud. We would be proud.” In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama had said that she trusted Clinton to protect her daughters; here, she went beyond that, saying, in effect, that she would be glad if Sasha and Malia were not only kept safe by Clinton but became someone like her.

A Trump victory, Obama said, would mean that "we’re telling all our kids that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable in the leader of their country. How can we maintain our moral authority in the world? How can we continue to be a beacon of freedom and justice and human dignity?"

She had an answer. "We have everything we need to stop this madness. You see, while our mothers and grandmothers were often powerless to change their circumstances, today, we as women have all the power we need to determine the outcome of this election.” The audience, as it had at several points during the speech, applauded wildly. "We have knowledge. We have a voice. We have a vote.”

Michelle Obama is working as hard as anyone in this country to get Hillary Clinton elected. After eight years in Washington, she hasn’t given up on politics. And that’s its own victory.