‘This Is the Convention of the Woman’

When State Senator Cordell Cleare of New York watched Michelle Obama, the former first lady, speak onstage at the Democratic National Convention this week, she heard a call to action — “Do something” — that thrilled and galvanized the Democrats around her.

“Michelle Obama,” Cleare said, “dropped the mic.”

She had a more restrained review for Obama’s husband.

“President Obama gave good advice,” Cleare said of Barack Obama, who made his party swoon 16 years ago.

This year’s D.N.C., which will close tonight with the biggest speech of Vice President Kamala Harris’s career, has made it very clear that, as Democrats tell the story of their party, it’s women who stand at center stage.

Every night, women have outshined male party stalwarts — sometimes the ones they are married to — in a development that has highlighted the rising power of women in the Democratic Party and left some of the most famous men in politics seemingly playing more of a supporting role.

“You hear the eloquent voice of Michelle Obama. I thought Secretary Clinton gave one of the best speeches I’ve heard her deliver in her career,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a talented orator whose soaring speech on Monday you might have forgotten amid all the big-ticket women, including Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state to whom he was referring.