If you just landed from Mars, you would have sworn that Barack Obama was attacking Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.

Speaking to a roaring crowd of Democrats at the party’s convention in Chicago Tuesday night, the former president, firing up the crowd, said, “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos.”

Which is something that people believe the country has had throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. And that is why Obama and Nancy Pelosi forced him out his campaign for reelection.

“We have seen that movie before, and we know that the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said, failing to point out that Kamala Harris is the sequel to Joe Biden.

What a curious thing to say since the bookish former two-term president annually puts out a reading list of books, and should know that a sequel is a continuation of a previous work.

So, in essence, Kamala Harris will be a continuation of Joe Biden, who Obama and Nancy Pelosi turned on because he could not win reelection running on his record and age.

It is a record that features, among other things, an illegal immigrant invasion accompanied by a flood of drugs and crime, a war on domestic energy, high food and gas prices, a shameful and deadly retreat from Afghanistan and support for a couple of unpopular wars.

Is that what Harris will be running on? Or is that what she will be running from?

Then Obama added, “America is ready for a new chapter, a better story. We are ready for President Kamala Harris.”

Presumably then, the new chapter and better story will be based on the sequel. Yet everybody, including Obama, knows from movies, plays and books that a sequel is never as good, or better, than the original work.

That aside, Obama had nice things to say about his former vice president, even though he supported Hillary Clinton over him in 2016, was late to support him in 2020, and helped force him out of the race in 2024.

Other than that, they were “brothers.”

Looking a back on his nomination for president sixteen years ago, Obama said, “I can say without question that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best, and that was asking Joe Biden to serve at my side as vice president.”

Overlooked, of course, was President Obama’s once incisive and prescient quote about his vice president that was, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.”

But that was then, and this is now.

Besides, Obama was only mirroring what Joe Biden said about Kamala Harris, his vice president, who is now the Democrat Party nominee for the top job.

A night earlier, during his meandering farewell speech to the convention Biden said, “Kamala Harris was the very best decision I made when I became our nominee, and it was the best decision I made my whole career.”

Biden added that “like many of our best presidents, she was also vice president,” no doubt including himself among the best presidents although few outside the convention all would have agreed.

Michelle Obama, who preceded Barack to the microphone, was just as inadvertently bad (or good, depending) on Biden as Barack was.

With Biden gone from the convention hall, and soon from the White House, Michelle opened by saying, “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, Isn’t it?

“You know, we’re feeling it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across the country we love. A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.”

Then she, like Barack, launched an extensive and bitter attack on Trump which makes one wonder what else the pair talk about over dinner, given that neither one has ever run against him.

And no doubt they agreed that it was just too bad that they had to throw their friend Joe Biden under the bus. He was  a good guy, but a lousy president.

It was nothing personal, just business.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.

President Joe Biden speaks at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)