DURHAM - Michelle Obama worked a crowd Friday afternoon like a lawyer making a closing argument in a case where someone's life is at stake.

It is, she told the 800 or so people who had waited hours to see her.

"This race," she said, referring to husband Barack's run for the presidency, "is about our future."

Obama talked of how her husband was never expected to make it this far and how he had to reach for a bar that moved each time he got it within his grasp.

First, Obama said, critics claimed her husband wouldn't be able to raise enough money to run a credible campaign. When he did, largely by appealing to "regular folks" who came through with donations of $10 to $50, the critics said money didn't matter.

They said he couldn't build an effective campaign organization that could compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton's machine. When he did, Obama said, the critics said the organization didn't matter. They said he couldn't win Iowa, and when he did, his wife said, they claimed Iowa didn't matter, because he couldn't appeal to voters nationwide.

"The bar keeps moving," Obama said. The sad irony, she added, is, "That's exactly what's happening to most people in this country."

They work harder all the time, she said, but it's never enough.

The audience for Obama's get-out-the-vote appearance at the Durham Armory was mostly black and largely female. Tickets to the event were free, but the candidate's wife spoke to the crowd as if they had paid $500 per seat, beginning with an apology for being delayed two hours by bad weather that kept her plane from leaving Chicago.

By the time she took the stage, the temperature in the room had crept up, and so had the fervor. Obama spoke for more than an hour, without a script but with plenty of emotion.

Among those who took the better part of their day to hear her was Nikki Harris, 40, of Durham.

"I think Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States, and I need to support him and the first lady," Harris said.