Amid the glamour of the Mile High Stadium Barack Obama removed some of the vagueness of his vision for change, but some Democrats worry not enough time was spent bashing John McCain ahead of next week's lower-key Republican convention
AS DEMOCRATS left Denver yesterday after their national convention, many were feeling light-headed and a little disorientated - and not just because of the thinness of the air in the Mile High City. Over the previous four days, they had watched the leadership of their party pass from Bill and Hillary Clinton, who had dominated Democratic politics for 16 years, to Barack Obama, a politician who has spent only four years on the national stage.
On Thursday night, Obama accepted his party's presidential nomination before 80,000 people at a stadium event that felt as much like a music festival as a political rally. The supporters who waited for hours in queues stretching more than a mile into downtown Denver were rewarded with a speech that soared with inspiring rhetoric but was packed with policy detail and carried a sharp political punch.
On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, the first African-American to lead a major party into a presidential election roused his Democratic audience, moving many to tears.
"I cried my eyelashes off," Oprah Winfrey said as she left the stadium. "I think it's the most powerful thing I have ever experienced."
Obama's tour de force reassured Democrats after a convention that had been dominated by the drama surrounding the Clintons and the need to unite the party after a bitter, 18-month primary campaign.
The convention began on Monday with a tribute to the ailing lion of the senate, Edward Kennedy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour earlier this year, and a speech by Michelle Obama. Caricatured on conservative talk radio and in right-wing blogs as angry and unpatriotic, the candidate's wife sought to present herself and her family as being solidly in the American mainstream.
Most white Americans know so little about their black fellow-citizens that the speech may have been a necessary gesture of reassurance, made more eloquent at the end by the appearance onstage of the Obamas' charming, irrepressible daughters, Sasha and Malia.
Tuesday and Wednesday were dominated by the Clintons, first with Hillary's speech urging her supporters to move behind Obama and then with her husband's resounding endorsement of the candidate he had once dismissed as an inexperienced "kid".
The only Democratic president to win two terms in office since Franklin D Roosevelt, Clinton remained the leading figure in his party after the defeats of Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Before the convention, Hillary said her supporters needed a moment of catharsis that could only be achieved by putting her name into nomination alongside Obama's.
In the end, Clinton herself provided the catharsis, effecting the emotional turning point of the convention when she called for the roll call of states to be halted and for Obama to be nominated by acclamation.
"With eyes firmly fixed on the future, and in the spirit of unity with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let's declare together with one voice right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president," she said.
Everyone agreed that the Clintons played their roles flawlessly, but some Democratic strategists complained that three of the four days of the convention had been wasted because they had not been spent attacking McCain and the Republicans. Others worried that Obama's decision to move his acceptance speech into a football stadium could reinforce Republican claims that he is a narcissistic celebrity too much in love with the roar of an adoring crowd.
Obama's speech had four main objectives: to introduce himself to a broader public as someone who understood them and shared their values; to make his promise of change more specific; to draw a sharp contrast with McCain; and to persuade voters that he is ready to lead.
Standing before a classical backdrop that evoked the West Wing of the White House, Obama set out his vision for the US in concrete terms, defining the change he promises as an end to the policies of the past eight years under president George Bush.
"Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive," he said. "And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: Eight is enough."
A biographical video before the speech stressed Obama's background as the son of a single mother who struggled financially, and highlighted the role of his white grandparents in raising him. There was no mention of his time at Harvard Law School - too "elitist" perhaps - and no sign of the Rev Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama worshipped for 20 years.
In his speech, Obama said that when he met people throughout the US who faced economic hardship he was reminded of the challenges faced by his mother and grandparents.
"I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said.
"These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."
Pushing back against the charge that he has been vague about policy, Obama spelt out what changes his presidency would bring.
He promised to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, to cut taxes for 95 per cent of families and to end US dependence on oil from the Middle East within 10 years.
"I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power," he said.
"I'll help our auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." He pledged to increase spending on education and to introduce affordable healthcare for everyone, prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
He would introduce paid sick days and better family leave and guarantee equal pay for women.
Turning to foreign policy, Obama defended his call for a timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, adding that both the Iraqi government and the Bush administration now shared his view. He said he would "finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan" but also promised to rebuild partnerships with the US's allies and to renew "tough, direct diplomacy" with Iran and Russia.
He insisted that he, rather than McCain, had "the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander-in-chief", accusing the Republican of clinging stubbornly to Bush's failed foreign policy.
"That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past," he said.
"You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying one country. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need."
Obama's speech made clear that his strategy depends on branding McCain as Bush's successor and presenting himself as the representative of "new leadership, a new politics for a new time". Despite a slide in the polls in recent weeks that has seen Obama's lead over McCain disappear, the Democrat's campaign radiated calm in Denver. Obama won the Democratic nomination in large part because of his superior grassroots organisation, and his campaign staff believe that organisation will help him to triumph again in November.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, has identified 18 battleground states, 14 of which Bush won in 2004, and he believes that increasing voter turnout in those states is the key to victory. In 2004, Bush's field operation increased Republican turnout by 12 million votes over 2000, dwarfing the Democrats' eight million increase.
"I think what the Bush people did in 2004 deserves to be in the political hall of fame," Plouffe told reporters this week.
"I think that McCain's going to have a difficult time replicating that. And if John McCain doesn't replicate George Bush's turnout, he's obviously going to lose in a very major way. If he replicates it and doesn't grow it, he's going to lose most of these states. He has to replicate it, and increase it." Plouffe points to Florida, where 600,000 registered African-Americans didn't vote in 2004 and more than 900,000 registered voters under 40 stayed away from the polls. He is confident that a combination of increased voter registration and an aggressive voter turnout operation could swing many of the battleground states to Obama.
"We spend a lot of time on this. And it's not sexy, and it's not something that people are going to spend a lot of time on, but it's how elections are won," he said.
AFTER THE GLAMOUR of this week's Democratic convention, which featured performances by everyone from Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow to Kanye West, and a Hollywood-style party hosted by Vanity Fair, next week's Republican convention in St Paul promises to be a modest affair. Whereas every hotel room within a 20-mile radius of Denver was booked months in advance, rooms within walking distance of the Republican convention centre were still available this weekend.
The editors of many leading British papers were in Denver, but none are going to St Paul, and one European television network that sent 20 reporters to Denver is sending just one to cover the Republicans.
US coverage of next week's convention could be squeezed if Hurricane Gustav, which is heading into the Gulf of Mexico, hits landfall in New Orleans early next week - almost exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina.
The Republicans will have some advantages over the Democrats next week, however, one of which is that they have no equivalent of the Clinton drama to distract from their primary purpose of bashing Obama. It's true that George Bush and Dick Cheney will play the role of the ugly sisters at the Republican ball on Monday evening but, given that it is Labour Day, many voters will be otherwise occupied and might not notice.
The theme of the convention is "Country First", and each evening will feature a celebration of McCain's life in public service, including his five years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. The Republican campaign is based on pointing up the contrast between McCain's political experience and personal heroism and Obama's inexperience and alleged lack of substance.
McCain owes much of his recent rise in the polls to his campaign's success in making Obama the central issue of the election, and next week's convention is likely to feature a relentless bombardment of the Democratic candidate. Republicans are less squeamish than Democrats about what Hillary Clinton calls "the politics of personal destruction" and they have an impressive record of turning the apparent strengths of Democratic candidates into weaknesses.
McCain has a further advantage next week in that, because he often performs poorly in major speeches, as he struggles with the autocue, expectations are low in advance of his acceptance speech.
Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, headed directly yesterday for the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan in an attempt to drive home their message that the economy is the central issue of the campaign. Bush is so unpopular that, if the Democrats can successfully link McCain with him in the public mind, they believe they will prevail in November. McCain faces a delicate task in seeking to win over Independent voters by stressing his record as a political maverick without alienating conservatives, whose energy and organisation he will need on election day.
McCain's best opportunity to pull ahead of Obama could come in the three presidential debates, a forum in which he has shown himself to be deft, ruthless and persuasive. Obama's hope lies in replicating and maintaining the enthusiasm he generated in Denver on Thursday, persuading young voters to turn out in record numbers while reassuring older Americans that he is ready to lead.
If Obama loses November's election, Thursday night's event at Mile High Stadium will go down as one of the most foolhardy acts of hubris in American political history. If he wins, however, that heady night in Denver might be remembered as the moment when an African-American presidential candidate sealed the deal with a sceptical electorate and helped to realise King's dream.