KEY POINTS:
DENVER - Today in a vast outdoor arena in Denver, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama will deliver an address upon which hangs the outcome of November's United States presidential election, and the hopes of the first black man with a real shot at the White House.
Eight years ago such a scenario would have been laughable. Obama was broke and without political friends of any consequence. He had to gatecrash the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles after arriving on a cheap flight at the last minute. A rental car company rejected his maxed-out American Express card and he watched Al Gore accept the party's nomination on television screens at the perimeter of the convention centre.
Today will seem a millennium away. This time it will be Gore in the audience lending moral support to the candidate on whose slender shoulders the Democrats' hopes lie. The psychodramas surrounding the Clintons have also been dealt with.
Senator Obama's acceptance of the nomination before 70,000 people is set to be an extraordinary political event. The task at hand is to energise the party and reconnect Obama's colourblind vision for the country with those Republican voters who were briefly enthralled by his electrifying promise to unify America's angry and divided politics.
"I'm not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric. I'm much more concerned with commenting on how I intend to help middle-class families improve their lives," he said.
Yesterday he walked unannounced on to the stage after running mate Senator Joe Biden used a rowdy vice-presidential acceptance speech to laud Obama and to tear into Republican rival John McCain.
"If I'm not mistaken, Hillary Clinton rocked the house last night!" he shouted.
While healing the Democratic Party may still prove difficult, the process began effusively on Wednesday when Hillary Clinton said Obama is "my candidate, and he must be our president".
Bill Clinton echoed his wife's words yesterday, noting that she had told the convention she would do everything possible to get Obama elected. "That makes two of us," he said.
"Everything I've learned in my eight years as president and the work I've done since ... has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job."
He defended Obama's national security credentials. Recalling that when he ran for president at age 46 in 1992, he said: "Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be president. Sound familiar?
"It didn't work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."
Clinton also suggested that on weighty issues, Obama would be leaning on the seasoned Biden.
"With Joe Biden's experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama's proven understanding, insight and good instincts, America will have the national security leadership we need," Clinton said.
Biden went hard against McCain and the Republicans on foreign policy. "I've been on the ground in Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms: This Administration's policy has been an abject failure."
Biden said McCain wants to keep it going on the same course. "America cannot afford four more years of this ... Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong and Barack Obama was proven right."
In spite of the tough talk, all this week an angst has hung over the delegates in Denver. Their foreboding is simple: have we picked the wrong person - and is it possible we are going to lose the most winnable election in a generation. Every delegate can reel off the advantages that should make their man a certainty to be behind the Oval Office desk come next January: a desperately unpopular Republican President, an unending war, a lousy economy, a gnawing sense of national decline.
No wonder in the "generic" polls that measure broad party preference, Democrats have a huge lead, of 12 per cent or more.
But when it comes to specifics, such as Obama versus John McCain, their man is running only level. McCain might be the best Republican option in this inauspicious year, but he's not exactly a superb campaigner. He's old, a dismal public speaker, and distinctly gaffe-prone.
The reason he is holding his own is that people simply don't yet have confidence his untested young opponent is up to the job. Today is an opportunity to overcome those doubts, in a prime time speech in which the candidate will have the country's undivided attention.
The nominee's speech will stand or fall on its own merits. It's up to Obama. And he must do it not with symbols, but with specifics. He must convince Americans that he is not merely a philosopher, but someone who grasps the problems of everyday life, of stagnant wages, vanishing jobs and foreclosed homes. Symbols cannot do this, running mate Joe Biden cannot do this, even Hillary Clinton cannot do this. Only Barack Obama can.
But if he can make the sale, then a neck and neck contest may turn into the sweeping victory of which those angst-ridden delegates in Denver dream.
TODAY
2pm - Barack Obama to accept his party's nomination at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High. His speech will be live on CNN and Fox News. Follow the event on nzherald.co.nz/world
- INDEPENDENT, AP
