DENVER — Striving for unity and spoiling for a fight with Republicans, Democrats from across the country gathered Sunday on the front edge of the Rocky Mountains for a history-making convention tinged with concern over a presidential race grown closer than many expected.
The nervousness belies broad political trends favoring the party and Sen. Barack Obama, its nominee-to-be: an unpopular war, a sour economy and a Republican president at basement level in opinion polls. Despite those advantages — and his prodigious fundraising — Obama’s lead in national surveys has all but evaporated over the past month, renewing concerns about the senator’s relative inexperience and political durability.
“It’s going to be part celebration and part anxiety,” Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, said of the Democratic gathering that begins today.
By sharpening his message over the next four days — narrowing the gap between his high-flown rhetoric and voters’ kitchen-table concerns —and building his image beyond a celebrity stereotype, the Illinois senator hopes to make the election a choice between himself and Republican John McCain, not just a straight referendum on Obama. He also hopes to patch, once and for all, his differences with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her followers.
“It’s important for him and the convention as a whole to lay out the distinctions and comparisons between himself and McCain,” said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist. “He needs to show that he can take off the gloves.”
Whatever happens in November, history will be made in the thin night air of Denver.
Obama’s nomination and his 50-yard-line acceptance speech Thursday in the city’s football stadium will not only cap a remarkable political upset, but also represent a milestone: It will be the first time an African-American carries a major party’s standard into the fall presidential campaign.
Campaigning Sunday in Wisconsin, a November battleground, Obama continued to sharpen his rhetorical attack on McCain, focusing on economic issues and offering, strategists said, a taste of the days to come.
“My main goal at this convention and through my speech is to convey a sense of urgency that so many families are feeling across the country,” Obama told The Denver Post in an interview published Sunday. “And to present a clear choice between continuing the same economic policies … and a new approach.”
Obama also needs to show — if polls are any indication — that he is more than a political flash with a gift for oratory and a pleasing but vague message of change. “He needs to introduce himself to voters who know him by name but not by substance,” said Peter Hart, a veteran Democratic pollster.
The coming days and weeks will present the sternest test of Obama’s brief but charmed national political career.
He faces a party still not altogether healed from a long and bruising primary season. Perhaps the biggest question this week is how vanquished opponent Clinton and her most die-hard backers — including her husband, former President Clinton — will comport themselves.
“They have to validate Obama,” said Brazile, a Washington, D.C., delegate who was neutral in the primaries. “She has to get up and tell her supporters, ‘I trust Senator Obama to carry out the agenda we put forth in the primaries.’ And Bill Clinton has to say, ‘I believe he will make a great commander-in-chief. I know he has what it takes.’ “
Obama will not arrive in Denver until Wednesday. He plans to wend his way here after a tour of battleground states. Biden is due to arrive today and address delegates Wednesday night.
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