DENVER — Ailing and aging, Sen. Edward Kennedy issued a ringing summons tonight to fellow Democrats to rally behind Sen. Barack Obama’s pioneering quest for the White House in a poignant opening to a party convention in search of unity for the fall campaign.
“Barack will finally bring the change we need,” seconded Obama’s wife, Michelle, casting her husband — bidding to become the first black president — as a leader with classic American values.
She pledged he would end the war in Iraq, revise a sputtering economy and extend health care to all.
Democrats opened their four-day convention in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains as polls underscored the closeness of the race with Republican Sen. John McCain. And there was no underestimating the challenges confronting Obama.
He faces lingering divisions from a fierce battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination, tough ads by McCain and his Republican allies, and a reminder that racism, too, could play a role.
“There are people who are not going to vote for him because he’s black,” said James Hoffa, president of the Teamsters union. “And we’ve got to hope that we can educate people to put aside their racism and to put their own interests No. 1.” He spoke in an Associated Press interview.
Kennedy and Obama’s wife were the bookends of an evening that left the delegates cheering, one representing the party’s past, the other its present.
“The work begins anew, the hope rises again and the dream lives on,” Kennedy said in a strong voice, reprising the final line of a memorable 1980 speech that brought a different convention to its feet. The senator has been undergoing treatment for a malignant brain tumor.
Obama’s wife said it was time to “stop doubting and start dreaming.”
Moments later, Obama appeared via satellite from Missouri, drawing cheers from delegates.
Convention planners hoped the prime time address by Obama’s wife would begin the work of casting the Illinois senator as a leader with classic American values.
Among them, she said, “that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”
The convention’s opening gavel fell with Obama and Clinton still struggling to work out the choreography for the formal roll call of the states that will make him the party nominee.
Michelle Obama included a tribute to her husband’s former rival, crediting her with having placed “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” that constrains women’s ambitions.
“There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is Barack Obama’s convention,” the former first lady told reporters early in the day. And yet, she said, some of her delegates “feel an obligation to the people who sent them here” and would vote for her.
Kennedy’s speech was an implicit appeal to her delegates — and the 18 million voters who supported her in the primaries — to swing behind Obama.
He said the country can meet its challenges with Obama. “Yes we can, yes we will,” he said, echoing the presidential candidate’s own signature refrain.
In one of their first orders of business, delegates ratified a party platform tailored to Obama’s specifications. It backs “complete redeployment within 16 months from Iraq,” as well as health care for all, a new economic stimulus package and higher taxes on families earning over $250,000 a year.
“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right,” it said.
As the delegates took their seats in the Pepsi Center, Obama campaigned in Iowa, the first in a string of swing states he is visiting en route to Colorado.
Obama delivers his acceptance speech on Thursday at a football stadium, before a crowd likely to total 75,000 or more. Then he and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, his vice presidential running mate, depart for the fall campaign.
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