Kennedy, Michelle energize Democrats (Roundup)

Aug 26, 2008, 15:27 GMT

Denver, Colorado - Waving blue and white signs, 4,400 Democratic delegates roared approval at a parade of the party's stars on Monday, including the ailing Senator Edward Kennedy, former president Jimmy Carter and Michelle Obama.

Whether it was the kind of energy that will propel presumptive candidate Barack Obama, 47, into the White House in November was another question, as the country's first African-American presidential candidate runs in a dead-heat race against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, 71.

Democrats attacked the Bush administration for the war in Iraq, the failing economy and the falling prospects of the middle class and medically uninsured, and charged that McCain would just provide more of the same.

'Republicans say that John McCain has experience,' said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 'We say that John McCain has the experience of being wrong.'

The biggest surprise on day one of the four-day presidential nominating convention was the arrival of Kennedy at Denver's Pepsi stadium. Only a videotaped message had been planned from the party's lion of liberal causes, who is fighting a cancerous brain tumor.

Sounding his life-long theme of health care for all, Kennedy shuffled onto the podium laughing out loud at his feat.

'Nothing, nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight,' said Kennedy, who is 76. 'I have come here to help elect Barack Obama president of the United States.'

Carter and wife Rosalynn received loud acclaim but did not speak. Joe Biden, Obama's vice presidential candidate, got an ovation when his presence was recognized.

Michelle Obama, 44, stole the limelight in the final speaker's slot, winding up the mood with her description of the working-class background she shares with Barack that could echo strongly with average Americans when they compare the candidate to McCain.

In contrast, McCain is more privileged with his second marriage to a wealthy heiress and the strong legacy of a father and grandfather who were four-star navy admirals whose example propelled him into the military.

The candidate's Chicago-born wife described him as a persistent suitor with a 'funny name' in their courting days and a dedicated father who would carry the same kind of determination into the White House.

In the 20-minute live broadcast speech, she talked about his determination to give their daughters 'everything he'd struggled so hard for himself' and to give them 'something he never had: the affirming embrace of a father's love.'

The speech aimed to fill in some of the gaps about Obama, who only arrived on the national scene with election to the US senate four years ago. Some voters are wary of his background which includes a Kenyan father and a childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii.

Michelle Obama also paid tribute to the 'crosscurrents of history,' of the women's and civil rights movements of the '60s that had brought the African-American couple to the threshold of the presidency.

'I know first hand ... that the American dream endures,' she said.

She won strong and loud applause when she saluted her husband's chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, for carrying more than 18 million votes and 40 per cent of the delegates in the hard-fought primary elections.

Clinton also got praise from Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Clinton's support is seen as vital for a Democratic victory in bringing in her reluctant supporters.

Clinton has been campaigning for Obama and will claim starring roles on the next two convention nights. On Tuesday, she will headline the program. On Wednesday, her name was expected to be formally placed in nomination along with Obama's for the state-by- state roll call, although it was not clear if she would release them to Obama before the process began.

Obama, who is campaigning through the Midwest during convention week, will arrive on Thursday in Denver to deliver his acceptance speech before a throng of 75,000 people at Invesco stadium.

Notable by his absence from the speakers' list during the four-day gathering is the civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, who provoked outrage earlier this summer with the off-mike suggestion that the candidate should be castrated for some of his proposed policies.

Instead, his son Jesse Jackson Jr, an Illinois congressman who took his father to task for his remarks, spoke of how Obama would be a leader 'who can heal the wounds of the last eight years, a leader who knows that what unites us is greater than what divides us.'