Obama Scores Big at Invesco

There's a lot of high praise for Obama and his speech tonight. It was well delivered, as we all knew it would.

The Associated Press' Nedra Pickler wrote the copy that will appear in most newspapers in America tomorrow morning:

An enthusiastic crowd of 84,000 — unprecedented for a political convention — literally shook the stadium at Invesco Field at Mile High with their stomping feet, every participant equipped by organizers with an American flag. More important was the audience of millions of Americans watching on television, a tougher crowd, as Obama spoke before a backdrop of columns reminiscent of the White House portico.

Carl P. Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News had this opinion in his blog tonight about the use of patriotism in the campaign:

Barack Obama challenged John McCain's efforts to corner the political market on patriotism. But he made clear he won't echo his Republican rival by accusing him of taking position for political purposes.

"Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and their patriotism," he said.

Bloomberg's Kristin Jensen and Julianna Goldman touched on the fact that it is the anniversary of another famous speech:

Obama spoke 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his ``I Have a Dream'' speech, and he drew on that historic legacy. His parents, a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, ``shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to,'' Obama said.

Democrats had high expectations for tonight's speech; it was Obama's keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 that propelled him to national prominence. He used the address to tell Americans more about himself, while arguing that he is a better candidate to lead the country than presumed Republican nominee John McCain.

And John Farmer of the Newark Star-Ledger had this thought about what's next:

Secondly, [the Obama campaign] had to move beyond the party's internal problems. Important as unity might be, it matters little to most rank-and-file voters -- especially members of the middle class, hard-pressed by rising consumer and education costs, job losses, stagnant wages and out-of-reach health care. They want answers to these troubles.

That was the task Obama took on last night in formally accepting the nomination at an outdoor speech (a la John F. Kennedy in 1960) at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos football team. He planned to go beyond generalizations about "change" to talk about bread-and-butter issues, like how to create jobs and end the nation's dependence on oil.

It was a pitch to the army of miffed middle-class voters, mostly white, blue-collar workers, many of them in small towns and rural areas. They resisted Obama's appeal during the long primary campaign and are considered a key to victory in such major battleground states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia.

Winning them over is the second part of the Obama camp's two-horse parlay.