Barack Obama delivers an incredible, searing articulation of our democratic ideals and Democratic agenda:

Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place – America – that stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor he signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA, and moved west, in search of opportunity. And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents. My parents shared not only an improbable love… they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation…I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

…Tonight, if you feel the same energy I do, the same urgency I do, the same passion I do, the same hopefulness I do – if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come. Thank you and God bless you.

Shame that Ted Kennedy seems to be the headline from tonight, because Obama’s the story. Shame he won’t be one of the pair getting nominated tomorrow…In the ensuing years, it’s on us to build a party radical enough to make it happen.

Josh Marshall asks Michael Moore whether the convention’s gone too positive:

So I ask him what he makes of all of this. No attacks on the president. Not even any mention of the man’s name. It’s like the anti-Michael Moore event. Or rather the non-Michael Moore event. (I caught myself the first time, realizing that hadn’t come out precisely as I’d intended.) Clearly, the guy didn’t know what to make of me. And as he breezes by he says, “Oh, Really? I liked it. You don’t even have to say it. Everyone knows how bad it is.” Think what you will about Michael Moore or evening one of the convention, I think that sums up precisely what this event is all about and the dynamic on which it’s operating…Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn’t even need to be explicitly evoked. The headline of Susan Page’s piece in USA Today reads: “Speakers offer few barbs, try to stay warm and fuzzy.” But the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.

Salt Lake City’s Mayor takes a stand for living wage contractors:

Despite warnings that his action violates at least the spirit of state law, Mayor Rocky Anderson signed an administrative rule Monday giving preference to contractors who pay a living wage. “We ought to be able to decide if we want to impose that [businesses] pay decent, livable wages,” Anderson told a crowd of about 60 people on City Hall’s east steps. But Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said last week that Salt Lake City’s measure runs counter to the intent of his 2001 law, which forbids Utah cities from requiring contractors to pay higher than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour.

Glad to hear from Jimmy Hoffa that Kerry got a union card as a Teamster back in the day, and that a quarter of the delegates are union members. It’s a start. Hoffa also managed to sound enthusiastic about Edwards after a very public call for Gephardt to get the nod.

James Ridgeway argues that the Democrats opened “with a whimper”:

Aside from possessing an impassioned hatred of Bush, the party is a collection of slogans wrapped around the Democratic Leadership Council’s shrill insistence that put-upon yuppie soccer moms can be the foundation of a new middle class. Since the DLC runs the show, that’s the program. Michael Moore and Flint, Michigan, represent the old working-class exhibits in the Museum of the New Deal. Dennis Kucinich, a seriously successful Democratic politician in Congress who crosses the aisles to unite members of both parties in ad hoc coalitions against such enemies as the World Bank and NAFTA, is considered in a kindly manner: nice guy, even an interesting guy, but a weirdo New Age consumer of veggies. Ralph Nader, who has methodically and sometimes successfully attacked the corporate rich, is portrayed as an enemy, a spoiler.

Come on, Massachusetts delegation: Do we really need a video of a historian to clue us in that the Boston of today is “different from the one with Paul Revere”?

Just watched strong speeches by Lois Murphy and Allyson Schwartz, future congresswomen, God willing, from the great state of Pennsylvania. Murphy, who’s running in my home district, gave a solid speech which hit her marks well and used individual stories to good effecct. Schwartz set a good model for Democratic politicians in reclaiming the debate over values and standing up for our values and articulating why they beat Republican values every time.

Andy Stern and John Sweeney offer clashing tones on the Democrats, their convention, and their candidate:

“It is a hollow party,” Stern said, adding that “if John Kerry becomes president, it hurts” chances of reforming the Democrats and organized labor…Later in the day, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney told The Post that Stern’s attitude “is not justified.” Sweeney, also a product of the SEIU, the largest and fastest growing union within the AFL-CIO, said the process of change is already under way within labor, adding that he is impressed with “the unity and solidarity” of Democratic support for Kerry. “I’m optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party,” he said.

…Stern complained that motivating blue-collar families who have not voted in the past is being impeded because Kerry and the Democrats have declined to address what he calls “the Wal-Mart economy,” a system in which he says employers deliberately keep wages so low and hours so short that workers are forced to turn to state Medicaid programs for their families’ health care. He also criticized what he called the vagueness of the Democratic platform on trade issues. Sweeney said he thought both complaints were off-base. He said Kerry had offered a very specific health plan with real benefits for working families. And he said he was confident that, despite his history as a supporter of liberal trade agreements, Kerry was sincere in promising to include “core labor standards” in future negotiations.

Al Gore:

…let’s make sure that this time every vote is counted. Let’s make sure that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, and that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court. The second lesson from 2000 is this: What happens in a presidential election matters. A lot. The outcome profoundly affects the lives of all 293 million Americans, and people in the rest of the world, too. The choice of who is president affects your life and your family’s future.

Jimmy Carter:

Today our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America -based on — based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world. Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered, and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world. Without truth, without trust, America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between a president and the people. When that trust is violated, the bonds that hold our republic together begin to weaken.

First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us; namely, the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs. Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate ublic panic. Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country. Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others. And finally, in the world at large we cannot lead if our leaders mislead. You can’t be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the next depending on the latest political polls.

Bill Clinton:

We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilities and shared benefits. We want a world with more global cooperation, where we act alone only when we absolutely have to. We think the role of government should be to give people the tools and to create the conditions to make the most of their own lives, and we think everybody should have that chance. On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that America should be run by the right people, their people, in a world in which America acts unilaterally when we can, and cooperates when we have to. They believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important matters like health care and retirement security…They need a divided America, but we don’t.

Harold Meyerson argues that this Democratic convention offers the latest demonstrations that Kerry’s team takes labor more seriously than Clinton’s ever did:

Longtime union officials and staffers were exuding an almost gleeful incredulity this weekend on the eve of the convention…whatever the laborites’ sentiments about November, they are stunned and pleased to find that the Kerry campaign is actually encouraging their input and involvement in the convention and the campaign. “I’ve been working with the Democratic Party for 30 years,” says one of labor’s most senior operatives, “and for the first time in my memory, we’re being treated like partners.” For decades, despite the ostensibly pro-labor tilt of the Democratic Party, unions have had to fight just to get pro-worker language onto the platform on such crucial issues as trade. Not this year. Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s chief policy and politics staffer on all things trade related, noted that Kerry’s platform watchdogs were happy to see that the platform includes the need for establishing workers’ rights and labor and environmental standards in trade accords…Labor has also received enthusiastic backing on the platform and from the Kerry-Edwards ticket for its foremost institutional imperative, the Employee Free Choice Act

…near-consensual acceptance within the Democratic Party of the imperative of changing labor law should not have been any great achievement. From any number of perspectives — ensuring workers their fundamental rights, creating a force to boost wage income (our current raiseless recovery is in good part a consequence of our union-free private sector), boosting Democrats’ electoral prospects (union members invariably vote about 10 percent more Democratic than the population as a whole) — persuading the Democrats to support labor-law reform should have been a no-brainer. But it was never a priority of the Clinton administration, and it required a sustained program of elected-official consciousness-raising — bringing workers illegally fired while on organizing drives, for instance, to the congressional Democrats’ retreats — on the part of John Sweeney’s AFL-CIO to make this a key issue for the party, Kerry, and John Edwards. The result? Edwards appeared at Sunday’s caucus via teleconference, telling attendees, “We need a president who believes in the right to organize.”

A Courant profile of one member of a Connecticut Board of Selectmen highlights how different policymaking might be were it responsive to those most affected by policy:

In 2003, as a candidate of the union-backed Working Families Party, Noble
was elected to the Windham Board of Selectmen, one of two Working Families
candidates in the state to win positions on an elected board. But she has retained her outsider’s point of view. In June, when Windham selectmen considered backing a plan to renovate the notorious former Hotel Hooker into supportive housing for the working poor and formerly homeless, Noble offered a different viewpoint.

Residents opposing the project kept referring to the potential tenants as
“those people,” as in, “there are too many of those people in town already.” As a former one of “those people,” Noble, 40, wanted to know the view from inside similar projects. “I want to hear from the tenants,” she said. “Has their life improved? Do they like their units?” Everyone else, it seemed, was more interested in the project’s effect on the town, rather than on those who stood to benefit. “I get angry and frustrated,” Noble said later. “No one has talked about the
people except to call them low-lifes and derelicts. It makes me sick. Everybody falls on hard times.” Noble, more than most, understands.

The Times previews Barack Obama’s keynote address to the Democratic Convention tomorrow night:

It came as a surprise that I’d be selected for such a privileged position,” Mr. Obama said on a recent afternoon, as he sat in his Springfield office and reflected on what he may tell a national audience in Boston on Tuesday night. “As my wife reminds me, I better not screw it up.” Even before he breathes a word to the widest audience of his career, just the prospect of the speech has propelled Mr. Obama into the spotlight. He spent Sunday morning answering questions on network news programs along with better-known figures, the leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and the governors of Michigan and New Mexico. Mr. Obama, a state senator who represents Chicago’s South Side, said he intended to describe what he has heard as he has wandered in the Midwest: the economic squeeze people face with jobs that pay less than before and the anxieties they feel about Iraq, but also his sense of Americans’ resilience and strength. “Ultimately,” he said, “it is a hopeful story I want to tell.”

One point listeners are unlikely to hear is his opposition in 2002 to Congress’s approval of the war in Iraq. Senators John Kerry and John Edwards voted to authorize it. Last week, Mr. Obama was waiting for editing of his draft from Mr. Kerry’s campaign, but said he hopes to deliver mostly his own words, written, thankfully, he said, before he realized what a big deal the keynote was, before he had a chance to develop writer’s block. Stephanie Cutter, communications director for the Kerry campaign, explained why the campaign chose Mr. Obama, a former community organizer and Harvard-educated civil rights lawyer: “We believe he represents the future of the party.” Mr. Kerry’s supporters say they hope the choice will also sway those who have accused Mr. Kerry of failing to include enough minorities in top campaign roles and, more broadly, of failing to excite black voters. “This represents the Democrats reaching out,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said. “It’s important because the destiny of the Democratic Party is tied up, in some sense, in the growth of the minority base.”

Just remember: Little Wild Bouquet was into Barack Obama before he was a star.