As the Democratic National Convention rises to a crescendo that culminates at Mile High Stadium (aka Invesco Field) tomorrow night, the speeches today were perhaps less soaring and eloquent but at the same time more hard-hitting and personal than those that went before.

Former President Bill Clinton, who will only be kept out of the history books' list of the top five American presidents of all time by his terrible personal behavior, gave as solid an endorsement of Barack Obama as anyone could have asked. He did not try to out-perform Hillary from last night (and that was a wise decision on his part) but he was powerful, he was the patriarch of his party, and he was convincing in his personal admiration for Obama.

Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden -- who, as Chris Matthews of MSNBC properly said, is the first regular guy from the neighborhood to run for national office in many decades -- was engaging, human, and warm when he needed to be and piercingly and convincingly critical of the Republicans and John McCain when he wanted to be.

Clinton's characterization of McCain as a man who is to be respected as a war hero and valued for his service to his country but who has embraced an "extremist philosophy" was particularly on-target. It's about time the Democrats called that particular spade a spade. The extremists are and have been in charge of the GOP.

Biden's new refrain -- "America doesn't need a good soldier, America needs a wise leader" -- will, I predict, become a powerful slogan of this campaign.

All in all, the build-up continued tonight but perhaps not as powerfully as might have been with different players. Biden, in particular, is not eloquent, but he is a fine speaker-from-the-heart and is probably easier for many American to identify with as a speaker than either of the Clintons or the Obamas.

This is going to be a heckuva election.

Sen. Hillary Clinton gave the lie to all the irresponsible and unfounded media speculation about her reservations about endorsing Barack Obama tonight in a masterful speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. In a talk that was soaring, inspirational, uplifting and unselfish to the maximum degree, she not only endorsed Obama, she told her supporters that if they don't work and vote for the Democratic ticket, then she will be ashamed of them for acting out of pure selfishness. "Were you in this only for me?" she asked, "or were you in this for the future of this nation?"

Not only did she challenge and instruct her supporters, she took the best shots at John McSame that we've heard from the main speakers at this gathering. She flat-out unified every Democrat who is not simply outside the pale of reason and suasion. And she did it with brilliant rhetoric, superb pacing, and a gut sense of what people want to hear.

Michelle Obama last night. Hillary Clinton tonight. The GOP doesn't have a single woman leader fit to carry the briefcase of either of those women.

So again I'm reduced to a single word of assessment.

Wow.

My favorite American politician, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, had a non-prime-time six-minute slot at the Democratic Convention today. Boy, did he make the most of it. It was the most rousing speech I've heard in a great many years.

Wow.

It's been a long, long time since I heard a speech that was as well-organized, articulate, and, as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann intoned, "pitch perfect" as that just delivered in Denver by Michelle Obama. At the risk of being a flat-out sycophant, I just couldn't find enough good words to describe it any more than I could find a single thing to criticize in it.

Traditionally, opening night of these political conventions is kind of flat, a gradual build-up to the main event. I'm not sure it can get any better. Everyone who speaks for the rest of this gathering -- including most especially Barack -- has a high bar to climb indeed.

Wow.

We would be so fortunate as a nation to have this woman as our First Lady and her husband as our President. They are America as it can and should be.

(Here's a link to a video of her talk.)

One of the best and most insightful pieces of analysis of how Barack Obama can emerge from Denver on Thursday night with the lead he ought to have by now has just been published over at The Huffington Post. Penned by Drew Westen, this long and well-organized think piece lists five things Obama has to do in Denver to secure his rightful place as the clear leader in the race for the White House now entering its real stage (these are all direct quotations from Westen's piece):

1. He needs to tell Americans his story in a way that allows them to identify with him, and to make clear that he understands their stories, their pain, and their aspirations for their families.
2. He needs to offer an indictment of the Republican Party and the Bush presidency, and to make clear that the economic insecurity of middle class families, the spiraling cost of gas and health care, and the indifference to future generations that has produced our current energy crisis is not an accident but is a direct result of a radical ideology that has proven dangerous, reckless, and now discredited.
3. He has to build a compelling case--a sustained and compelling emotional argument--for why John McCain should not be President.
4. [He needs to] address head-on the stories told by the other side that have eroded positive feelings toward him among a large swath of the electorate and that have kept so many people undecided in a race that should be all but over. In particular, he needs to address the stories that he is just an empty celebrity, that he is an elitist, and that he is not really American, patriotic, or "one of us."
5. [He must make] this election a referendum on the Bush-McCain years and whether we can afford any more of them.

The details are delicious and the thinking clear and focused.

CNET.com's analysis of Joe Biden's record in the Senate bodes ill for consumers battling draconian and Dickensian policies on the part of the entertainment industry. The man who is likely to be the next Vice-President of the United States has a consistent track record of supporting the FBI and industry interests over those of consumers. He recently sponsored an attempt to authorize $1 Billion to study and monitor peer-to-peer networks.

Yikes.

The fact that John McCain is wealthy isn't and shouldn't be a disqualifier from holding the office of the President. But, as this well-thought-out piece by Jared Bernstein on the Huffington Post points out, when you lay his enormous wealth alongside his policy positions, there's plenty of reason to worry.

(BTW and FWIW, I really don't enjoy the Left's continuing to take McCain to task for answering the question, "How much do you have to make to be rich," with a seemingly flip "$5 million". I saw that interview. He first said it was an impossible question -- which Bernstein agrees with, by the way -- and then tossed off the $5 million figure and immediately said he was joking and that he expected to be taken to task for it. Lighten up. The guy makes enough legitimate gaffes without picking on one that he didn't intend as serious.)

Anyway, the key pull quote in Bernstein's piece for me is:

I don't care how much money our president has (though the seven homes thing really does seem beyond the pale given today's housing climate). But I deeply want him or her to understand the economic plight of those with less, and the evidence regarding the policies allegedly designed to help. When their wealth operates like empathy-killing blinders, then that wealth is a problem...a big one.

McCain is simply incapable of identifying with the common man. As such, he ought not be allowed to become President of the nation, which has far more common men and women than those in the stratospheric reaches of mega-wealth.

After listening to Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's newly announced running mate, and reading and hearing more about him, my enthusiasm factor for him has gone up a good bit. While I'm a long way from declaring him a "home run" or conceding he may in fact be an inspired choice, I'm more impressed with him than I was this morning.

His colloquial communication style has an Everyman appeal about it that I'd forgotten until I heard his speech today. That clearly has appeal to the masses who voted for W because he seemed more like them. One of the analysts I heard today said that the Democratic tickets in 2000 and 2004 had a "likability shortfall" which this ticket doesn't appear to have, particularly with Biden aboard. I mean, come on: a guy who commutes to D.C. on Amtrak most days and has never lived inside the Beltway? Pretty freaking radical. I wonder how many of his colleagues do that.

Clearly his chops in national security and foreign policy are sterling.

And I think the fact that he criticized Obama during the campaign and Obama picked him anyway shows a certain amount of confidence and fortitude on Obama's part. In addition, it strengthens the perception Obama offered that he didn't want to surround himself with Yes Men. As a couple of pundits have said, "Joe's nobody's No. 2."

This could turn out to be a more helpful choice than I first thought.

Unless the news sweeping the networks of all kinds now is a trial balloon or a monumentally clever diversion, it appears that Delaware Sen. Joe Biden is Barack Obama's choice as his running mate in the upcoming presidential election.

Biden's been getting the lion's share of the speculative attention. He's got great foreign policy chops and he's an outspoken guy so he'll do a good job of hounding Bush III (aka John McCain). Not that that's going to be a particularly hard job against a GOP ticket with a combined net worth upwards of $300 million and an unknown number of houses and mansions. Even some of the "Reagan Democrats" won't be able to choke that one down.

I think the choice is uninspired. I'm a little disappointed but not overly so. It's not that I don't think Biden won't be a good VP; he will. It's just that he's a symbol of politics as usual and Obama has campaigned hard against that entrenchment. I think selling a change-based campaign just got a little tougher.

On the other hand, I think Obama's right in one respect: Biden is the kind of guy who's not going to be a lap dog as VP. He'll challenge Obama's thinking and his naivete on the Beltway scene where Biden's been a fixture for decades.

FactCheck.org today points out three statements in a currently running Obama ad that distort statements made by McCain about the economy.

All three quotations are either old or taken out of context or both.

It's too bad that politics always comes down to this. McCain promised to run a clean, issues-oriented campaign and hasn't done so from the beginning. So Obama's team feels compelled to get into the mud with him because time after time American voters prove that they believe mud-slinging ads and are influenced by them.

As I often say, we pretty much get the kind of leadership we as a people deserve. More's the pity.