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Life comes at you fast - as an advertisement for something or other (insurance I think?) tells Americans every day. Or to put it more elegantly - as did a British prime minister when asked about the greatest threats a statesman could face - This was noted during the summer over Georgia (not great for Obama) and will be noted hugely this week in St Paul (not good for McCain).

Plainly the backdrop of images of destruction reminding Americans of Katrina will be horrible for the Republicans. So will the focus of the 24-hour news shows on the event in New Orleans (or wherever) rather than in St Paul. must all be in jeopardy. Which is sad for a city

But a convention without George Bush and Dick Cheney is an improved event, politically speaking. And if John McCain can sound the right note when he speaks it need not be a disaster.

As for Sarah Palin! Her creationist views are bound to become an issue (can you really have a president who denies basic truths about the world?). But far more politically explosive will be her views on abortion, apparently against it in ALL circumstances.

I must say I have some sympathy for support of the philosophical underpinnings of that view, but it will be uncomfortable not only for supporters of abortion rights but also for many opponents who cannot bring themselves to be quite so clear-cut in their opposition. My prediction: she will be a brilliant candidate or blow up and take the whole party down with her. Not sure which.

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He brought it off. I thought at one stage that the Doric columns (if that is what they were) might fall on him (metaphorically) but they did not. He is too clever for that. His supporters and those sympathetic to him are breathing a sigh of relief and can be optimistic that the speech might really assist his cause, as the New York Times .

Old versus new. That was an as well and, if they handle it carefully (no bashing grandpa), it could be a rich seam.

As for - could they perhaps just miss the Bush-Cheney bit and then carry on? What a shame that would be for John McCain.

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Hi everyone - I'm going to be blogging throughout Barack Obama's convention speech tonight, so please keep refreshing the site for new updates.

20:12: He strides out very purposefully, dressed very formally - presidentially, wearing a white shirt and a restrained red tie. The look is sober and that's important.

20:20: He's chosen to lead off on economic themes (which is no surprise) The way he phrases it is so important - he needs to hit home to individuals in mainstream America. I'm not sure he has Biden's touch.

20:29 By the way - it's a stunning evening here in Denver. I mention this because some fundamentalist Christians of a right-wing persuasion prayed for rain - proof that God is a Democrat?

20:35: Quite a brave line there on oil drilling. John McCain is proposing to open up America's coast for drilling, which has proved popular. Obama is sticking to his line that it's not a solution.

20.38: A good line on health. About how he watched his mother arguing on the phone with insurance companies as she lay in bed dying of cancer - an experience familiar to many Americans.

20:41: A very interesting choice of word there - on who would make the better Commander-in-Chief, he asked who had the better temperament. What could he mean?

20:43: Great Bin Laden line - "John McCain says he'd follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives."

20:47: A reprise of his very successful 2004 convention speech - there are no Red States or Blue States - only the United States. (Plus - the crowd are chanting USA-USA -usually only heard at Republican conventions).

20:50: Another good line: Don't tell me we can't uphold the second amendment AND keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals".

Conclusion: This needed to be a serious speech and it was. I'm still not sure about the Doric columns, but he's managed to be convincing despite the overbearing backdrop. One of the features of the speech was the frequent reference to the future. He's not saying McCain's too old for the job - at least not in so many words. But the Obama camp know that Americans are worried about McCain's age and ever so subtly they are making an allusion to it.

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I'm going to be commenting on Joe Biden's convention speech live, so keep refreshing your page!

20.19 (Mountain time): As we watch the biographical video ahead of the big speech, it's interesting that the talk of kids and grandkids segues into his foreign policy experience faster than you can say gravitas...

20.30: Pitch perfect opening - the praise for his son is especially moving when you think of their early life.

20.40: He's managed now - with well-chosen words about people struggling with the economy - to do what few other speakers have been able to do: speak directly to Americans in trouble. That's what the Democrats have to do and have not been doing so far.

20.46: "That's not change, that's more of the same" - a slogan about John McCain he's now repeated about 10 times. This is the message the Democrats need to get out to the rest of the country.

20.48: He's defining what "change" means - affordable healthcare, affordable education, more cops on the street. Never mind "change you can believe in", this is change people can grasp.

20.51: Daring line there on foreign policy - "John McCain was wrong and Barack Obama was right" on troops to Afghanistan and other recent foreign policy controversies.

20.54: That final line - "God bless America and God bless our troops". He used it at the end of his first speech as Obama's running-mate. For Barack Obama to have a running-mate who can say that - and sound convincing - is a tremendous asset to the ticket.

Conclusion: Joe Biden proved in his speech (it's well worth reading by the way) that this ticket will have bite as well as cool - and it may just be the bite that wins it.

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It was stunning - a moment of brilliantly produced political theatre and a moment to cherish forever. Television conveys something but to be there, to see a death and a birth; that was something else.

What made it was the chaos, the crowd, the press of bodies, the tears, the consequence of it all. It reminded me of the British parliament at its best, rowdy and physical yet serious of purpose and aware of its potency: consequence.

People died years ago for America's right to be able to have these moments and their descendents have done them proud, though in a way most of the nation's founders would have found impossible to imagine.

The roll call went state by state (Hawaii happy, talk of sunshine, Michigan miserable, talk of lost jobs in the Bush years) and all was proceeding with that ceremonial and genteel decorum that America is so good at ("Guam, can you repeat your numbers please? Oh thank you Guam!") - and then came New York.

What made it was the physicality of the moment - she swept in from a tunnel, on to the crushed, cramped floor, arm-in-arm with the governor of the state and its other senator. When she took the microphone, it was not at a distant podium with music and autocue and clocks to time the start and the finish.

There on the floor Hillary Clinton uttered the words that she needed to utter, in slightly courtly language (reminders of the Brits again) but clearly and with awareness of their consequence.

Then Nancy Pelosi called for the seconder to the motion that Obama be selected, and the roar was surely felt down the years. She did not pause for those opposed - they were crushed too. That, too, is politics. A reminder that all this is the exercise of power, of one group of human beings forcing others to accept their dominance.

As people cried and hugged each other and the music blared, I thought of the little black children stolen from their parents, the daily cruelty and humiliation suffered by black people in this country for so long in what one historian calls "America's Original Sin" and, to a lesser extent, the daily miseries they still endure. From slavery to the nomination of a black man as the leader of a major party. Sometimes it really does appear that our political evolution matches our physical progress...

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The dust has settled and the Hillary speech has been , though contains as well an interesting take on one of the layers of this multi-layer Shakespeare-on-steroids drama - the relationship between Bill (pouting "I love you" in the audience) and her.

As for the political effect of the speech, - and might have brought some of her fans back on to the reservation.

Surely it did - though it also reminded everyone of her stature which - 2012 anyone? - was no bad thing for her.

I remember saying in the early primaries that she was failing because she had no ready trade mark, no brand. How far she has come in those months from no-brand to tough-brand.

She is the quintessential steely politician now - nothing that has happened to her since New Hampshire (including losing!) has done her anything but good.

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I thought was effective but not a knock-out; it doesn't settle the matters of perceived lack of patriotism and oddness and effeteness (if that is a word) - it merely begins the fight back against them.

and some saw it for what it (probably) was, .

As I was leaving the convention centre I saw the motorcade taking Michelle and the children home, all of them sitting in a row in a big Suburban surrounded by gun-toting secret service men. It is a privileged life they are leading, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy...

Meanwhile - deserves to be reported as fact...

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They call Denver the Mile High City. "A mile high, an inch deep" - the slogan on the wall of the Republican war room here in Denver - is the claim to beat this week; not with counter slogans but with actions and words that make the claim itself look ridiculous and desperate.

Interesting take here on , though in stark political terms, does it not put the Mountain West (Montana's Democratic governor told me months ago: "Gun control is hitting what you shoot at!") out of reach?

Meanwhile, a spot-on piece in the Washington Post, with this crucial paragraph:

"The decision to pick Biden rather than someone who reinforced the change message at the heart of Obama's candidacy no doubt disillusioned some of Obama's grassroots supporters, but it said something about the Illinois senator that while obvious is not often remarked upon. His will to win is overpowering. The choice of Biden was a hard-headed, cold-blooded calculation that he may need a Biden to win and will certainly benefit from a Biden in governing, if he become president. It was the action of a politician, not a crusader."

The whole piece .

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I see is picking up on our discussion of America's strength through diversity and renewal. He makes an interesting point about the occasional merits of the command approach. It's about the infrastructure (London 2012 is well aware of this) and the ability of advanced economies to renew and modernise it while maintaining fundamental freedoms - such as the freedom not to be over-taxed.

America does have an aversion to tax and a creaking infrastructure (anyone who comes here from Western Europe or the advanced bits of Asia notices that stuff doesn't work very well) which is one of the things Obama might fix, particularly if infrastructure investment becomes a way of keeping employment up in a recession.

As the sinks in, , and a grumpy elderly person complains to me that a 3am text message is hardly the sure-footed campaign management we witter on about. Au contraire: for one thing Obamaniacs are up all night - famously - and anyway in Hollywood it was only midnight (and in Berlin where many of his keenest fans live it was 8 or 9 in the morning).

I still think the Biden risk is that he will outshine the younger fellow - his speech later this week here in Denver (just arrived, hot and long queues) could be a real corker of focused genial knife twisting. Obama cannot do that. He may look even more like a rock star after the week - a rock star who has employed a politician to do his work for him.

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Would he have made this choice a year ago? Six months? Even a few weeks? Joe Biden is Vladimir Putin's contribution to American politics - he is a necessary antidote to the Obama lack of worldly wisdom, which before Georgia was a bit academic to most Americans or amorphous and unfocused as an issue (perhaps they could take a punt, roll the dice as Bill C helpfully put it) but post-Georgia is back at the top of the pile of concerns.

McCain did well on Russia - he avoided frightening threats but managed to seem tough and aware. He took the 3AM call. Obama needs a pal who can do the same. But something of the Obama appeal has been diminished by the choice - it is going to be very difficult to rail against Washington insiders with one at his right hand. There is also - if Biden performs well - the Dukakis Lloyd Bensen issue, which is, to put it delicately, Why is it this way round: why isn't the able, experienced, reassuring guy the one at the top of the ticket?

Here are some early thoughts from the wise, in and

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while we wait...

Is there something faintly annoying and superior (Unamerican?!) about the tightness of the Obama ship?

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In case anyone is interested .

I will not stray again Into the Evangelical Bear Pit except to note that some of the Biblical scholarship on offer was above my pay grade...

As ever, on the subject of health I am taken to task by Americans who see their system as flawed to the point of immorality - that is a wholly defensible view but if you turn up bleeding at a major hospital in the US they will not turn you away and my sole point was that for large number of Britland folks (thanks to whoever it was who suggested that moniker) that is a surprise, and that, my friends, is ignorance.

In response to A Woman Scorned, David_Cunard writes "no Hillary, no victory". We will hold him to this...

Finally, TimothyR444 complains of the narcissism of the Big Text Message. And MikeIL accuses me of giddiness when really my giddiness is faux giddiness. I am not in the least bit giddy.

Hang on I think that's a text coming in...

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It appears that CBS is firming up what many suspected - that .

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By the way, the vice-presidential candidates will be for Obama and Tom Ridge for McCain, notwithstanding to stop him.

UPDATE: And some just in...

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Women! Better be careful here, but this piece seems to me to in US politics between - not to put too fine a point on it - entitled, wealthy, self-regarding Manhattan-based women on the one hand and the Democratic party on the other.

The author suggests that some Hillary supporters are so cross about being called rude names that they will actively support Obama's opponent. Unlike many women, and many Democrats, they care not about the fact that McCain believes human life begins with conception. Nor that he has such a temper that he might nuke South Ossetia. Or that his health plan (Democrats would argue) does less for the poorest Americans than Obama's. All they care about is that some idiot called them bitches and they feel sore. Can they be serious?

And, more importantly, if Obama loses, will the party regret that it allowed them to be disrespected so cruelly, or will it turn on them and on the whole idea of identity politics and go back to grey white men who really do represent everyone - or try to?

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As the dust settles on the Obama/McCain "what would Jesus do" showdown (and various aftershocks, allegations of cheating etc), there is a of the whole shebang in the Chicago Tribune.

I must say, although I thought the whole thing weird in conception (why should the candidates be dragged into the evangelical bear pit at the very time that evangelical Christians are a fading force in US politics?), I did think it was a far better than that ghastly saccharine effort CNN put on when the candidates simply wittered on - in a manner by many and ultimately rather embarrassing to all concerned.

There's a fascinating and important new survey of interest to all of us who have views on anti-Americanism. It's on a British-based website with worldwide importance and, it is to be hoped, worldwide reach. The finding that 31% of Brits think Americans without health insurance are turned away from emergency treatment (near the bottom of the findings) is hugely important because we often report (and rightly so) on the failings of the US system and the sense among many Americans that it has to change; but when I tell ´óÏó´«Ã½ audiences that large numbers of people are uninsured (which is true), what many Brits think is that those people will get NO treatment (which is, of course, not true).

I do think (as we discussed a few postings ago) that the US is on balance (and for better or worse) a more brutal place than western Europe - but the difference is far less marked than many Europeans would believe.

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A small plucky nation is snuffed out by a bullying neighbour. A neighbour who lost the fight but still has the ability to project power.

This is the deal in Obamaland with the announcement and her concerns - her husband, his friends, their pets, their poems, their finances etc etc etc.

What has happened to his self-confidence?

This line from the joint press release surely cannot be true:

"'I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion,' said Senator Barack Obama."

What position was he in when he uttered those words? Was he politically water-boarded? We need to know...

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We murdered him! So says that man who shouts a lot on MSNBC about which I include out of deference to those who found by Olympic thoughts a tad unrealistic (they are not, but sure, there are exceptions to the rule, and terrible ones at that: no point in denying it).

On the other hand just read some of these comments from educated Chinese people in response to my colleague James Reynolds' perfectly reasonable observations on aspects of Chinese sport (they must be educated because they are responding in English) and you get a picture of the isolation and ignorance and monochrome thinking that these semi-closed societies engender. Modern economies require flexibility and free-thinking; I do not see it in many of James' blog responses.

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I am loath to get involved with the Edwards business; he always looked like a cad to me and I could never understand his appeal to so many Americans. But the coverage of his wife seems to me to be as unquestioning as the media take on the man himself. The writer of the first letter is spot on - I have seen no columnists go there but the fact is that they were a team.

The reckless effort to get him elected in the full knowledge that the enterprise could have blown up at any time was hers as well. She could have stopped him. She chose not to. Ever since Lady Macbeth political wives have been misunderestimated. They pull the strings. No humane person feels anything other than sympathy for her but that does not alter the fact that she decided to go ahead and let him run. And that run had consequences as are now complaining, not without some justification.

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Interested in why the United States of America has been so successful a nation? The Olympics provide a clear answer for those who care to ponder the surnames of the members of the US team. It is not just who led them out in Beijing as from the run-up to the games pointed out, there are well over 20 team members who have been welcomed from abroad.

They come for a variety of reasons but the welcome they get is what interests me. It's the welcome of a flexible dynamic society that has no time for peevish nationalism, but has a warm inclusive welcome for those who have something to offer - in sport, historically of course in commerce as well and in academic life and every other area of human endeavour.

This is why America can afford to view the Chinese triumph at these Olympics (and it is certainly seen here as a triumph so far) with some degree of relaxation: it is the triumph of organisation and determination and vision and all sorts of other hugely important qualities in a nation aiming to better itself - and to better the world - but it lacks that magical openness that America has. Economically - culturally - the US will be challenged by China in the years ahead but in the marathon of human progress the US has the real stamina, the staying power, and that power comes from its attitude to the talents of the rest of the world: not bring it on, but bring them in.

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Reading your responses and talking to Tad Devine, the former chief consultant to Al Gore and adviser to the Kerry campaign, I think the most reasonable take is that Obama is probably doing just fine.

Remember the autumn of 2007 when he was dismissed by many as a man incapable of hitting the mark when it mattered? Well, what he knew was that it didn't actually matter then; it mattered a few months later in the snow in Iowa, and his people had been preparing for that moment all along.

It's the same deal now. Devine told me one of the biggest mistakes with Kerry was not to let the man take a break (I didn't mention the windsurfing debacle but I suppose that was a sign of a holidaymaker manque frustrated by being kept too long on the campaign trail) and some of the candidates biggest mistakes stemmed from that error.

A rested Obama and a whose greatest applause will come when he corrects himself and says he DOES think Obama is ready, will set the scene for victory.

But I do think the line "is the biggest celebrity in the World ready to help your family" (running now in around a dozen states) is a good one: you can see how this man could lose and it not be the fault of racists or warmongers or ignoramuses.

In the meantime, it is time to chill - rather in the manner of this who watched a non-event come and go down in Texas.

The real storm will come, but this summer argy-bargy is not it .......

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This is the question of the summer - it will hang over his holiday and the run-up to the Convention.

kind of fissiparous stuff does him no favours and might dampen his Convention bounce, but the deeper issue is whether or not talk of him not quite belonging begins to gain traction.

is the case for the defence and for Obama having a relaxed break - written by a fan but a fan with political acumen and judgement - suggesting that it will all come together courtesy of the fundamentals when the votes are cast.

I know I am a bit late with this but if anyone hasn't seen it the is good. Still, quite affectionate I thought, though full of warnings for the O team.

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I agree with allmymarbles and those who have pointed out that Obama hitting back is not, frankly, a very impressive sight. Could be right?

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Finally Obama is hitting back - and changing tack - on energy policy.

The US presidential election of 2008 hinges not on choices of vice president or association with Paris Hilton: it hinges on the cost of gas/petrol (which may or may not be sky high in November) and the credibility of the candidates' plans to reduce it short-term AND long-term.

Obama scored well during the Hillary campaign by successfully arguing that the gas tax holiday was ridiculous but he is suddenly way off-side on drilling (majorities of Americans believe there should be offshore drilling though they seem to over-estimate the benefits) and has altered his position accordingly.

I argued months ago when McCain did the same dance that the change of view is unimportant compared with the challenge of presenting something credible in November. That is the case with Obama too - he can flip flop all over the place with relative impunity provided that he looks serious on gas when voting time comes. This for Obama.

Meanwhile I see that from freewheeling interaction with the more dangerous elements of the press. I haven't travelled with him for some time but he was always willing to chat to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in the past - gosh, it will be disappointing if we are off that bus as well...

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