Stories

Johnson County Democrats at a speech watching party greeted Barack Obama’s acceptance speech with cheers, and a sense of relief.

“All this week it was, ‘can he do it again? Can he do it again?’ He did it again,” said county attorney Janet Lyness.

Early on Obama declared “enough,” and that word resonated throughout his 48-minute speech. So did the phrase “Now is the time.” Those simple sentiments bookended a comprehensive indictment of the presumptive Republican nominee as honorable but clueless and a challenge to his own party.

DENVER — The Center for Independent Media’s network is covering the Democratic convention here this week.
On our Michigan site, editor Todd Spencer covered a discussion between T. Boone Pickens and leading environmentalists.
On the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman assessed the Democrats’ efforts to engage on national security.
And the Colorado Independent, playing with a significant home field [...]

From Denver, The Sioux City Journal reports on supporters of Hillary Clinton moving over to the Barack Obama camp:
“I’m getting on board with Barack Obama. I think he’ll be an excellent president,” said Kathleen Krehbiel, of Solon., who came here as a Clinton delegate. She said she no longer wanted to carry out the “pretense” [...]

Twenty percent of television viewers 55 and over tuned in to the Democratic National Convention coverage Tuesday night as the demographic has been the dominant viewership so far, the Nielsen Company reports in its ratings.
Nielsen also reported the Hillary Clinton pulled a bigger TV audience than Michelle Obama and that a higher percentage of African-Americans [...]

The Iowa video blogger covering the Democratic National Convention for YouTube says Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday prime-time speech served as a perfect follow-up to the one delivered by Michelle Obama the night before.

It’s been eight months since Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama heard the personal story of Cedar Rapids resident Katherine Marcano, but her story is not one that’s easily forgotten and perhaps that’s why she was chosen to tell it to those in attendance at the Democratic National Convention.

Like most speeches delivered by people not named Obama, Biden, or Clinton, Republican Jim Leach’s lecture to the Democratic National Convention was largely ignored by delegates. A media watchdog group is complaining that Leach’s speech backing Barack Obama was ignored by the press corps as well, despite its prime time slot.

DENVER — In a speech that lasted only a few minutes to an audience that included fewer than half of the states’ delegations, Culver highlighted Iowa’s role in the nomination of Sen. Barack Obama, but he shied away from making a direct appeal to maintain Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in future election cycles.

DENVER — True to form, former congressman Jim Leach, R-Iowa, delivered a speech to the Democratic party’s 2008 convention that was part endorsement, part treatise on American government.