Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention | featured news

Sounding at times like a college lecturer and others like a revival speaker, former President Clinton delivered a thumping endorsement Wednesday night of incumbent Barack Obama, saying his policies were slowly healing the country and would lead to dramatic improvement in a second term.

President Obama, seeking to quell a storm of criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel groups, directed the Democratic Party on Wednesday to amend its platform to restore language declaring Jerusalem the Israeli capital.

Opening night of the Democratic National Convention, featuring remarks by Michelle Obama, was watched by more than 26 million people... Last week, Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie kicked off the Republican National Convention and attracted 22.3 million viewers to their first-night speeches.

President Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention has been moved indoors, aides said, because of concerns over threatening storms in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday.

If Barack Obama is re-elected on November 6, he will owe more to his first lady than any president ever to win a second term. On Tuesday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, Michelle Obama gave one of the finest speeches ever delivered at a national political convention. More important, it could have more impact on the immediate future of the country than her husband's celebrated 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Can President Obama and his Democrats successfully make their case for another four years? Here are five things to watch for at this week's DNC.

The famously fractious party that tore itself apart in the 1960s and 1970s over civil rights and the Vietnam War, that lost a series of blowout presidential elections in the 1980s and painfully reinvented itself in the 1990s, faces little of the infighting or self-doubt that for decades seemed as much a part of being a Democrat as worshiping FDR or watching the South, a former party bastion, inexorably slip away.

Just minutes after the end of the Republican convention, President Obama appealed to his supporters for campaign cash. "Tonight was their night," Obama wrote in an e-mail. "But our focus must be on tomorrow." And presumably next week, when Obama and the Democrats hold their own convention in Charlotte.

Mitt Romney has moved into a narrow lead over U.S. President Barack Obama in a small bounce for him from the Republican National Convention, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Thursday... So-called convention "bounces" are typically short-lived. With Obama to accept his party's nomination for a second term next week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, the incumbent could quickly rebound.

The Democratic National Convention is reportedly having trouble with its fundraising about two months before the party faithful gather in Charlotte to renominate President Obama. The Washington Post reports the host committee has raised about $20 million and is about $16 million shy of its goal. The story cites unnamed sources, describing them as "several people familiar with the internal discussions."