Obama poised to set agenda for USA
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 2:08 am Under World News Alerts 10 views
Final preparations were being made in Denver, Colorado, on Sunday (August 24) for the Democratic National Convention which begins on Monday and runs from 25 - 29 August. The convention provides the Democratic Party with a platform to present their presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama to voters as someone they see as the next US President.
After news that Delaware Senator, Joe Biden, had been chosen as Obama’s running mate, the seating arrangements for the Delaware delegation were upgraded on the convention floor. Delaware delegates will now be seated closer to the podium and close to the Illinois delegation, Obama’s home state. Workers from Delaware on Sunday moved their placards into place.
Barack Obama’s wife Michelle arrived in Denver for the gathering on Sunday, hoping to help her husband gain momentum in the presidential race. She and the couple’s daughters landed at a small general-aviation terminal at Denver International Airport. They were met by the Democratic Governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter and his wife, Jeannie.
They hugged and chatted briefly after the plane landed. Obama, hoping to become America’s first black president, campaigned through swing-state Wisconsin, then flew home to Chicago to work on the acceptance speech which he will deliver before 75,000 partisans on the convention’s closing night.
Speaking about Biden, he said he hoped convention viewers would conclude he was “sort of like us.” “He comes from a middle-class background, went to school on scholarships. He and his wife had to figure out child care and how to start a college fund for their kids. You’ll find out he’s pretty much like us,” he said. His former rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, offered a ringing endorsement as she addressed a meeting in California.
“It is time,” she said, “for us to have a president again who believes that every person is entitled to be given the chance to fulfil his or her dreams and that is what Senator Obama will do as our president…. so I am asking you to work as hard for Senator Obama as you worked for me.”
As the Democrats prepared to launch their four-day celebration, about 1,000 demonstrators set out to steal the show, shutting down streets en route to Denver’s Pepsi Convention Centre. The Sunday march was the first of at least five protests planned in the coming days by the group Recreate 68. The group is non-violent but its name brings echoes of the protests that became riots during the Democratic National Convention 40 years ago in Chicago.
Anti-war activist Ron Kovic, a paralysed Vietnam veteran whose story was chronicled in the book and movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” led the march in his wheelchair and promised Sunday’s protest was only the beginning. “They will not take our liberties away from us,” he said. “We will not be silenced”. Police patrolled on bicycles and on foot, but the march and protests were generally peaceful.
It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any march-related arrests, however there were arrests related to convention events for disturbing the peace, interference with police and trespassing. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in the Iraq war and staged a month-long protest at the gates to the Texas ranch of President George W. Bush in 2005, said Obama was not the peace candidate he tried to portray himself to be.
“I think that a true anti-war peace candidate would be calling for bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, no war in Iran. Obama has said that he would take no option off the table for dealing with Iran…. He’s called for increasing the military industrial complex, not decreasing it, so he is not a peace candidate,” Sheehan said.
(With inputs from agencies)
( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)
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