Special Report:
U.S. presidential election
2008
Backgrounder: Barack
Obama
Democratic presidential nominee U.S.
Senator Barack Obama (R) and Democratic vice presidential nominee U.S.
Senator Joe Biden (L) acknowledge the audience onstage after Obama
delivered his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention
in Denver, Colorado, Aug. 28, 2008.
(Chinese media Photo)
Photo
Gallery
by Wang Wei
DENVER, United States, Aug. 28 (Chinese media) -- On Aug.
28, 1963, U.S. civil right activist Martin Luther King Jr. brought Americans
into a dreamland with the resounding "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington D.C.
Exactly 45 years later, Barack Obama, an half
African-American, stood on the stage at the Democratic National Convention in
Denver, Colorado, on Thursday night as the first-ever black presidential nominee
of a major U.S. party.
As Dr. King foresaw before he was assassinated in
1968, the country now has accepted a person of color to be the presidential
nominee.
In the past 19 months after Obama started the journey
to the White House, the Illinois senator kept appealing to Americans, in rural
cottages or in urban stadiums, to back him and join him in making changes to
"the country and themselves."
His plan seems like an overhaul of the present U.S.
policies: withdrawal from Iraq, affordable healthcare, first-class education, a
fair tax code, energy independence and restoration of America's legacy in
foreign policies.
It did not take too much time to convince young
people inspired by his underdog stories and upbeat speech, African-Americans
sharing the same background and hope, and political independent voters
encouraged by his bipartisan messages, to stand behind him.
For those who suffered from the subprime market
crisis and economic slowdown, and became tired of paying tax and funding the
anti-terror wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's policies carried more charm to
them.
His popularity was more convincingly revealed by the
record-breaking amount of campaign donations and donors.
Now, Obama is supposed to become more fearless since
Joe Biden joined his fight for the White House, along with his record of more
than 30 years of seating in the Senate and current chairmanship in the Foreign
Relations Committee, which could be used to fill in the blanks about his foreign
affairs record.
Even Republican rival John McCain has predicted that
Obama's approval ratings would increase by about 10 percentage points during the
Democratic National Convention. How to turn more voters' support for Obama's
policies into endorsement on his ability and commitment to implementing them in
an effective way isexpected to become a priority for Obama and Biden in the next
two months leading to the big day in November.
There could not be a better time for Republicans to
flex their muscles in foreign and national security areas.
The U.S.-Iraq agreement on the future presence of
American troops in the country with a withdrawal timetable took shape as
violence in Iraq was on the decrease. The Georgia-Russia crisis over South
Ossetia supplants Iraq and Afghanistan wars to become newspaper headlines.
Americans' attention was diverted from domestic
affairs to the international ones in the key period of presidential campaigning,
leaving Obama no choice but to fight in the battleground.
Despite a national convention that was filled with
calls for party unity, it remains an unfinished mission to Obama to woo those
voters who used to support Hillary Rodham Clinton but now are considering
helping McCain.
Recent polls showed that about 27 percent of the some
18 million Clinton supporters said they would not vote for Obama in the November
election.
It is expected that Obama would reload his cannons
and target McCain on his domestic policies and link them with President George
W. Bush's foreign policies.
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