"Exit the warrior
Today's Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the energy you trade
He gets right on to the friction of the day,"
– Pye Dubois

The light is just coming over the Rockies, but you can bet that some members of the Democratic Party's politburo are likely already starting to sweat when they pad over to their laptops with a cup of coffee, open their web browsers, and read a line like this from the Politico website: "...The optics surrounding the stadium event have heightened worries that the Obama campaign is engaging in a high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment."

"A high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment" -- that's a nasty turn of phrase that makes political consultants start to reach for their revolvers.

Just when the convention finally began to hit its stride, the Democratic Party is pulling up its stakes and moving its operations over from a cozy basketball arena to a massive, post-modern open-air football stadium.

The plan to end the convention at Invesco Field probably seemed like a really good idea this summer at some staff meeting at Obama headquarters when someone took the challenge too literally to "think outside the box." Now, that same staffer is probably trying not to swallow his tongue while constantly hitting "refresh" on the Weather.com website for tonight's forecast. Luckily for him, the stormgods seem to favor Denver today.

But should Barack Obama faceplant on the 50-yard line tonight, it will instantly wipe out the highly-successful final day at the Pepsi Center, where Bill Clinton was like an old, star athlete having the game of his life, while his wife was part of the only moment of unscripted drama in the entire convention.

No one knew what to expect when yesterday's roll-call vote started taking place. Would Obama delegates start booing when Hillary Clinton picked up some votes? Would some of Hillary's hard-core supporters storm out if their votes weren't counted? Would every state even get to vote? The answer to that final question turned out to be no.

In an extremely complicated move, Hillary Clinton stopped the voting herself, calling for a suspension of the convention's rules to allow Obama to be nominated by acclamation. It could've been a hollow and symbolic move, but instead it felt more like what conventions must've been like 100 years ago, when delegates showed up not knowing who they'd actually support. But it was ironic that Clinton was taking part in the most smoke-filled-room moment in a very smoke-free arena.

With the nomination formally in hand (you could feel the collective sigh from the Obama campaign's skybox), the Clinton repentance tour soon continued with Bill, whose remarks against Obama during the primary campaign were far more withering than his wife's.

His speech could have been like a political hostage tape, with Clinton touching on his support for Obama for a few paragraphs and then just launching into a general attack of the Republicans. Instead, his address was a full-on ringing declaration of support for Obama, the best speech so far to lay out a strong rationale for the campaign. Bubba even compared Obama to the 1992 Clinton model, and heavily praised his pick of Joe Biden as his running mate with a baseball metaphor (If picking Biden was a homerun, would a Hillary selection have been a grand-slam?)

The Clinton drama really overshadowed a strong speech by Biden – and would've eclipsed everything, if not for Obama's "surprise" appearance at the end of his running mate's night.

But even Obama had Clintons on his mind, telling the pumped-up delegates that Hillary "rocked the house" Tuesday night and praised Bill for being a president who put people first. The pair will never be close, but Obama does want to join Clinton as only the second Democratic president in 28 years.

First, Obama must enter what John McCain's team is already labeling "The Temple of Obama" -- the large Greco-Roman-inspired stage assembled on Invesco Field. But with the stakes and the stage so large, tonight could become just another punch-line for a clever Republican staffer, or a launching pad for Obama that could make GOP staffers wish they'd thought of putting John McCain in the middle of a football field next week.

Bob Hardt

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