Obama ready to sketch path forward

Speech » Advisers promise a hit but downplay hopes for a huge rating boost.

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Clinton also preached bipartisanship and a pullback from politics as "blood sport" — this near the end of back-to-back conventions that feasted on rhetorical red meat and even as he ripped the Republican agenda as a throwback to the past, a "double-down on trickle-down" economics that assumes tax cuts for the wealthy will help everyone down the ladder.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, also appearing on morning talk shows, said Clinton’s speech had set out the economic choices, "so now the president can talk about the future having some of that underbrush out of the way."

Former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, a past Democratic Party chairman who appeared on "CBS This Morning," said that for all the excitement of the convention, he’s still worried "about the base turning out to the degree they did" for Obama in 2008. He cited the battleground states of North Carolina and Virginia in particular.

Speaking of the convention speeches delivered by the first lady and the former president, Rendell added: "The beauty of Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton is they stoked the base."

Motivation was not an issue in the convention hall, at least not when Clinton spoke.

The hall rocked with cheers as Clinton strode onstage to Fleetwood Mac’s "Don’t Stop," his 1992 campaign theme song, and he held the crowd rapt as he drifted off his prepared remarks for about 50 minutes.

He accused Republicans of proposing "the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place" and led to a near financial meltdown. Those, he said, include efforts to provide "tax cuts for higher-income Americans, more money for defense than the Pentagon wants and ... deep cuts on programs that help the middle class and poor children."

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