Kerry to deliver acceptance speech tonight

BOSTON -- Presidential hopeful John Kerry will deliver his acceptance speech tonight as the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the FleetCenter in Boston concludes. The junior senator from Massachusetts is scheduled to deliver his speech in primetime.\nSo far convention speakers have been attempting to perform a precarious balancing act between a positive, upbeat message and a persuasive amount of criticism against President Bush.\nAl Gore, the former vice president who won the popular vote but narrowly lost the Electoral College to Bush in 2000, delivered a speech Monday night, which was fueled with a mixture of self-deprecating humor and partisanship.\n"I'll be candid with you -- I had hoped to be back this week under different circumstances, running for re-election," the former vice president told the crowd. "But you know the old saying: You win some, you lose some. And then there's that little-known third category."\nFormer President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who are still treated like celebrities inside the Democratic Party, were each given a loud, enthusiastic welcoming.\nSen. Clinton introduced her husband, who concluded the Monday line-up of speakers.\n"The state that gave us John Adams and John Kennedy has now given us John Kerry, a good man, a great senator and a visionary leader."\n"Tonight I speak as a citizen, eager to join you here in Boston as a foot soldier in the fight for our future, as we nominate a true New England patriot for president," Clinton said.\nClinton used himself and his own financial luck ironically as the rhetorical center of his speech. He said that while he is now in the top income tax bracket, the tax cut he received from the Bush administration in 2001 should have been used to help the middle class and finance the war in Iraq. \nBarack Obama, a Democratic candidate for the Senate from Illinois, delivered the convention's keynote address Tuesday night.\nThe delegate audience responded with a standing ovation multiple times for Obama, the 42-year-old son of a Kenyan immigrant father and a Kansas mother, who electrified the audience.\nObama tried to shorten the gap of what some see as a different value system between the Republicans and Democrats, and criticized the characterization of red Republican states and blue Democratic states. \n"We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states," Obama said.\n"There are patriots who opposed the war and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America," he added.\nYoung black politicians who are considered to be rising stars in the Democratic Party have delivered the keynote address now at two conventions in a row. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., delivered the address at the 2000 convention in Los Angeles.\nTuesday evening's speeches concluded with Sen. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.\n"By now I hope it comes as no surprise, I have something to say," Heinz Kerry joked, referring to recent news surrounding a series of unpopular and controversial comments she has made while on the campaign trail with her husband. \nShe spoke proudly of her husband, describing him as a fighter, and said, "He earned his medals the old-fashioned way, by putting his life on the line for his country. No one will defend this nation more vigorously than he will -- and he will always be the first in the line of fire."\n-- Contact Opinion Editor Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.