Last night went pretty much as I expected it to. President Bill Clinton came out and fully supported Barack Obama, just as his wife had done the night before. He didn’t outshine her, but he got the job done, and made the case that Obama has the judgement to lead the country:

Everything I learned in my eight years as President and in the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.

He has a remarkable ability to inspire people, to raise our hopes and rally us to high purpose. He has the intelligence and curiosity every successful President needs. His policies on the economy, taxes, health care and energy are far superior to the Republican alternatives. He has shown a clear grasp of our foreign policy and national security challenges, and a firm commitment to repair our badly strained military. His family heritage and life experiences have given him a unique capacity to lead our increasingly diverse nation and to restore our leadership in an ever more interdependent world. The long, hard primary tested and strengthened him. And in his first presidential decision, the selection of a running mate, he hit it out of the park.

With Joe Biden’s experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama’s proven understanding, insight, and good instincts, America will have the national security leadership we need.

Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States.

I also think the former president got in one of the best lines of the convention so far when he said, “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” Stellar.

As for Joe Biden, he gave the DNC crowd the red meat they wanted, all tidied up in a tender bacon-wrap of middle-class clout. If you missed the Biden speech, I strongly urge you to watch it at C-Span (real media plugin required). I’m starting to think the Biden pick was definitely the right one. He’ll give the everyday joe and mary all the reasons they need to pull the lever for Obama this November. His humble roots and commitment to family and small-town America are unquestionable. No one will ever convince him of being an “elitist,” and adding him to the ticket is sure to give Obama some of those independent voters who still have an open mind and who will be swayed by Biden’s no-nonsense style of speaking. He’ll be able to reassure any middle-class voter that McCain is out of touch, while Obama will continue his life’s work of making sure everyone has a fair shot in post-Bush America.

From Biden’s speech last night:

My parents taught us to live our faith, and treasure our family. We learned the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they try.That was America’s promise. For those of us who grew up in middle-class neighborhoods like Scranton and Wilmington, that was the American dream and we knew it.

But today that American dream feels as if it’s slowly slipping away. I don’t need to tell you that. You feel it every single day in your own lives.

I’ve never seen a time when Washington has watched so many people get knocked down without doing anything to help them get back up. Almost every night, I take the train home to Wilmington, sometimes very late. As I look out the window at the homes we pass, I can almost hear what they’re talking about at the kitchen table after they put the kids to bed.

Like millions of Americans, they’re asking questions as profound as they are ordinary. Questions they never thought they would have to ask:

• Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone?
• Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars to fill up the car?
• Winter’s coming. How we gonna pay the heating bills?
• Another year and no raise?
• Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care?
• Now, we owe more on the house than it’s worth. How are we going to send the kids to college?
• How are we gonna be able to retire?

That’s the America that George Bush has left us, and that’s the future John McCain will give us. These are not isolated discussions among families down on their luck. These are common stories among middle-class people who worked hard and played by the rules on the promise that their tomorrows would be better than their yesterdays.

That promise is the bedrock of America. It defines who we are as a people. And now it’s in jeopardy. I know it. You know it. But John McCain doesn’t get it.

Biden’s so in touch with what’s going on in America today. I ask those same questions every single day. All of them. My neighbors talk about it whenever we get together for a barbeque, or whenever we see each other in our backyards and decide to chat for a few moments.

It wasn’t long after he connected with the audience that he started defining the John McCain he knows, someone who has been his friend and who has served with him many many years in the Senate:

John McCain is my friend. We’ve known each other for three decades. We’ve traveled the world together. It’s a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism John demonstrated still amaze me.But I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country. For example,

John thinks that during the Bush years “we’ve made great progress economically.” I think it’s been abysmal.

And in the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time. Give me a break. When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history—a half trillion dollars in the last five years—he wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks. But he voted time and again against incentives for renewable energy: solar, wind, biofuels. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

Millions of jobs have left our shores, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

He voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. For people who are struggling just to get to the next day, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

And when he says he will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on a surplus of nearly $80 billion, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

The choice in this election is clear. These times require more than a good soldier; they require a wise leader, a leader who can deliver change—the change everybody knows we need.

I think that last sentence is the perfect way to respect John McCain’s service to America, yet state in no uncertain terms that he does not have the judgement to lead. “These times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader.”

Biden then went on to detail what Obama’s foreign policy views have been over the years, and how the Bush administration (and McCain) is just starting to come around to those views, but only after significant loss of time, money, and life.

I can’t wait to see Biden stump for Obama, and I can’t wait until the night of October 2nd, when he’ll sit down face-to-face with McCain’s running mate and blows him (or her) out of the water. Hmmm. Perhaps McCain will choose a woman for this very reason? Biden is sure to rip into any candidate, but would he do the same if that candidate was a woman?

One of the other highlights for me was John Kerry’s speech, where he detailed the differences between what John McCain used to stand for, and what he stands for now:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what’s more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same “Rove” tactics and the same “Rove” staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

Wow. Talk about red meat. The Democrats really need to hammer this message home during the next couple months as we get closer to the election. They need to show that 2008 McCain is not the same as 2000 McCain. When the American public stops being fed the “Maverick” tale from the MSM, perhaps they’ll really find out who this guy is. If they do, you can be sure we’ll be inaugurating Barack Obama within a couple days of my fortieth birthday. Best present I could ever get.