As day three of the convention winds down, the crowd was treated to an unexpected visitor and we all got a preview of tomorrow night.

In other news, rumor has it that John McCain will name his running mate tomorrow ahead of Barack Obama's speech. It's hard to decide whether to laugh at the thought of a green screen running mate, or roll our collective eyes at what kind of a petty, petty person would do that. And if it turns out to be only a rumor, I'll apologize for calling him petty. I will, however, still call him an asshole.

Biden's speech began with lovely tributes to his family, including his mother, of whom he said:

My mother's creed is the American creed: no one is better than you. You are everyone's equal, and everyone is equal to you.

Biden ends by using his authority on foreign policy to detail how Obama's foreign policy judgment has time and again been correct while McCain has been wrong. Biden's foreign policy judgment will not be substituted for Obama's; instead, his credibility will be used to affirm Obama's judgment.

John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right -- again, and again, and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong and Barack Obama has been proven right.

And here comes Obama, introduced by Biden's wife Jill.

MSNBC just flashed that the Obama car is driving to the Pepsi Center.

Joe Biden has been nominated and Nancy Pelosi informs us he's accepted.

The video and son Beau's introduction have really focused on Biden's remarkable story of commitment as a father; earlier, Quincy Lucas, an advocate on domestic violence issues, delivered a nominating speech focusing on Biden's longstanding work on the Violence Against Women Act.

Finishing, Beau Biden alludes to the fact that he will be deployed to Iraq this fall, asking the crowd to "be there for my father; be there for Barack Obama."

And now Biden is on...

Who has been your favorite speaker so far tonight? And how do the speakers compare to last night?

Yesterday Bob Casey had one of the best lines of the night:

John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush more than 90% of the time...that's not a maverick, that's a sidekick.

Tonight he is relaxing and enjoying the show.

Take the poll and use the comments to tell us how you made your choice.

I'm speechless.

John Kerry just explained not only why I'm a Democrat, but why I don't trust Republicans on ANYTHING -- including their so-called strength: "national security".

From Kagro X, reporting from the Pepsi Center...convention goers watching Bill Clinton on TV. Remember, these folks are all about ten steps away from seeing it live. But rather than miss a word during the ten foot walk, they stayed glued to the screens.

John Kerry reporting for duty ....

Before John McCain debates Barack Obama, he needs to finish the debate with John McCain.

Nearly everyone agrees Hillary Clinton gave the speech of her political life last night, magnanimously urging her diehard supporters to back Senator Obama for president. She emphasized what all democrats know: it is in their best interests and America's to see Barack Obama elected. As her reference to the Supreme Court suggests, a McCain presidency has negative long-term ramifications and will spiral America further downward.

Last night, Clinton earned figurative pats on the back for singing harmony. This is like praising the virtue of someone who kicked you in the head but was kind enough to give you an ice pack for the headache. Had it not been for Clinton's near-Rovian performance those last months of the primary, this disunity would be a background mumble rather than a ferocious roar reverberating daily in every media outlet.

America can do better than that and Barack Obama will do better than that.

Clinton just laid some branding on the Democrats and made the Republicans own the last eight years as we saw their ideology in practice.

They want us to reward them for the failures of the last four years with four more years.

The third time is not the charm.

Bill says that Hillary is supporting Barack Obama, that his support makes two of them, and:

Actually, that makes 18 million of us.

And that:

Barack Obama is the man for this job.

Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States

The Big Dog is up. Prepare for media tears as Bill Clinton endorses Barack Obama. Says Bill:

I am honored to be here tonight...[crowd going nuts]...I am here, first to support Barack Obama and second I'm here to warm up the crowd for Joe Biden.

Speaking for myself, I think by now we've had plenty of happy talk at the Democratic National Convention. The American public is not in a good mood; it thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction; and it's fed up to ^HERE with dysfunctional and corrupt government. Americans probably can tolerate only so much uplift coming from any group of politicians.

No, convention speakers needn't bother to tell us that George Bush has been a godawful president. Everybody gets that who's been awake during any of the last 8 years.

What our friends at the DNC might want to explain, in these few days when they've got our attention, is why the current Republican philosophy of governance led to this mess. There are plenty of Americans who have never given it much thought – why a political party that is hostile to government inevitably undermines good government; why a party that seeks at every turn to privatize government can have no clear idea how to govern; why a party that turns instinctively to divisiveness cannot fail to injure a commonwealth; why a party that hands government over to the powerful to despoil can never be trusted to help the rest of us. They might even want to show the public how John McCain has taken part in the Republican train wreck during the last 8 years.

There are plenty of Americans, too, who don't really know much about John McCain's temperament – his fits of anger, his impulsiveness, his bellicosity, his mendacity. Some don't realize how profoundly ignorant and misinformed John McCain is about foreign affairs and about domestic issues. Many of the public may be only vaguely aware of how privileged a life John McCain has led, or how out of touch he is from ordinary Americans' experiences. A fair number of people "know" the myth the news media have peddled for years about John McCain, and little else.

You might want to remedy that by giving us less uplift and more actual straight talk about what the next 4 years would hold under Republican governance. Now would be a good time to do that.

I know everyone is in celebration mode and I don't mean to take anything away from it, but I just ran across this news and wanted to share it with you, in case you don't know.

When McBush goes to Minneapolis, he'll have some DNC presents greeting him there and following him around.

Follow below for more details.

Former President Bill Clinton is up next.

Who remembers this?  Back in September 2000:

President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.

While it seems that we are working better at defining the debate more to our advantage, we are still using terminology that can be seen as advantageous to McCain.  McCain is seen as a strong military-style leader (I know this shouldn't be the case, but it is), and as long as we use the Republican framing, this race is far too close for comfort.