BOSTON — Sen. John Edwards summoned his courtroom skills Wednesday night to try to convince Americans that Sen. John F. Kerry could keep the country safe while spreading opportunity to its farthest reaches.
Edwards extolled the Democratic presidential nominee, his running mate, with a speech that concluded a day of lavish personal tributes and economic policy prescriptions -- virtually all aimed at the swing voters both parties consider key to the election.
Standing before a sea of more than 4,000 delegates at the Democratic National Convention, Edwards used the talents honed as one of North Carolina's most successful litigators -- with a jab of his finger here, a sweep of his arms there -- to make his case to a nationwide jury of millions.
Delegates later installed Kerry as the party standard-bearer with the traditional roll call of states -- and not by accident was the nomination formalized by Ohio, expected to be a key state in the general election.
Kerry arrived Wednesday morning in his fortified hometown after a six-day journey through half a dozen competitive states. Beneath a gray sky, he pulled into Charlestown Navy Yard -- home to the Old Ironsides battleship and just a cannonball's flight from the FleetCenter convention hall -- aboard a cruise vessel dressed up in red, white and blue. A clutch of Kerry's former Vietnam crewmates were on hand, and he fell into their bearhugs.
"We are taking this fight to the country, and we are going to win back our democracy and our future," Kerry told a rally of supporters.
As did Kerry, Edwards played on the nominee's Vietnam experience as he made the case that the senator from Massachusetts planned to continue in his own prime time speech tonight.
Edwards recounted Kerry's valor during the Vietnam War, describing how the young Navy lieutenant turned his boat into enemy fire to save a fallen comrade. "Decisive. Strong. Is this not what we need in a commander in chief?" he asked.
Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, sought to turn back the relentless GOP attacks on Kerry by casting the fall election as not just a battle of ideas, but also as a struggle between divisiveness and unity.
"This is where you come in. Between now and November, you -- the American people -- you can reject this tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible," Edwards said.
