DENVER — Amy Pearl is the sort of Democrat who made the Barack Obama campaign nervous. A volunteer who ran Hillary Rodham Clinton's Palo Alto campaign office during the primary season, she had doubted Obama's experience and arrived at the Democratic convention here unsure how she would vote in November.
She left town Friday with her mind made up: She is for Obama.
For all the glitter of a convention that literally ended in fireworks, the Obama campaign's mission was a simple one: winning over the Amy Pearls. Obama entered the convention as the nominal head of a Democratic Party cleaved into factions -- one devoted to him, another to Clinton. The four-day convention was his best chance before election day to cement the two halves into a coalition that would serve as a durable and expanded political base.
Republican John McCain seemed eager to peel off aggrieved Clinton supporters with his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. But various women's groups and Clinton loyalists said Friday that the Palin pick wouldn't spur defections.
"Gov. Palin and John McCain are a good match because they both want to overturn Roe v. Wade, they both want to continue the failed economic policies of the Bush administration, and they both offer more of the same," said Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY's List, which works to elect female Democratic candidates and endorsed Clinton in the primaries.
Buoyed by new poll results, Democrats wrapped up the convention feeling better about their prospects.
"We're going to beat the hell out of 'em in November!" exclaimed Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who backed Clinton during the primaries.
On the convention's most important night, Obama could not have asked for a bigger audience. Apart from the more than 84,000 spectators who watched him accept the nomination Thursday in a football stadium, the television audience smashed records. More than 38 million people saw him deliver his speech on TV, apparently a new high, according to Nielsen Media Research.
By the convention's end, the Gallup daily tracking poll showed Obama had taken a race that was dead even and built an 8-point lead. The margin could grow when the polling data account for everyone who saw the speech.
Obama's bounce exceeds that of his most recent predecessor. Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry lost a point after his nominating convention in 2004. The average post-convention bump for Democratic candidates since 1964 is 6.2 points, according to the nonpartisan publication National Journal.
