Clinton: 'No way, no how, no McCain'

Clinton also delivered her stinging attack on McCain, answering calls from some party activists for a more sustained attack on the Republicans.

“We don’t need four more years of the last eight years,” Clinton said, hammering McCain on numerous issues, including health care, high fuel prices, job outsourcing, home foreclosures and the war in Iraq.

“It makes perfect sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities,” she said. “Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart.”

It was a very different speech from the keynote address delivered by former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who urged voters to remember that the party will need to work with Republicans after the election.

“We need Barack Obama as the next president of the United States,” Warner said. And he criticized Republican policy proposals on defense, energy and the economy, saying, “John McCain promises more of the same.”

But that was one of only two times Warner mentioned the Republican candidate.

Warner, who is running for the Senate as a “radical centrist” by appealing to independent and Republican voters, turned away from the tone of Clinton and many of the speakers who preceded him Tuesday. He called on Democrats to bury their partisan bitterness, saying cooperation between the parties would be vital in the future.

“I know we’re at the Democratic convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn’t matter if it has an ‘R’ or ‘D’ next to it,” he added. “Because this election isn’t about liberal versus conservative. It’s not about left versus right. It’s about the future versus the past.”

Warner had acknowledged ahead of time that many Democrats might be unhappy with his remarks after Monday night’s opening session, which featured a tribute to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Michelle Obama’s speech, which was more personal than political. Some party activists complained of a lack of red meat and called for a more sustained attack on McCain.

Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Tuesday that Warner had the wrong idea, adding, “This isn’t the Richmond Chamber of Commerce.”

VP candidates on the move
Meanwhile, McCain was preparing to name his running mate in the coming days, Republican officials said.

Two contenders were to be in Denver on his behalf to assail Democrats: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Thursday. It amounted to a final audition of sorts.

Biden, in his first public remarks since being named Obama’s running mate, acknowledged that he had caused headaches for his party in the past, and he thanked home-state Delaware delegates for sticking with him when he “didn’t always comport myself in the way that I wanted to.”

Biden, who ended his 1988 presidential run amid allegations of plagiarism, did not elaborate, but aides said the remarks were mostly a reference to his reputation for long-windedness and off-the-cuff remarks that sometimes backfired. As he began his brief campaign for the presidential nomination last year, he called Obama “articulate” and “clean,” and he drew criticism for saying “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Clinton meets Michelle Obama
After her warmly received appearance Monday night, Michelle Obama turned to politicking for her husband, dropping by a conference in Denver on economic security Tuesday morning.

Obama introduced a plan for working women that she said would address issues like the 22 million working women who do not get sick pay.

“The Obama-Biden plan will expand the Family and Medical Leave Act so that millions of additional Americans will be able to take time off to care for a baby or an elderly parent,” she said. “And the Obama-Biden plan will require employers to provide all their workers with at least seven paid sick days a year.”

Obama ran into to Clinton at an event for Emily’s List, the women’s political group. Clinton congratulated Obama on her convention speech, and Obama wished Clinton good luck on hers.

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