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close whether he had approved the earlier version.
• The convention concludes Thursday with Obama's acceptance speech before a prime- time national TV audience. Aides announced he would speak in the convention hall rather than a nearby 74,000-seat football stadium as originally planned. They cited weather concerns as the reason for the switch in a city that has been hit by heavy rains in recent days.
• Romney, nominated at his own convention last week, spent his second straight day in Vermont preparing for next month's debates with Obama.
• Clinton's speech was deemed so important by Obama's campaign aides that they delayed the president's formal nomination to a second term until it was over. The familiar roll call of the states began well after television prime time in the eastern part of the country, and the hall was emptying out rapidly as it dragged on past midnight.
• Obama's campaign hoped the former president would prove especially persuasive in an era of sluggish economic growth and 8.3 percent unemployment. Clinton is exceptionally popular 12 years after he left office, particularly among white men, a group among whom Obama polls poorly.
• The speech was vintage Clinton, overlong for sure, insults delivered with a folksy grin, references to his own time in office and his wife Hillary, all designed to improve Obama's shaky re-election prospects.
• The convention hall rocked with delegates' applause and cheers the former president strode onstage to sounds of "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," his 1992 campaign theme song.
• He sought to rebut every major criticism Republicans leveled against the president at their own convention last week in Tampa, and said that in fact, since 1961, far more jobs have been created under Democratic presidents than when Republicans sat in the White House, by a margin of 42 million to 24 million.
• Clinton accused Republicans of proposing "the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place" and led to a near financial meltdown. Those, he said, include efforts to provide "tax cuts for higher-income Americans, more money for defense than the Pentagon wants and ... deep cuts on programs that help the middle class and poor children."
• "As another president once said, 'There they go again,'" he said, quoting Ronald Reagan, who often uttered the remark as a rebuke to Democrats.
• There was another reference to Reagan, whom Democrats routinely accused of advocating "trickle down economics" that favored the rich.

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