Barack Obama supporter and activist musician Moby talks to Inside the Tent contributors Shai Goller and Patti Moon about his predictions for the Republican National Convention.

Goller is an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, and Moon is a TV producer and graduate of Northwestern University. Both are working as interns for Reuters during the the Democratic National Convention.

Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

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Richard Schiff, the actor best known for playing Toby Ziegler on “The West Wing,” talks about vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. This video was shot by Reuters Inside the Tent contributor Mike Smith.

Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Smith is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are his own.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

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Dilia Schack, a Hillary Clinton delegate for New York, talks to Reuters Inside the Tent about the senator’s efforts to convince supporters to back Barack Obama.

Clinton offered a rousing plea for Democratic unity on Tuesday evening, promising to work for Obama and challenging her supporters to bury their grudges and rally behind his White House bid.

Reuters Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up.

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Former White House hopeful Hillary Clinton offered a forceful speech at the Democratic National Convention aimed at convincing her backers to throw their support to the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and reunite their party.

With the stakes high, do her supporters believe she made the case for throwing their backing to Obama? Will the party factions start to coalesce around their candidate for November?

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

Political consultant and pollster Frank Luntz discusses Joe Biden as the Democratic running mate, union support for the party’s presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and recent poll figures. The following video is from Mike Smith, a contributor to Reuters Inside the Tent.

Reuters Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Smith is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are his own.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week. 

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DENVER - Hillary Clinton is set to address the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, but the real action started a little bit earlier.

Clinton aides brought out on stage several different pantsuits, each of them a different color, to see how the color of each reacted to the lighting and backdrop at the convention site.

Presumably this was to help Clinton of New York decide which color of her trademark garment would be best to wear for her big performance.

(ABC News reported that Glamour magazine has a spread on Clinton this month with photos of her wearing “a rainbow of pantsuits from fire-engine red to light lilac.” The Glamour headline reads: “Hillary, we loved your pantsuits!”)

When Clinton came strolling out to check out the scene on Tuesday, she was wearing a light linen pant suit that showed up well in the lighting.

Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, were all smiles as they tested the microphone at the podium from which they both will speak. It was clear they did not have to talk very loud to have her voice picked up and magnified throughout the pro basketball arena.

“Wow,” the former first lady said. “This is a really sensitive mic.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Clinton stands on stage during a walk-through in preparation for her speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention)

As far as vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is concerned, Michelle Obama has given what will prove to be the most pivotal speech at the four-day Democratic Convention.

And Biden predicted on Tuesday that her prime-time address at the opening of the convention on Monday will help propel her husband, Barack Obama, to the White House.

“Wasn’t that the most incredible speech you ever heard,” Biden, who addresses the convention on Wednesday, a day before Barack Obama steps to the podium, told a breakfast meeting of convention delegates from Biden’s home state of Delaware.

“Mark my words,” Biden said.

“When this convention is over and three to four years from now they are commenting on why the Democrats won, they are going back and say the single most significant event that occurred at the Democratic convention is Michelle Obama — not Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, not Ted Kennedy — but Michelle Obama’s speech.”

“She gave a window to the American people who she is, who he is and what really is the American dream,” Biden said.

Michelle Obama used the address to introduce herself as a working mother, sister, daughter and wife who has much in common with her husband’s humble roots.

With Republicans accusing her husband of being an out of touch elitist, Michelle Obama described him as a Harvard-educated lawyer turned community activist and now a U.S. senator dedicated to helping the downtrodden.

Democrats hope her convention speech, along with those of other this week, give Omaha’s a boost in the polls in his razor-close race with Republican John McCain to replace President George W. Bush in the November election.

Michelle Obama said in her remarks, “What struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine.”

“He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did,” she said.

“Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves,” she said.

“Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values — that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do.”

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DENVER - “Saving the world is my hobby, I guess you could say, because I don’t play golf,” said Rick Fitzgerald, wearing a striped prison costume and holding a papier-mâché Dick Cheney head.

Moments earlier he had been wearing the Cheney head outside the Democratic National Convention chanting “Cheney in chains!” and shaking his plastic shackles for an obliging New York Post photographer. A papier-mâché Condoleezza Rice head sat at his feet.

Fitzgerald, who drove in from Longmont, Colo., was joined outside the Pepsi Center on Sunday by about a hundred protesters. But Fitzgerald doesn’t like the term.

“I’m an advocate,” he said. “We’re not protesting anything. We’re advocating for democracy.”

The convention to nominate Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate has drawn tens of thousands of delegates and journalists to Denver, along with hundreds of others who also want to make their voices heard.

“It’s awesome,” cried a spiky-haired young woman in a pink t-shirt as she surveyed the colorful protests. “The whole world is watching.”

What the world saw was a brigade of costumed protesters carrying colorful signs — some hand-lettered, some professionally printed — with demands that included the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the impeachment of George W. Bush and sustainable development all over the world.

Many of the protestors plan to continue on to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

Bob Kunst of Miami (left) was one of the few anti-Obama protesters, with a sign reading “Obama is bad for America and Israel,” to which he’d added a second, smaller poster reading “Democrats not united. Biden can’t help!”

Despite being outnumbered, Kunst said he was surprised by the positive reaction he received in Denver, with supportive comments from people driving by outweighing the negative ones.

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Inside the Tent’s Kathleen Miller, a pledged Barack Obama delegate for Maryland, talks to Hillary Clinton supporter Marsha Massey about whether it’s possible to unite the Democratic Party.

Reuters Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Miller is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are her own.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

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Bernice Scott, a pledged Hillary Clinton delegate for South Carolina, talks about how a phone call from the New York senator convinced her it was time to pledge support to Barack Obama. This video was shot by Inside the Tent contributor Kathleen Miller, a Barack Obama delegate for Maryland.

Reuters Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Miller is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are her own.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

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