Craigslist founder Craig Newmark talks to Laurence O’Donnell, a political pundit as well as producer and writer on “The West Wing,” about how the nominating conventions can only be truly appreciated by watching them on TV.

Newmark is a contributor to Inside the Tent, which 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. He 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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Kristine Fallstone, whose son was killed in an Army training exercise after he spent a year in Iraq, talks to Inside the Tent contributor Kathleen Miller about her support for Barack Obama and her evangelical Christian faith.

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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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