Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has formally nominated President Barack Obama to be the Democratic Party's candidate in the November election, during a nationally televised address Wednesday night.
Mr. Clinton criticized the Republican party during his prime time speech at the Democratic National Convention, calling the Republican narrative an “alternative universe.”
“In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's re-election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: We left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”
The Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, last week focused on how the U.S. was worse off now than it was when Mr. Obama took office in 2009. Former president Clinton disagreed.
“When President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free fall. It had just shrunk 9.4 percent of GDP. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Are we doing better now today? The answer is YES.”
Mr. Clinton remains a popular figure among many Americans who recall the economic prosperity during his two terms in office in the 1990's. President Obama joined Mr. Clinton on stage after his speech.
The DNC aimed to strike at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's record as a businessman, which Mr. Clinton called “sterling” earlier this year.
Among the speakers Wednesday were three employees that were fired from companies controlled by Bain Capital, an asset management firm that Mr. Romney co-founded and ran as CEO for several years. One of the employees said America cannot afford “Romney economics,” which he said was “putting profits before working people.”
Mr. Obama arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina, earlier Wednesday for his party's national convention.
Hours earlier, party officials looked at Thursday's weather forecast and decided to move his night-time nomination acceptance address from an outdoor football stadium because of concerns about rain. The president will instead speak in the much smaller, 20,000-seat indoor arena that has hosted the rest of the convention.
Democratic officials said they feared the possibility of rainstorms during the speech. Mr. Obama's Republican opponents said the real worry for his supporters was that the president might not attract enough people to fill the 74,000-seat stadium.
In a statement, convention organizer Steve Kerrigan said the group shared the “disappointment of over 65,000 people” who had signed up for credentials to attend the outdoor event. He said Mr. Obama would speak to them during a Thursday conference call.
Mr. Obama's opponent is a one-time venture capitalist and a former governor of Massachusetts. Surveys of voters show the two candidates in a virtual tie nine weeks ahead of election day on November 6.
