A frantic effort began at the Democratic Convention today to escape the shadow cast by Hillary and Bill Clinton — as well as their die-hard supporters — over Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Mrs Clinton will speak on Tuesday and her husband will take the stage on Wednesday amid angry complaints that Mr Obama’s team has failed to unify the party and heal the wounds opened up during the epic struggle for the party’s nomination this year.

Behind the scenes tonight Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are still seeking to hammer out a compromise plan over the former First Lady's demand to have an open roll-call vote on the convention floor, a move that would highlight the fact that she won nearly as many delegates in their primary battle.

Mr Obama wants the floor vote cut off after just a few states, followed by a unanimous consent vote in his favour.

The anger, never far from the surface in Denver today, threatened to distract attention from the opening night of the convention, where Michelle Obama has the prime-time slot for a big speech telling her family’s “American story” to millions.

She will give the convention, and a television audience of millions, a personal view of her husband, Mr Obama's aides said, and his role as a father to their daughters Sasha and Malia.

The Obama campaign released short extracts of the speech tonight. Mrs Obama will say that "I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president. I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world – they’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future – and all our children’s future – is my stake in this election.

"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; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.

And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

“And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.”

A film about Mrs Obama's working class upbringing on the south side of Chicago will also be shown.

Senator Ted Kennedy, an early backer of Mr Obama’s, was expected to make an emotionally charged appearance after surgery and a six-week course of chemotherapy for a malignant brain tumour.

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