Smash hit

More than half of the 75,000 free tickets were allocated to Colorado residents, part of the broader strategy of targeting the Rocky Mountain west in the general election. The region voted for President Bush in 2000 and 2004 but has been turning more Democratic in recent years. Mr Obama's strategists believe the has a good chance of winning Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

His task has been made easier by his former adversaries in the 17-month primary battle. What Hillary Clinton began on Tuesday, by appealing to supporters still smarting over her defeat to rally around Mr Obama, was completed in spectacular fashion by her husband the following night.

Bill Clinton did not merely pledge his backing for the nominee, he anointed him as his rightful heir. Previously, he had scorned Mr Obama's lack of foreign policy experience and warned voters they should not "roll the dice" with an untested candidate. But on Wednesday night, the former president artfully sought to demolish that same argument while defending his White House record that, he feels, has been slighted by the Obama campaign.

A couple of hours earlier, Mrs Clinton had symbolically brought to an end the hardest-fought battle for the Democratic nomination in recent history by proposing that a roll-call vote of delegates be halted so that Mr Obama could be crowned by acclamation.

"With the goal of unity," she said, "let's declare together in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president."

Delegates held hands, danced to the song "Love Train", and chanted "Yes, we can!" Some of them even wept as they reflected on the historic nature of two candidates seeking to become the first woman or black president.

Joe Biden, in his speech to the convention on Wednesday night, continued the up-beat momentum with a muscular performance that laid into John McCain and cast himself as a champion of the working class vote.

Both Mr Biden and Mr Clinton were greeted with thunderous applause from a party that was drawing a collective sigh of relief. But, behind all the carefully-crafted public displays of unity, it is still possible to detect the strains of division. A senior adviser to Mr Obama, asked if the campaign was convinced that Mrs Clintons would prefer victory in November to running for the presidency again in 2012, replied: "I think so - although it depends on which bit of her brain we're talking about."

A Clinton confidant is citing the way Mr Obama's team had denied the former president a primetime speaking slot. "That is just another example of their craziness," he said. "Obama will get less bounce from this as a result.

"His people do not talk to us or seek our advice. Obama should win as default Democrat in a Democratic year. But his polling is still behind that of the party and if he prevails it will be despite, rather than because, of his campaign.

"I think the Republicans will rip his flesh of next week, that is what they do. Obama is a novice who has never run against a white male Republican. And he no longer has the crutch of talking about the Clintons and what they are supposedly doing to him. It's now up to him. He is all by himself."

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