Barack Obama accepts US presidential nomination from the Democratic Party

August 30, 2008

United States presidential candidate Barack Obama accepted the United States Democratic Party's nomination for president Thursday evening at Invesco Field in Denver, Colorado before a crowd estimated to be between 75,000 to 80,000 people.

Obama is running to become the 44th President of the United States. His opponent John McCain will accept the Republican Party's presidential nomination next week in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Obama is the first African-American nominee for President by a major political party. The speech concluded the fourth and final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The speech was given on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

In the speech, Obama stated that the "American promise has been threatened" by eight years under President George W. Bush and that John McCain represented a continuation of policies that undermined the nation’s economy and imperiled its standing around the world.

The speech set an American television record for viewership during a convention. The Nielsen Media Research company found that just over 38 million Americans watched the speech, eclipsing both the 2004 acceptance speech of John Kerry and the 2000 acceptance speech of Al Gore. According to Reuters, the format by which Nielsen conducts its research — known as the Nielsen Ratings — has changed since 2004, adding four networks and factoring in people who watched the speech via a digital video recorder.