Howard Wilkinson

The first bit of discord at the Democratic National Committee came early in Wednesday's session when former Ohio governor Ted Strickland introduced a platform amendment mentioning God and declaring that the party believes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Strickland, a Methodist minister and co-chairman of the platform committee, made the motion shortly after the Wednesday session began, saying God and faith "informed the development" of the original platform presented to the convention.

The seating arrangements on the floor of the Time Warner Cable Arena tell it all when it comes to Kentucky's role in this presidential election.

The Bluegrass State's 73 delegates are about halfway back in the arena, up against the far wall, to the left of the speaker's podium - not the prime position that goes to key battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

Ohio's senior U.S. senator, Sherrod Brown, told the Ohio delegation at its breakfast Wednesday morning that no Democratic senator in the country is facing the kind of torrent of spending on negative advertising from conservative Super PACs that he is.

"In spite of the $16 million they are spending against me, they are wasting their money,'' Brown said to the delegates. "And that $16 million does not include the electronic billboards, the direct mail and the radio ads they are running against me."

The Democratic National Convention Committee just announced that President Obama's Thursday night acceptance speech has been moved out of the open air Bank of America football stadium because of the threat of severe weather in Charlotte.

It will be moved back to the Time Warner Cable Forum, the basketball arena where the first two nights of the convention are being held.

Organizers had hoped to have a crowd of about 70,000 for the acceptance speech in the stadium that is home to the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for the Obama-Biden re-election campaign, came to the Ohio delegation breakfast Wednesday morning telling delegates that they know they will be outspent in Ohio, but that the Obama  campaign will turn out the voters.

"We need to make the 2008 from-the-ground-up election look like Jurassic Park,'' Messina told the delegates and guests gathered for the daily delegation breakfast at the Oasis Shriners Lodge.