The papers lead with Barack Obama accepting the Democratic nomination for president last night in front of more than 84,000 people at a packed outdoor football stadium. When Obama walked onstage, the "cheering went on for several minutes; the stadium erupted with hundreds of camera flashes and shuddered from the concussion of thousands of stamping feet," notes the Wall Street Journal.  USA Todaysays the Democratic Convention ended "with a display of fireworks and pageantry worthy of an Olympic opening." 

Everyone makes a point of emphasizing that Obama's address was much more critical of John McCain than his usual speeches. It "was less lofty than his earlier rhetorical forays, more specific on the policies he would pursue as president and more scathing toward McCain," the Washington Post summarizes. The Los Angeles Times agrees and says it "was more sharply worded than his usual lyrical prose." The New York Timesnotes that Obama "went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr. McCain's campaign, national security."

As expected, Obama focused much of his speech on the economy as he tied the problems currently faced by the country's middle class to the "failed presidency of George W. Bush." The Iraq war was once a centerpiece of Obama's campaign strategy, but an analysis by the LAT reveals he spent only four minutes of his 44-minute speech on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan while he devoted 16 minutes to economic issues.

As for substance, the WSJ says that the Democratic nominee "presented some long-standing and fairly conventional Democratic economic proposals." He called for a middle-class tax cut, urged the elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses, and pledged he would "finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East" within 10 years. USAT points out that at times "the speech seemed like a State of the Union, detailing proposals to recruit teachers, lower health care premiums and revise bankruptcy laws."

One theme that Obama came back to repeatedly was to tie McCain to Bush while he characterized his opponent as the personification of "the broken politics in Washington," which has been a theme throughout his campaign. He also said that McCain simply doesn't understand the everyday problems that plague average Americans. "It's not because John McCain doesn't care," he said. "It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

Obama lashed out at McCain's attempts to portray him as a celebrity who is obsessed with the sound of his own voice and unable to lead. The Democratic nominee spoke of his mother's experience using food stamps, his grandmother's difficult rise in the workplace, and his own work organizing unemployed steelworkers. "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," Obama said. He also described these kinds of attacks as the same old Washington politics. "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from," he said.

After more than a month of tepid responses to McCain's attacks, Obama fought back and unveiled a "more combative" candidate, notes the LAT. The LAT summarizes the new Obama's message: "Ordinary people are hurting economically, the Bush administration has failed to respond, and a McCain presidency would represent nothing but 'more of the same.' " Ultimately, "the centerpiece of his acceptance speech was a sharp-edged, almost populist, economic message."

The WP's Dan Balz says Obama's criticism toward McCain and Bush, combined with his message of change was exactly what "many nervous Democrats were hoping for." But despite all the policy prescriptions to cure the nation's ills, Obama didn't "set the clear priorities that some of his critics say his governing agenda has lacked," writes Balz.

As has been the case throughout most of the convention, Obama never directly talked about the historic aspect of his nomination, even when he noted that he was delivering his address on the 45^th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

The NYT notes that yesterday Obama became only the third nominee of a major party to leave the site of the convention and deliver his acceptance speech at a stadium. When John F. Kennedy did it in 1960, there were plenty of empty seats, but yesterday the stadium was packed hours before Obama reached the podium. Both the NYT and WP front stories describing the scene at the stadium yesterday and note that many waited for hours to get inside. "The scene was one of the most unusual sights in the annals of American political conventions," notes the NYT. The closing day of a convention suddenly looked more like an open-air concert rather than a place for party insiders and donors to mingle.