The Democrats lifted up their quadrennial gathering and transported it several hundred yards away to the playing field of Denver's pro football stadium. Their seats fanned out in a semicircle from a high tech stage decked with American flags.
Obama stood at the center of a round, blue-carpeted podium, 10 steps high, that stretched out, like a lollipop, from a faux classical colonnade compete with four Greek columns that framed a pair of high resolution video screens.
Rising above Obama and the convention delegates, on a mild, starry Colorado night, were tens of thousands of screaming supporters, who largely filled the bowl at Mile High stadium. They were there as part of a symbolic "opening up the last night of the convention to America," as campaign manager David Plouffe told early arrivals.
Like the presence of more than 50,000 cellphone-toting spectators, whose presence strained the local wireless company's ability to carry the traffic, last night's event shouldered a heavy historical, political and cultural load.
By sheer coincidence, the first African-American presidential nominee in history took the stage on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, an oratorical landmark of the crusade that blazed a path for his candidacy.
King, assassinated when Obama was a child, has been a constant presence in Obama's campaign. The 47-year-old candidate has sought to link himself to the civil rights movement without overtly referring to the historic nature of his run.
In a reach across generations, he frequently quotes a King phrase - "the fierce urgency of now" - to justify his decision to try for the highest office in the land, in spite of having spent only the briefest time on the national scene. He has appealed successfully to the idealism of young volunteers, at least in part, by implying that his campaign is a direct descendant of that earlier effort to change America.
Obama tied his campaign and King's dream to "the American promise" of a better future.
Admitting that he's not "the likeliest candidate" and doesn't fit "the typical pedigree," he said Americans were demanding change and that the country's wealth is not in its military or economy but in its spirit and generosity.
The rapturous response from his supporters left little doubt that - regardless of the fact that this where was football is played - Obama hit it out of the park. But the reaction that matters more will be in the working-class communities of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and other battlegrounds the Democratic nominee touched on last night and whose votes he will need to push his historic campaign through a barrier that has yet to be broken.
