If you live in the City of Opelika and you haven’t yet voted for mayor and City Council, you have just over three hours to get to the polls.

In the headliner race of the day, Mayor Gary Fuller is asking voters to for another term, while challenger Rainer Meadows is trying to unseat him.

Leadership of four of Opelika’s five wards are on the ballot today (Ward 4 Councilman Eddie Smith was re-elected without opposition), and Ward 3 will have new representation: Outgoing Ward 3 Councilman and City Council President Jerry Teel did not seek re-election.

Opelika has five polling places:

Hillary Clinton will deliver a much-anticipated address to Democratic delegates assembled in Denver this evening, part of the DNC’s “Renewing America’s Promise” night.

Clinton made her first convention appearance before the New York delegation on Monday. The New York Times noted that she sounded “strong in her support for Senator Obama — and her commitment to putting him in the White House next year.” In a line you’re likely to hear tonight, Clinton said of the continuing friction between her supporters and Obama’s supporters, “We are Democrats. It may take a while. We’re not the fall-in-line party.”

Clinton’s job tonight will be to tamp down the remaining discord among her supporters, who resent the way Democratic Party leaders arbitrated the Michigan-Florida delegate flap and are outraged at what they perceive as the Obama campaign’s disrespect for her in the vice presidential search process.

It’s a tall order. There have been some ugly skirmishes between the camps, and anecdotal evidence abounds that her supporters will stay home or vote for John McCain in the fall. Some of her supporters simply don’t believe she’s throwing in with Obama. From CNN’s Political Ticker:

Reports that Clinton was planning to ask her delegates to support Obama were greeted by some there with angry disbelief. “Have you heard it from her mouth? Have you? Have you? Did her campaign say it on the record?” demanded a woman in a black pro-Hillary t-shirt. “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” she said, and walked away.

But the latest slings and arrows angering Clinton supporters is one of the reported efforts actually meant to bind the party together: A two-part roll call vote. According to the Denver Post:

The move being worked out between the Obama campaign and officials behind Clinton’s suspended bid, would work in two parts: Delegates would cast votes at their hotels Wednesday morning; that night, at the Pepsi Center convention site, the roll-call process would rely on the votes cast that morning, the delegates said.

Obama adviser Jennifer Backus denied that negotiations to split the roll-call vote were underway. But even a rumor was enough to stir things up. Reaction among Clinton supporters included these:

This story is more disturbing than I have words to describe:

CBS4 has learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.

CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were “going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle … sighted at 750 yards.”

Law enforcement sources tell Maass that one of the suspects “was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative.”

The story began emerging Sunday morning when Aurora police arrested 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell. He was driving a rented pickup truck in an erratic manner according to sources.

Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas.

Fox News says law enforcement officials are trying to figure out whether the plot had more to do with the meth than Obama. But given the fractured political landscape in which we now live, could we make it through another assassination of a political leader if it happened?

I wish I was confident that we could.

I’m not. 

Not everyone was pleased with the DNC’s lineup on Monday night.

In addition to Sen. Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama, Monday’s lineup featured former President Jimmy Carter and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

SIDEBAR: Does anyone else find it curious that on the night when the theme was “One Nation,” the DNC would send three of the most recognizable (read: controversial) faces of liberalism to the stage? END SIDEBAR

Former Clinton strategist James Carville lamented that Monday’s theme, for all its emphasis of the personal stories of Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama, left little to no room for attacks on John McCain and Republican positions on issues like taxes, health care, the economy and energy independence.

As The James usually does, he summed it up in one line:

“If this party has a message it’s done a hell of a job hiding it tonight, I promise you that,” he said.

Saturday afternoon was the Obama campaign’s rollout of the candidate’s vice presidential nominee.

Tonight at the Democratic National Convention, they rolled out Michelle Obama.

Michelle had a somewhat rocky road during the primaries, thanks to an off-handed statement she made about being proud of her country “for the first time in my adult life.”

Republicans quickly pounced on what they insisted was an inadvertent look Michelle Obama had allowed into her psyche: That she wasn’t proud of her country until Barack Obama began winning primary elections. In an uncharacteristically ungraceful attack, even Cindy McCain got some digs in against Mrs. Obama.

Of course, the Obama campaign said Michelle’s remarks were taken out of context, and Mrs. Obama herself spent weeks insisting that she actually is proud of her country.

Fairly or unfairly, she began developing an image as a shrill, aggressive, overbearing political wife.

Remind you of anyone?

And so, the Obama campaign began to take great lengths to reintroduce Michelle Obama to American voters. Among other engagements meant to soften the image was a widely praised appearance on The View earlier this summer; those appearances were meant to pave the way for her speech tonight, when she would get a chance to speak for herself on the biggest stage the party could offer – and convince Americans that she would not be a risk as First Lady Michelle Obama.

I have seen several interviews with Michelle Obama; she’s a well-spoken, intelligent and able defender of her husband, his campaign, her family and her country. I don’t know what to make of the “proud of my country” remarks from several months ago, and that’s one of many reasons I was anxious to hear her tonight.

The stage couldn’t have been set any better: Michelle followed Ted Kennedy’s emotional appearance before the delegates, which ended on a high note. The video that preceded her introduction was fantastic. It was obvious that the Obama campaign intends to define Michelle Obama through her relationships with those close to her: As the wife of the candidate, as the mother to two young daughters, as the daughter of hard-working parents from Chicago’s South Side and as the younger sister of a protective older brother.

It was genius. The video was flawless. Especially because of its emphasis on her relationships with her mother and late father, Michelle Obama came across as a little girl, a young woman, a wife and mother that anyone could bump into at a PTA meeting.  The best part of the video, though, was the end, when her mother said, “I hope America gets to know the girl we raised and the woman she became, because she is the most remarkable person I know.” Referencing her late husband, Michelle’s late father, her mother said, “Every day I get to see a piece of him in her, and for that I am so proud and so blessed.”

The stage was perfectly set.

And then, for reasons that are completely inexplicable to me, convention organizers had Michelle’s brother, Craig Robinson, a college basketball coach, come out and give a colloquial segue from the video into Michelle’s introduction.

I know he’s her brother, but this staging ruined the vibe. Craig Robinson is, I’m sure, a great guy, but he’s no raucous speaker. There’s something about the idea of memorizing every episode of the Brady Bunch (a big brother tidbit that Craig offered) that completely shattered the buildup and anticipation for hearing from the woman who wants to be America’s First Lady.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t have included him. I’m saying he should have gone before the video, then appeared after it just long enough to say Michelle’s name preceded by, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.”

That aside, Craig Robinson continued the theme from the video, which was to define Michelle through her relationships. And a new word began emerging: Compassion. Everyone mentioned Michelle’s compassion, how compassionate she was, etc. Again, this is an effort to soften her image and make her more approachable for voters.

When she finally appeared, she seemed to start off a bit nervous, though she seemed to find her stride in the section about the anniversaries of female suffrage and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. From there, although her tone remained easy and even, it was bolstered by a strength that was obscured by nerves before.

Michelle mentioned how the “American dream endures;” this was a direct carryover from Kennedy’s earlier speech. She was at her best when describing the physical hardships her MS-stricken father bore as he tried to dress himself each morning, and then as she described the different groups of men and women she’s met across America, including those who work double shifts, military servicemen and women and their families and public servants of all kinds.

Michelle came as close as she could to addressing the earlier furor that surrounded her when she said, “That is why I love this country.”

It was a direct and self-assured response to those who have questioned her love for America and, by extension, the love for America her husband truly espouses. To those who have questioned her patriotism, Michelle Obama offered a firm but graceful response: I won’t back down.

Michelle brought her speech around to her husband and his dreams for the country, ending up describing in very real language how the man who would be president drove at a snail’s pace with his baby daughter in the car, “feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands … determined to give her something he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.” She described how she tucks her daughters in to bed at night and thinks about their future and what they will one day tell their children and grandchildren about this election.

In this way, she couched her appeal for her husband in language every mother, every father, every daughter and every son can understand. Television cameras captured several women in the audience in tears at the end of Michelle’s speech.

Overall, Michelle and her speech played to good reviews. But I thought, again, the aftermath ruined what could have been an impactful and poignant moment. This time it was an ill-conceived song, “Isn’t She Lovely,” which is a nice song but probably not the best choice for a one half of a couple who’s been accused of – shall we say, having too healthy a self-image.

And then there was that satellite hookup.

Whether it was the candidate himself mistaking St. Louis for Kansas City (oops), the satellite delay that made for awkward conversation or Michelle having to lean down to prompt the children what to say, it was just a difficult transition that shredded the goodwill vibe Michelle had just built up among the delegates. I can understand having the children come out and stand with Mom; that’s a no-brainer, especially after she just got finished talking about them. But they didn’t need to have anything to say, and they certainly didn’t need to be placed between Barack Obama and the delegates when he appeared via satellite feed.

Just my observations, but I think avoiding those segue issues would have dramatically helped the flow.

Michelle Obama: A-minus tonight. If she can stay on this note throughout the general election season, she’ll be every bit Cindy McCain’s match.

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Sen. Ted Kennedy made gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight and did in about 10 minutes what it’s taken his party all summer to do: Give life to its general election message.

Kennedy is the heart of the liberalism that has defined the Democratic Party for 75 years. He’s referred to as the “lion” of the Senate—not only by virtue of the nine terms he’s spent in America’s highest lawmaking body, which make him the third-longest serving senator in the body, but also by virtue of his indefatigable determination, even in the face of a malignant brain tumor that has forced him into experimental treatment and has kept him out of the Senate for most of the past four months, to have a leading role in this history-making convention.

According to the talking heads narrating the event for us, convention organizers weren’t sure, even in the last few minutes leading up to the speech, whether Kennedy would be strong enough to deliver his remarks. CNN reported that Kennedy’s family had arranged for him to have a chair or stool of some sort available while he spoke.

As he did with the advice of his doctors who had advised him not to travel to Denver, he pushed it away.

On the heels of an emotional video tribute that recounted the service of and his relationship with his three older brothers—one of whom was killed in World War II, the other two of whom were assassinated before the world—Kennedy took the stage with all the vigor of a healthy man, determined to deliver a message that would bring the leaders of his party to their feet.

And he did.

Kennedy delivered a speech stamped with the Kennedy trademark, direct in its tone and heavy with the happy burdens of moral obligations that he believes Americans owe one another. But what was most remarkable about it, in the mind and eye of this humble blogger, was the reaction the party faithful had to it.

Here they have one of their longest-serving senators, the last living member of the generation of brothers that gave America two war heros, three United States senators, an attorney general and a president of the Unitest States. He is aged; he is ailing. Convention delegates knew, even as they watched an animated Kennedy fire away in vintage style, this is likely the last opportunity they’ll have as a party to thank him for his lifetime of service to their cause and their country.

For me, as a 31-year-old political observer who only has first-hand knowledge of one of those Kennedy brothers, it was almost surreal to watch. I have studied the lives of his brothers since even before I was an adult; the disquietude I felt, even as a 10-year-old, as I stood in Dealey Plaza was as deep then as it is unforgettable today. But there was something about watching Ted Kennedy tonight that, for the first time, made me feel that I had experienced some part of that famous Kennedy mystique.

Regardless of what you think of their politics (and virtually no one is tepid when it comes to their politics), the Kennedys are an American political institution. Their impact on this nation cannot be overstated. Their involvement in public service, in politics, in governance and in affecting change on so many issues throughout the last 50 years leaves a legacy that is unmatched in modern American history.

Kennedy used the final paragraph of his speech to signal a sea change in Democratic politics. Not only did he hand the leadership mantle of leadership of the party to Barack Obama and his generation, but in doing so, in the words of Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, he bypassed another American political family that at one time had seemed to be heir to that mantle: Bill and Hillary Clinton.

And Kennedy channeled his late brother, the president, as he did it:

This November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans. So, with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

It was one of those moments for which conventions are still useful: The very weight of history unfolding before your eyes.

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