In the platform, speakers, electorate, it's all about women

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DENVER -- For giddy Democrats assembled in the Mile High city this week, it's all about women.Even though Barack Obama and John McCain were statistically neck-and-neck in the political horse race going into the Democratic National Convention, many Democrats here are convinced that their party platform's emphasis on women's rights, their candidate's positions on the issues and the way they have structured their convention make them more likely to win in November.Democrats require that 50 percent of their delegates be women, up from only 13 percent just 40 years ago.The schedule for their opening session Monday featured 33 women speakers out of 62 scheduled, culminating in an address to the convention by Michelle Obama, wife of the presumptive Democratic nominee, who is a hard-charging lawyer but is aiming to present herself as a wife and mother to Americans who complain they still don't know who she is.While it is unusual for the wife of the nominee to be the featured speaker for the first night of a convention, the Democratic National Committee is worried that her first introduction to many Americans did not go well. She said that when her husband secured the nomination after a tough fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was finally proud of her country. Some thought that was inartfully phrased and wondered if she were a closet black-power advocate. She since has stressed she is not.A woman lawyer who worked alongside Michelle Obama for seven years said Michelle hates the spotlight, hates wearing makeup and hates getting dressed up every day but is willing to do it to appear more as a traditional wife to make American voters more comfortable.The Democrats' party platform this year is the strongest it has ever been on women's rights. In 2004, the Democrats said they would stand by a woman's right to choose to have an abortion but abortion should be safe, legal and rare.In 2008, they say the Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade (the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion) and will oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.The platform also says that the party strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.Tuesday night truly is all about women inside Denver's Pepsi Center where the Democrats are meeting. Hillary Clinton is to speak, and Obama forces are hoping her speech rouses women around the country, especially since only 47 percent of those who voted for her in the primaries say they are enthusiastic about Obama.Obama essentially was forced to permit a roll-call vote at the convention to give Hillary Clinton's supporters a chance to cheer for her, especially because she was not vetted for the veep slot because Obama did not want her on the ticket with him. The tension between the two campaign organizations has been so acute for weeks that it has overshadowed much of Obama's effort to get his message out.The selection of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as Obama's running mate, spearheaded by Caroline Kennedy, was designed primarily to showcase his foreign policy expertise but also his stand on women's rights.Although Biden is a Catholic, he is pro-choice. His election won the enthusiastic support of numerous women's groups such as Emily's List, a group dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office.Even though Democrats in 2004 rejected the slogan of change because it didn't resonate with voters, Obama chose change you can believe in this year because 87 percent of Americans say they think the country is going in the wrong direction and convention chair and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she liked the idea.And if there's no other barometer that women are a big deal for the Democrats this year, for the first time in recent memory, convention planners said, women are not supposed to have to stand in line for toilets. The Pepsi Center has 198 toilets for women (albeit many are outdoors) compared with 45 for men and 129 urinals.(Scripps Howard columnist Ann McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986. E-mail amcfeatters(at)nationalpress.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)