DENVER As Democrats arrived here Sunday for a convention intended to promote party unity, mistrust and resentments continued to boil among top associates of presumptive nominee
Barack Obama and his defeated rival,
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One flashpoint is the assigned speech topic for former president Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday night, when the convention theme is Securing
Americas Future. The nights speakers will argue that Obama would be a more effective commander in chief than his Republican rival,
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The former president is disappointed, associates said, because he is eager to speak about the economy and more broadly about Democratic ideas emphasizing the contrast between the Bush years and his own record in the 1990s.
This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms.
Some senior Democrats close to Obama, meanwhile, made clear in not-for-attribution comments that they were equally irked at the Clinton operation. Nearly three months after Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the nomination contest, these Obama partisans complained, her team continues to act like she and Bill Clinton hold leverage.
After a period earlier this month when the two sides were working collegially over strategy, scheduling, and other convention logistics, things turned scratchy again in recent days.
Some senior Obama supporters are irritated at how they perceive the Clintons fanned or at a minimum failed to douse stories that she was not even vetted as a possible vice presidential nominee. This is because she told Obama she preferred not to go through the rigorous process of document production unless she was really a serious contender, an Obama associate noted.
One senior Obama supporter said the Clinton associates negotiating on her behalf act like Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific still fighting after the war is over.
A prominent Obama backer said some of Clintons lieutentants negotiating with the Obama team are bitter enders who presume that, rather than the Clintons reconciling themselves to Obamas victory, it is up to Obama to accommodate them.
In fact, some senior veterans of Clintons presidential campaign do believe this.
He has not fully reconciled, said one political operative close to the Clintons, and he has not demonstrated that he accepts the Clintons and the Clinton wing of the party.
While the Clintons have a relatively easy job in Denver to deliver gracious speeches and accept what are likely to be loud cheers from their supporters it is Obama who has the heavy lifting this week, this aide said.
This is because large numbers of Clinton backers 30 percent in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll are still not backing Obama over McCain.
The peevishness on both sides and the volume of behind-the-scenes catcalls are noteworthy because both the Clinton and Obama teams had resolved in pre-convention talks that it was overwhelmingly in the interests of both sides to get along.
Both Obama and Clinton associates have said for weeks that one of the challenges of Denver would be to control the news media narrative, in a city full of reporters and political sources, at an emotional moment for both the Obama and Clinton teams.
