If Monday was the night for the party’s stars, Tuesday was the night to show off its diversity. California Congressman Mike Honda spoke of his Japanese American family’s internment a half-century ago. African American poet and activist Maya Angelou performed, followed by Arizona American Indians singing the national anthem in the Tohono O’odham language. Rhode Island’s U.S. representative, Jim Langevin, rolled out to the podium in his wheelchair to extol the virtues of the all-but-anointed Democratic candidate, John Kerry. But the night’s most dynamic speaker, by far, was Barack Obama, the all-but-elected candidate for senator in Illinois, a biracial graduate of Harvard Law School who has distinguished himself in the segregated city of Chicago for his ability to build bridges across racial lines.

Obama’s father herded goats in Kenya before coming to the United States as a student; his mother, who is white, grew up in Kansas. One grandfather was a cook serving the British colonizers; the other worked on oil rigs and farms before signing up for Patton’s army in Europe. Obama’s remarkable life story testifies to the promise of opportunity for all in this country; he declared: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.” When his speech ended, the crowd erupted in cheers, and the stadium screen in the Fleet Center flashed a live feed from Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where elderly black women in summer dresses clapped with exuberance.

Obama is almost certain to win come November (the Republicans have so far failed to field a candidate in his race). He is months away from becoming the only person of African descent in the Senate and, with his echoes of Clinton-style eloquence, will surely be a star in the national Democratic Party for years to come.

The other revealed talent last night was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate’s wife and First Lady in waiting. Conservative analysts immediately assailed her for a “self-indulgent” performance, and it’s true that her speech was as much, or more, about her views than those of her husband’s. (Is a wife not supposed to speak her own mind? She insisted on this right: “My only hope is that, one day soon, women — who have all earned the right to their opinions — instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.”) But it also showed that Heinz Kerry has the makings of an international superstar — sort of like a sub-Saharan version of Eleanor Roosevelt. Starting her speech in measured, accented English, she soon moved on to phrases of welcome in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. She spoke of growing up in Mozambique (a dictatorship where her father voted for this first time when he turned 73), her student activism against South African apartheid, her immigrant’s journey to the United States of America. Heinz Kerry wrapped up her remarks with a quintessential American quotation, the elegant oratory from Lincoln’s first inaugural address in which he urged his fellow citizens (on the eve of war) to rise above their old enmities and recognize their common destiny. “The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It was a night to remember those better angels: the diversity — and tolerance of diversity — that has made this country strong. Convention organizers intend to highlight the party’s inclusiveness throughout the week. It’s not just a matter of race, gender, or place of origin, of course. The larger message is that Americans of all political beliefs — liberal and conservative — can fall behind the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Last night, speakers from Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy appealed to their audience in this spirit of national unity. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America,” Obama said. “There is the United States of America.” At another point in the night, a message flashed across the big screen, describing a Republican Vietnam veteran who had decided to vote for Kerry thanks to the Bush-induced morass in Iraq. Republicans, it was implied, can be reasonable people, too.

But how well will the Democratic Party’s touted diversity play in the rest of the country — especially in those “battleground” states where the election (so the experts say) will be won and lost? Take just one of last night’s wild cards: Heinz Kerry. Will she attract women voters who want to hear someone with the courage to say (invoking Eleanor), “It is time for the world to hear women’s voices, in full and at last.”? Or, will she drive away conservatives who are made uncomfortable by the prospect of a strong woman? (It is a sad fact that this is still a concern in a national election in 2004.) Will Heinz Kerry’s foreign origins and her menagerie of difficult-to-pronounce languages draw the admiration of voters? Or, will her background further suspicions that she is an alien in political waters reserved for the native-born elect? (It’s not without good reason that Kerry refuses to speak his fluent French in earshot of American reporters.) Last night, the party was united; the next few months will show us whether the party can unite the country.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen