DENVER—Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean arrived in Denver on Friday as his party prepared to nominate Barack Obama for president amid a four-day spectacle of old-fashioned speeches and high-tech presentations.
Dean arrived on a bus with flashing blue and red lights that started in President Bush’s hometown of Crawford, Texas, and has been touring the West.
He met with a group of college students at a voter registration rally, telling them they hold the key to their own future and urging them to vote in November.
Dean said college students are the generation of change and that Obama is the person they want in the White House.
“Only you can win this. This is a generational change going on in America,” he said.
“The message that your generation has brought to us is, ‘Please stop fighting about those things that you disagree on and start reaching out to everybody and fix the things that you can agree on,'” Dean told the students.
Dean urged them to register to vote and to ask their neighbors to do the same, saying they will have more clout than television ads or talk show hosts.
Most of the students at the rally said they had already registered , but a few signed up on the spot.
Shirtina Scott, 20, who recently moved from Ohio to attend college in Denver, changed her registration to Democratic.
“I think this world is ready for a change,” she said as she scribbled her name on a registration form.
Dean said rural Americans have been hit hard by rising gasoline prices, hard-to-find health care and a disproportionate number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I think people in rural America have been really hurt by the Bush-McCain economic policies,” he said.
Dean said Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting doesn’t understand middle class problems.
“If you don’t know how many houses you own, how can you deal with affordable housing?” Dean said, again mocking McCain for saying he wasn’t sure how many homes he and his wife own.
Earlier in the day, Democrats opened the doors to the Pepsi Center to public tours, showing off a three-level stage with a podium bathed in blue light and Star Wars-like backdrop.
An estimated 50,000 visitors are expected when the convention kicks off on Monday.
