For it is clear after the Hillary Clinton speech that the party remains divided, the Clintons and many of their supporters bitter that Mr Obama has rained on their parade.

Mrs Clinton's speech was notably short on praise for Mr Obama and her mention of Mr McCain being a "friend" will be seen as the green light by her disaffected supporters to vote Republican or stay at home in November. She pointedly failed to back Mr Obama as a commander-in-chief, his single greatest disadvantage against the grizzled war veteran John McCain.

And, in case anyone missed the point, husband Bill rammed it home with his decision to skip Mr Obama's acceptance speech tonight in Denver's Mile High Stadium.

Mr Clinton will not be the only absentee: Also missing will be the former party chairman Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.

The signal could hardly be clearer: the big guns of the party who had banked on a Clinton victory feel snubbed by the Obama campaign. They would rather see him lose in November to enable them to claw their way back to the driving seat and back Hillary Clinton for a presidential run in four years time.

This division is not to do with the issues: Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama have near identical policy platforms.

Rather, Mr Obama's nomination victory represents a changing of the guard: For more than a decade, the command lines of the party ran through the Clintons. Mr Obama has upset all this. If he wins in November, the big jobs will be doled out by his Chicago-based team.

"It's a good thing for the party, you need this clear-out every ten or 15 years," said one party official at the convention. "But there are going to be casualties."

And these fights will have effects beyond Denver. For the voters, Mr Obama is failing his first key test: if he cannot show the leadership needed to wrestle control of his party, how can he be trusted to run the country?

Mr Obama is not yet at the convention, and this absence has left a sense of drift among the speakers rather than a single easy-to-understand theme.

Many supporters think he should come down from his principled stand and engage in negative politics of the kind McCain's team are skilfully throwing at him.

The Bush administration is one of the worst in recent history, but by common consent the Democrats have yet to zero in on this.

Former president keeps a low profile by wife's side

BILL Clinton was supposed to beam at the side of his wife at the Democratic convention as she was crowned their party's presidential nominee. Instead, he held back tears as his wife formally surrendered the nomination to Barack Obama and threw her full support behind her former opponent.

At one point, he leaned back in his seat to bask in applause when she said Democrats know how to lead on the economy and other challenges.

The 42nd president's campaign performance this year was erratic: he helped drive voters his wife's way, but his occasional outbursts at critics and reporters tarnished his image as a statesman.

He has complicated the task of reconciliation with comments early on that were critical of Mr Obama.

On Tuesday, his first full day in Denver, Mr Clinton did what comes hardest – he kept a low profile and avoided wading into political waters that are still stormy amid tensions between the camps.

"Must be killing him," said the Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen.

Speaking before a gathering on international affairs, Mr Clinton gave a subdued address on democracy and global warming, referring to the convention and the campaign only in broad strokes. After about ten minutes of remarks, he left the stage to work on his wife's Tuesday night convention address and his own speech.

Mr Clinton offered no advice to Mr Obama. Instead, he said simply: "This was an endlessly fascinating process already, and it's still got some twists and turns between now and November."

SCOTT LINDLAW

No way, no how, no McCain – Hillary's battle cry

HILLARY Clinton made an emphatic plea at the Democrat conference for her supporters to back her one-time rival Barack Obama because victory over Republican John McCain "is a fight for the future and a fight we must win together".

The former first lady drew thunderous applause as she coined what could become the most powerful political slogan of the autumn campaign: "No way, no how, no McCain."

Mrs Clinton's speech, in the early hours of yesterday, will probably be the most closely scrutinised of the convention, a gathering that opened with drama – full of speculation about how effusive her support for Mr Obama would be and whether the party could heal the divisions from the primary campaign.

In the end, she held back nothing in an address that also served to launch whatever lies ahead in her political career.

"We don't have a moment to lose or a vote to spare," said the New York senator, writing the latest chapter in a political quest every bit as pioneering as Mr Obama's own.

She urged her supporters to remember who was most important in this campaign.

"I want you to ask yourselves, Were you in this campaign just for me?" she said. She urged them instead to remember US marines who have served their country, single mothers, families barely getting by on the minimum wage and other struggling Americans.

"You haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership," Mrs Clinton told the delegates.

Calling Mr McCain "my colleague and my friend", Mrs Clinton proceeded to tear into him as a voice of the past and little more than a clone of the deeply unpopular president George Bush. "We don't need four more years of the last eight years, more economic stagnation … more war and less diplomacy," she said.

And she congratulated herself and her campaign for bringing to the national consciousness a myriad of issues important to Americans, and women in particular.

"To my supporters, to my champions, to my sisterhood of the travelling pantsuits, from the bottom of my heart, thank you," she said. "Together we made history."