US election: Obama endorses Clinton as political heir

Writing in the Washington Post, external, EJ Dionne Jr says that Mr Obama’s mission in his speech was to try “to safeguard his legacy by ensuring his time in the White House would not be seen by history as having culminated in the election of Donald Trump. And so he went to work, combining rational argument with evangelical exhortation in the classic Obama fashion”.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear in the New York Times, external recall Mr Obama’s speech at the 2004 convention that thrust him into the national spotlight, in which he rejected the “politics of cynicism”. His challenge now, they say, is “to find a way to acknowledge that the political divides he promised to bridge have only grown deeper and more acrimonious while arguing persuasively that the way to rise above them is to elect Mrs Clinton”.

On the Politico website, external, Michael Hirsh says Wednesday’s speeches confirmed “a dramatic shift, perhaps even a reversal, of the roles the two major parties have been identified with for several decades. For the first time, perhaps, since Vietnam, the Democratic Party is now the party of national security expertise.”