Obama Campaign Will Try to Have Speech Excerpts in Time for Evening News

Staffers dealing with logistics of fitting Thursday program into smaller venue

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/6/2012 3:13:13 PM

The Obama campaign and Democratic National Convention organizers said Thursday the speech texts could be delayed due to the logistics changes of moving the last day to TWC Arena, but they said they would try to get excerpts of the president's speech to new organizations before the network evening newscasts begin at 6:30 p.m.

In a backgrounder with reporters, the Dems did not give away much about the president's speech other than to suggest it highlight the choice between the two candidates, lay out the president's case for another for years and his vision for policies that would earn his reelection, and to strongly suggest he would be mentioning both the troops and ending the war in Afghanistan, which they pointed out Governor Romney did not mention in his speech.

Look for Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to focus on foreign policy in his speech, both critiquing the Romney positions and pointing to the president's accomplishments.

Asked about the platform flap over leaving out "God given" in one section and Jerusalem as Israel's capital in another, party officials said they had not been taken out of the 2008 platform, but had been incorrectly omitted from the new one. The president was said to have first learned about the omissions from news reports, after which he asked that they be added back to reflect his own views, said the officials.

In some bad news for Earth, Wind & Fire fans, the band, which was scheduled to appear at Thursday's closing festivities when they were going to be at Bank of America Stadium, won't fit into Time Warner Cable Arena, but Foo Fighters and James Brown are still on the bill.