For Triangle residents who didn’t make it to Denver, but want to watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech with a group, check out one of several watch parties in our area tonight:

Area
Dozens of area watch parties are listed at an Obama campaign sponsored site. The list includes parties in most Triangle towns. You can find one near you here.

Cary
Galaxy Cinema, an independent arthouse theater, will present a Mile High Watch Party from 7 to 11 p.m.  Tickets for the event are free, but seating is limited and advance registrations are suggested. The theater is located at 770 Cary Towne Blvd., near Cary Towne Center, just off I-40 Exit 291. 

The theater can seat as many as 250 in its screening room. The theater also offers WiFi and voter registration. In addition, a local women’s a capella group, Fleur de Lisa,  will be leading 200 people in a sing-a-long  of an original song they wrote for Obama.  Listen to the song.

To learn more, contact Kim Yaman at Galaxy Cinema at 919-463-9959 or mygalaxycinema@gmail.com. 

Raleigh
Raleigh’s Acceptance Speech Watch Party – 9 p.m.
Raleigh Field Office, 130 E. Morgan Street

Durham
Duke University’s Democrats and College Republicans will be holding viewing parties on campus to watch their respective national conventions.

The Duke Democrats will convene in the Richard White Lecture Hall on East Campus from 7 to 11:30 tonight.

The Republican viewing party will take place Thursday.

For more information about the Democratic watch party, contact Benjamin Bergmann, president of the Duke Democrats, at ben.bergmann@duke.eduor (352) 562-5957. For details on the Republican event, contact Vikram Srinivasan, chairman of the College Republicans, at vikram.srinivasan@duke.edu or (408) 410-1521.

Fayetteville
State Rep. Rick Glazier will speak at the watch party at Dock’s at the Capitol, 126 Hay Street. The free event begins at 9 p.m.

DENVER- Spielberg! Affleck! J.Lo! They were among the Hollywood celebrities attending events in Denver as the Democratic National Convention nominated Barack Obama as the party’s presidential candidate.

Steven Spielberg, who directed a short film that shown Wednesday at the convention, was spotted entering the Pepsi Center.

Jennifer Lopez spoke at a reception honoring children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman. Ben Affleck read excerpts from a Howard Zinn book and made an appearance at the city’s food bank for America’s Second Harvest.

Affleck was joined by his wife, Jennifer Garner, at the book reading at the Starz Green Room across the street from the Pepsi Center. Also participating: Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington, Taye Diggs, Hill Harper and Josh Brolin.

Other celebrity sightings around Denver:
      – The Black Eyed Peas performed a concert at the Fillmore Auditorium for the Creative Coalition. Fergie praised Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Tuesday-night speech, saying Clinton “really spoke to me as a woman. And I think she spoke to a lot of people in that way.”
      – Politicians including former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner attended a ONE Campaign party featuring a Kanye West performance. Also in attendance: Forest Whitaker, Kal Penn, Jamie Foxx and director Davis Guggenheim.
      – Muhammad Ali sat in the convention audience.
      – Fran Drescher, Ashley Judd and Joy Bryant joined Lopez at the reception honoring Edelman.
      – Hathaway and others gathered at a morning reception honoring Annette Bening for her work narrating the documentary “14 Women,” about women in the U.S. Senate.
      – Big Boi of Outkast was at the airport on his way out of town after hosting a Radio One show where he interviewed John Legend, among others.

DENVER – The Democratic National Convention you see on TV is not the same convention as experienced in the Pepsi Center.

You see delegates cheering, dancing, waving signs. You don’t see the army of men and women in lime-green vests patrolling the aisles, distributing American flags and signs and instructing delegates in their “spontaneous” demonstrations.

Humanity clogs the area behind the prime floor seats and in front of the risers. Delegates push to find their seats. Gawkers want a glimpse of network news stars broadcasting from the floor.

“My God, that’s Katie Couric!” a woman screamed as she snaked through the crowd.

Others in the lumbering mass are celebrities whose conversations cause those around them to stop and stare. A jam quickly formed when comedian and TV talk show host Bill Maher stopped to talk with Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. I couldn’t hear their conversation and was blinded by camera flashes. Kucinich’s beautiful wife, Elizabeth, stood off to the side, almost unnoticed.

Many of these wanderers are guests or staffers who have no seats – but they do have cameras and cell phones and the need to share. Others are members of the news media – who outnumber delegates here better than three to one – who must take the temperature of their delegation, again. Is the party unified yet?

So, hundreds, if not thousands, of people roam the hall – or they would if there was room to roam. We may be in a city on the wide-open plains, but here in the Pepsi Center the proximity to other human beings is worse than anything New York commuters experience on rush-hour subways. In the bottleneck, it’s hot and close and an unconventional reality.

During former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner’s keynote address Tuesday, I tried to make my way to Media General’s seats in the press stands near the podium after visiting with North Carolinians. Here’s some of what I heard from the podium and on the floor:

Warner: “The most important contest of our generation has begun…”

Lime-green vest man: “Put the signs down for now. We’ll tell you when to put them up.”

Warner: “I believe from the bottom of my heart with the right vision, the right leadership, and the energy and creativity of the American people, there is no nation that we can’t out hustle or out compete. And no American need be left out or left behind.”

Man to friend: “You coming to the party tonight?”

Friend: “Which one?”

Warner: “In America, everyone should get a fair shot.”

Lime-green vest woman speaking urgently into phone: “We have a press bottleneck between Alaska and New York! They won’t move!”

Warner: “You know America has never been afraid of the future, and we shouldn’t start now.”

Young blonde woman on a hot pink cell phone: “You can drop your bags at my place. … We’re staying at the Sheraton.”

Warner: “Barack Obama has a different vision – and a different plan…the status quo just won’t cut it.”

Lime-green vest man, shouting: “Guys, you can’t stand there. You’ve got to keep moving. Move! Move! Move!”

As far back as I can remember, one of my favorite things was when my parents let me stay up late to watch the Roll Call of the States during political conventions.  I guess that explains why I jumped at the chance to blog for Media General.

The Illinois Delegation was just recognized by the Secretary of the Convention to cast what I anticipated would be the deciding votes in the Roll Call of The States.  However, in a beautifully scripted play, Illinois yielded to New York as Senator Hillary Clinton walked out onto the convention floor.  Hillary stepped to the microphone in the middle of the New York delegation.  She moved “in the spirit of unity” that the rules be suspended and Barack Obama be nominated by acclamation.

The crowd went nuts as Speaker Pelosi called for a vote on the motion which passed and kicked off a celebration among all of the delegates in the hall.

This was a great way to remind everyone here and at home that we are a united party and a united people.  I will never forget being here for the most significant Roll Call of my lifetime.

–Bruce Thompson, NC Delegation

DENVER (AP) – Barack Obama, standing where no black has ever stood before, swept to the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday as thousands of national convention delegates cheered his improbable triumph.

Former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked the convention delegates to make it unanimous, the culmination of a painstaking agreement worked out between the two camps to present a unified front.

Obama was across town as the delegates he won in the primaries of winter and spring sealed his victory. Aides left open the possibility that he would briefly visit the Pepsi Center to thank his supporters, a routine event at recent national conventions. His formal acceptance speech Thursday night was expected to draw a crowd of 75,000 at a nearby football stadium where an elaborate backdrop was under construction.

Obama, 47 and in his first Senate term, carries the Democrats’ hopes of recapturing the White House into the fall campaign against Sen. John McCain and the Republicans.

Inside the convention hall, the outcome of the traditional roll call of the states was never in doubt, only its mechanics.

“No matter where we stood at the beginning of this campaign, Democrats stand together today,” declared Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a former Clinton supporter who delivered a nominating speech for Obama.

“We believe passionately in Barack Obama’s message of changing the direction of our country,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Clinton formally released her delegates amid shouts of “no,” by disappointed supporters. “She doesn’t have the right to release us,” said Massachusetts delegate Nancy Saboori. “We’re not little kids to be told what to do in a half-hour.”

Polls showed the campaign was a close one between Obama and McCain.

The same surveys showed a strong desire for change after eight years of the Bush administration, and Obama pledged an end to the war in Iraq and a fresh economic policy.

But even as he awaited his nomination, there was open talk in the convention city that his race remained a stumbling block to winning the White House.

The convention program also included the delegates’ acceptance of Obama’s choice of Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as vice presidential running mate. Biden had the marquee time spot for his acceptance speech late Wednesday.
 
Former President Clinton also had a turn at the podium, this time in a supporting role for the man who defeated his wife in a bruising battle for the nomination.

Obama’s nomination sealed a political ascent as astonishing as any other in recent memory – made all the more so by his race, in a nation founded by slave owners.

The son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya whom he barely knew, he attended college and Harvard Law School. In between was a turn as a $12,000-a-year community worker on the streets of Chicago.

He won his seat in the Illinois Legislature in 1996. But his first bid for higher office, a brash challenge to Rep. Bobby Rush in an inner-city Chicago congressional district, ended in failure in 2000.

Four years later, as a candidate for the Senate, he dazzled with a keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then won his election. He announced his presidential candidacy a scant two years after arriving in Washington.

With his gifts as a speaker, his astounding ability to raise funds on the Internet and an unmatched ground operation pieced together by political veterans, he won the first test, the Iowa caucuses, on Jan. 3
 
Clinton rebounded to win the New Hampshire primary five days later, and the two were soon matched in a grueling battle for the nomination that was not settled until the primaries ended in June.

“The journey will be difficult. The road will be long,” he said then as he pivoted to confront McCain.

DENVER—The 2008 presidential election offers North Carolina a chance to settle the score from the racially-divisive Senate campaign of 1990, Gov. Mike Easley told delegates this morning.

Speaking at a North Carolina breakfast, the governor asked fellow Democrats to “remember 1990” as they enter the fall campaign. (See video below.)

“We’ve got a score to settle,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten – it goes back to 1990.”

The ultra conservative Republican Jesse Helms defeated Democratic candidate Harvey Gantt, an African-American, in the 1990 Senate race, a race that was one of the most racially-divisive elections in the state’s recent history.

Helms ads played up racial tensions heavily. One aimed at white workers said, “You needed that job. You were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.”

Despite recalling the viciousness of that election cycle 18 years ago, several African-American delegates, including Rep. Mel Watt, said this November’s election should not be used to look back at that one.

“I don’t know anybody who walks into a voting booth in 2008 thinking, ‘I’m settling a score from 1990,’” Watt said. .

Ed Booth, an Obama delegate from Washington, N.C., said people “feel the scars from the tactics that were used,” but have moved on.

After his remarks to delegates, Easley told reporters that the 1990 race paved the way for African-American candidates to win statewide elections in North Carolina, despite Gantts six point loss.

“It showed race is something you can transcend,” Easley said.

But Valerie Woodard, a county commissioner from Charlotte, said she thought bringing up the ugly race from 18 years ago was unnecessary — not to mention Easley’s repeating of his call to “settle the score,” a vengeful phrase he used twice from the podium.

She said she didn’t even remember the 1990 race until Easley brought it up.

“It’s not fresh in my mind,” she said. “You can’t dwell on the past. We have surpassed that.”

DENVER – Democrats were poised to formally deliver the party’s presidential nomination to Barack Obama on Wednesday, making him the first black nominee of a major party. While the historic outcome was certain, suspense remained over how a vote of delegates would proceed, and for how long.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, presiding officer of the Democratic National Convention, predicted roll-call voting after the names of both Obama and one-time rival Hillary Rodham Clinton are put in nomination, would go “very smoothly.”

“Are you ready for victory? Then you must be ready for unity. That is the only way we are going to win and have this victory,” she told Iowa’s convention delegates.
 
Many details remained unknown, however, including how many states would vote before somebody – probably Clinton herself – asks the delegates to give the nomination to Obama by acclamation.

Clinton, who made a ringing, unqualified endorsement of her former rival in a prime-time convention speech Tuesday, planned to meet with all her delegates in early afternoon and was expected to make a statement at that time. She won 18 million votes in primary-season contests but failed to earn her party’s nomination.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who had been a Clinton supporter, said he expected the New York senator to say that she would cast her vote for Obama.

“I’m going to cast my vote for Senator Obama if Hillary Clinton says she’s going to cast her vote for Senator Obama,” Rendell said.

Obama, who was due to arrive in the convention city mid-afternoon Wednesday, will give his acceptance speech on Thursday to as many as 75,000 people at nearby Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.

Then, on Friday, Obama, his wife Michelle and running mate Joe Biden and his wife Jill will embark on a bus tour of battleground states Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Biden was to address the convention Wednesday night, as was former President Clinton, whose support for Obama has seemed tepid at best. Earlier this month, for instance, the former president sidestepped a question on whether Obama was prepared for the White House. “You could argue that no one’s every ready to be president,” Clinton told ABC News.

Representatives of the Clinton and Obama teams struck a deal setting ground rules for Wednesday’s roll call vote that will hand the nomination to Obama, but will also allow Clinton supporters to express their support for her.

Advisers to Clinton and Obama sent a joint letter to state delegation chairs instructing them to distribute vote tally sheets to delegates Wednesday and return them before the vote gets under way.

The letter, first obtained Tuesday night by The Associated Press, said Clinton would have one nominating speech and two seconding speeches, followed by Obama’s nominating speech and three seconding speeches – totaling no more than 15 minutes for each candidate. Then the roll call will begin, said the letter signed by Obama senior adviser Jeff Berman, Clinton senior adviser Craig Smith and convention secretary Alice Germond.

The roll call will continue until all votes are counted or someone asks the delegates to give the nomination to Obama by acclamation.

Democratic officials close to Clinton say they plan to have someone – perhaps the senator herself – cut off the vote after a few states.

Yet to be announced: who would make the nominating speeches and how long the roll call vote would be allowed to proceed.

Kathleen Krehbiel, an Iowa delegate who had supported Clinton, credited the New York senator’s convention speech for finally persuading her to cross the line and vote for Obama.

“My horse is out of the race. I’m getting out to work for Obama,” Krehbiel said. But, she added, “I think there are a few delegates who need to vote for Hillary to reach that point of closure.”

In a sign of unity, Obama adviser Berman and Clinton adviser Smith told delegates on Wednesday that they have been working out of the same office all week to ensure a smooth convention.

“The story is that we are working as a team,” Berman said.

Anticipating Wednesday night’s focus on national security at the convention, Republican John McCain contended in a new TV ad that Obama showed he was “dangerously unprepared” for the White House when he described Iran as a “tiny” nation that didn’t pose a serious threat.

“Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to ‘generate power’ but threatening to eliminate Israel,” says the ad, which was being run in key states. “Terrorism, destroying Israel – those aren’t ’serious threats”‘?

Missing from the ad was the context of Obama’s remarks last May in which he compared Iran and other adversarial governments to the superpower Soviet Union. “They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us,” he said in arguing for talks with Iran. “You know, Iran, they spend one-100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Bill Clinton in his speech was expected to criticize McCain and on the Bush administration, particularly on the state of the U.S. economy.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Two North Carolina women will address the nation tonight when they speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Gloria Craven of Eden is scheduled to speak at 8:45 p.m. eastern time.  She and her husband lost their jobs as textile workers when Pillowtex closed its doors in 2003.  According to the Obama campaign, Craven is supporting Barack Obama because she believes he understands the struggles of working families, and he will help to protect American jobs, rather than rewarding companies who ship jobs overseas.  She introduced Senator Obama at last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Raleigh.

Pamela Cash-Roper of Pittsboro is scheduled to speak at 10:12 p.m. eastern time. 

Learn more about Cash-Roper by watching NBC17’s video report below: