Michelle Obama with her daughters Maya (left) and Sasha in Denver. (AP)

Denver, Aug. 26: The Democratic Party geared up in earnest today to claim the White House with a vivid demonstration on the opening day of their national convention that America's pluralism, threatened by nearly eight years of George W Bush's policies, would be safe if Barack Obama was elected president in November.

The first day of the convention to formalise Obama's candidacy, appropriately themed "One Nation" by the party's leadership, was a parade of nationalities and races on the stage and in the backrooms here that symbolically pledged a renewed commitment to America's multiculturalism that is under strain.

It was also an attempt to neutralise muted rejection of Obama by many Americans on account of his race and to present the American reality to voters as a melting pot of different cultures.

The star of the convention on its first day, during prime time, was a black woman: the candidate's wife, Michelle Obama.

Dressed in a chic green jersey dress and a hairdo meant to enhance her striking features, Michelle received a standing applause from the party faithful and rave reviews from political pundits on virtually every TV channel here for telling her personal story in a major speech.

Earlier in the evening, a woman history teacher with Indonesian features told the convention that her students, in schools even in cosmopolitan New York city, "had never travelled beyond their neighbourhoods."

That woman was Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half sister whose father was an Indonesian businessman. Maya is married to a Chinese Canadian academic.

Michelle was introduced by another black man, her elder brother Craig Robinson, who went to Princeton, worked for Morgan Stanley and then gave it all up to become a basketball coach at Oregon State University.

The Navajo "nation" of native Americans presented the colours as soon as the convention was called to order.

The very first speaker of the day was Japanese American Doris Okada Matsui, a member of the US House of Representatives from California, who was born in one of the detention camps where more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II.

And the co-chair of the convention's Report and Rules Committee is Sunita Leeds, chairperson of the Indian American Leadership Council. The co-chair of the Credentials Committee is Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, a Hispanic born in Puerto Rico.

To complete the picture, Mary Rose Oakar, one of the few Arab Americans ever to serve in the US Congress was also given an important role at the convention.

Apart from the effort to show Obama as part of the American multi-ethnic mosaic, the parade of races and cultures at the convention was intented to counter the xenophobia in America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Indian Americans, who have been seeking a higher profile in American public life are taking advantage of this Democratic effort to ethnically broadbase US politics in the light of Obama's presidential bid.

There are about 100 Indian Americans on the floor of the 2008 Democratic National Convention at the Pepsi Centre here. These include 37 elected delegates and 30 alternates or committee members. The remaining 33 are made up of special invitees.

Rajen Anand, who has been a delegate to the last five Democratic conventions that has nominated the party's presidential candidate, said this is the highest Indian American participation in any political process in the US so far.

Anand was appointed executive director of the US Department of Agriculture's Centre for Nutrition Policy and Promotion by president Bill Clinton, a post he held from 1995 to 2001.

Indian Americans are using this year's Democratic convention to produce their version of Republican Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor who is the only Indian American to have been elected in recent years to the US Congress.

A bid by Ashwin Madia for a Congressional seat from Minnesota in the November elections is considered here to have the potential for victory.

At a reception organised here yesterday by the Indian American Leadership Initiative, the organisation's president, Jay J Chaudhuri, said: "While Republican governor Bobby Jindal remains the most visible Indian American public official, this year also marks an astonishing rise of Indian American Democrats as candidates, elected officials (and) appointed officials."