Bill Clinton makes case for Obama re-election

Former President Bill Clinton rallied to the defence of a one-time adversary on Wednesday, arguing that US President Barack Obama cannot be blamed for a bad economy he inherited and must be re-elected to restore strong growth and create jobs.

The Democrats' most popular elder statesman, Clinton caps the second night of the Democratic National Convention with a speech designed to remind voters of the budget surpluses and job growth he led in the 1990s during his two terms in the White House.

He appealed for more time for Obama to fix the economy and reduce the jobless rate of 8.3 percent. Just as Obama has done repeatedly, Clinton blamed Republican President George W. Bush, without naming him, for leaving Obama with a broken economy.

His appearance followed a sometimes chaotic day at the convention in Charlotte, where Obama had to personally intervene to force back into the party platform language declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.

And Democrats scrambled to move Obama's Thursday night speech indoors. He had wanted to accept the Democratic nomination in an open-air stadium jammed with tens of thousands of supporters to portray an image of strength as he faces a tough fight with Republican Mitt Romney at the November 6. election.

But the threat of thunderstorms from remnants of Hurricane Isaac forced convention organizers to switch the speech to a much smaller location, the Time Warner Cable Arena.

That disappointed many thousands of Obama's supporters with tickets for the stadium who will now be left out. There will be no colorful balloon drop from the ceiling, a familiar scene at US political conventions.

Clinton was the main follow-up act to first lady Michelle Obama, who electrified the crowd with a powerful testimonial to her husband on Tuesday night.

In social media, reaction to her speech was off the charts.

She racked up 28,000 tweets per minute at the conclusion of her speech, according to Twitter. That was double the 14,000 that Romney saw in his convention speech last week. His wife Ann Romney's tweets per minute tally was just over 6,000.