PHOTO: Michele Obama at the Democratic National Convention — “She absolutely nailed it”

The Democratic National Convention got off to a bumpy start in Philadelphia on Monday night, with some supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders — the runner-up in the contest for the Presidential nomination — booing every time the name of the victorious Hillary Clinton was mentioned.

Adam Quinn of the University of Birmingham talks to BBC Radio Ulster about the “very worrying” scenes at the beginning of proceedings, with the promotion of unity — and the contrast with the shambles of the Republican convention last week — jeopardized by the discord.

However, he notes that by the end of the night, the situation had been rescued by the speech of one Michelle Obama.

Listen to discussion

She absolutely nailed it….

She’s not a politician in any conventional sense, but she benefits that she is not going to be attacked in the hall…as a partisan figure.

By the standards of any politician…it was a great speech.

Quinn also talks about the Sanders-Clinton issue:

The polls suggest that when most people see the alternative — which is Donald Trump, which is pretty disastrous alternative from the perspective of any Democrat, right or left — that they will mostly come around, however begrudgingly in the end.

There is also discussion of Clinton’s Vice-Presidential choice, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, the “mixture of positives and negatives” that Bill Clinton brings to the campaign, and a judgement of Clinton v. Trump.