President Barack Obama offers a better path forward for the country that will promote united values rather than the winner-takes-all mentality of Republicans, former President Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night.

In a highly anticipated speech before Obama was formally nominated for re-election, Clinton framed the November vote as a choice of what kind of country Americans want.

"If you want a winner-take-all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket," Clinton said. "If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility -- a we're-all-in-this-together society -- you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden."

The packed Times Warner Cable Arena erupted in cheers when Obama made his first appearance at the convention by joining Clinton onstage at the end, and the two most recent Democratic presidents embraced and stood arm-in-arm waving to the crowd.

Analysts called the speech vintage Clinton, blending an expert's command of figures and details with a down-home touch of language and emotion that made him one of the best communicators and politicians of his era.

"If Barack Obama gets re-elected, I think tonight will be a good reason why," said Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos, adding that Clinton gave a Democrats "a master class" on moving to the political center.

In the 48-minute speech that ran well over its planned time, Clinton responded to the attack line by Republican nominee Mitt Romney that Obama's policies made things worse for Americans already confronting economic hardship four years ago.

Noting the economic crises Obama inherited upon taking office in January 2009, Clinton declared to raucous cheers: "No president -- not me, not any of my predecessors -- no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years."

He noted that "a lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated by this economy" and had yet to feel any benefits from a sluggish recovery under Obama.

"I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early '95," Clinton said, drawing a parallel between his experience and Obama's presidency. "We could see it was working, that the economy was growing, but people just couldn't see it yet."

Referring to last week's GOP convention, Clinton said that "in Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: 'We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in.'"

"I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better," Clinton said. "He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators."

Democratic economic policies have proven successful in the past, Clinton said, noting that Democratic administrations created 42 million jobs in their 24 years in power since 1961, compared to 24 million by GOP administrations in the other 28 years.

"It turns out advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and economically sound," Clinton continued.

Alluding to the rough primary campaign in 2008 when Obama defeated Clinton's wife, Hillary, for the Democratic nomination, the former president said Obama showed his willingness to work with anyone by appointing her as his secretary of state and also including Republicans in his Cabinet as secretaries of defense and transportation.

Clinton also listed Obama's achievements, focusing in particular on the 2010 health care reform law that he said has lowered health care costs and provided benefits for consumers such as allowing parents to keep children up to age 26 on family policies and preventing insurers from denying coverage for children due to pre-existing conditions.

"We're better off because President Obama fought for health care reform," Clinton declared, "You bet we are."

At the same time, Clinton criticized Republican proposals to overhaul the Medicare and Medicaid government health care programs for senior citizens, the poor and disabled.

"If that happens, I don't know what those families are going to do," he said. "We can't let that happen."

Clinton also derided Republican deficit reduction plans, saying "the numbers don't add up" because of planned tax cuts without any new revenue sources. The result will be widespread spending cuts that hurt "the middle class" and other vulnerable segments of society.

"Don't you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that Republican economic policy quadrupled the debt in the 12 years before I took office and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left because it defied arithmetic," he said.

The Clinton speech concluded a day of some self-inflicted wounds for Democrats. First, campaign organizers announced they were moving Obama's address concluding the convention Thursday from an outdoor stadium to the smaller Time Warner Cable Arena because of possible thunderstorms.

Later, the Wednesday session started with some dissension when delegates approved a change in the party platform to reinstate language recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The original platform approved on Tuesday omitted that reference, which had been part of the 2008 platform, and Republicans quickly criticized it as a snub to Israel.

Another change restored the word "God" to the platform after the 2012 version omitted it, though it included language on faith as part of American society. The language referring to God-given rights was the same as in the 2008 platform.

It took three voice votes, with supporters and opponents of the changes strongly expressing their preference, before a clearly flummoxed Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared himself satisfied that a two-thirds majority backed the new language despite groans of dissatisfaction from some delegates.