DENVER (AP) — Barack Obama swept to the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, Aug. 27, a transforming triumph that made him the first black American to lead a major party into the fall campaign for the White House. Thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered as they made history.
Former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked Democrats in the convention hall to make their verdict unanimous “in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory.” And they did, with a roar.
Competing chants of “Obama” and “Yes we can” surged up from the convention floor as the outcome of a carefully scripted roll call of the states was announced.
Obama, a 47-year-old Illinois senator, was across town as the party handed him its top prize — a ticket into the general election campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain.
His formal acceptance speech Thursday night was expected to draw a crowd of 75,000 at the nearby football stadium.
Clinton’s call for Obama to be approved by acclamation — midway through the traditional roll call of the states — was the culmination of a painstaking agreement worked out between the two camps to present a unified front after their long and often-bitter fight for the nomination.
Obama, in his first Senate term, carries the Democrats’ hopes of recapturing the White House into the general election campaign against Sen. John McCain and the Republicans.
Inside the convention hall, the outcome of the 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 Weston, 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.”
And Clinton did get hundreds of votes in the roll call before she called for Obama to be approved by acclamation.
Polls show the campaign now is a close one between Obama and McCain.
The same surveys show a strong desire for change after eight years of the Bush administration, and Obama has 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.
“A lot of white workers … and quite frankly a lot of union members believe he’s the wrong race,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told a breakfast meeting of Michigan delegates.
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.
Photo: Sen. Barack Obama
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