Barack Obama: Wins Nomination, Makes History
photos by Steed Media Service |
DENVER – Just eight years ago, Barack Obama was a complete political unknown. In 2000, Obama was reeling from a colossal Congressional campaign beating in Chicago at the hands of popular incumbent Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther leader who was much beloved. Obama was broke financially, broken emotionally, and he was not even invited to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Los Angeles.
Obama doesn’t need an invitation today, because he figuratively owns the convention in Denver – as well as a piece of history.
The junior senator from Illinois received the necessary votes from convention delegates during roll call at the Pepsi Center Wednesday, thus officially becoming the first African American to ever lead a major political party. The day’s momentous events cap one of the quickest and most spectacular rises ever seen in American politics. In 1996, when former President Bill Clinton was securing the nomination for his second term, Obama was making his first run for political office as an Illinois State Senator. And in 2004, the Ivy-League educated lawyer successful ran for the vacant Senate seat in Illinois, becoming just the third African American senator since Reconstruction. Four years after he delivered a speech during the DNC convention in Boston that galvanized a nation and placed him firmly on the political map for the first time, Obama is the Democrat’s presidential nominee – with less than three months away from claiming the Oval Office.
After a mercurial and caustic presidential primary that featured bloodletting from both camps, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) appropriately made Obama’s nomination official.
Former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton named the nominee in a roll call ceremony filled with tradition and symbolism — Obama's chief rival, who was edged out after a campaign that lasted through the entire primary season.
Obama arrived in Denver on Wednesday and will deliver his acceptance speech Thursday evening at the 70,000-seat Invesco Field near the Pepsi Center. “Let's declare with one voice, right here and right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president,” Clinton said.
Earlier in the day, prospective First Lady Michelle Obama admonished members of the Congressional Black Caucus inside the Denver Convention Center, a short walk from the Pepsi Center, to “do their part” to help make an Obama presidency a reality. Clinton also spoke to conventioneers a while later, admonishing her supporters to let their hearts dictate whom to vote for in November. “I am not telling you what to do,” Clinton said. “You've come here from so many different places having made this journey and feeling in your heart what is right for you to do.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the convention's presiding officer, called for a voice vote. After the motion received a huge vocal wave of “ayes,” she called for — and ended — the “no” vote. The convention band then immediately struck up the tune “Love Train,” and the cheering for the new nominee began.
– terry shropshire
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