Over a year of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears finally paid off late on Tuesday afternoon. The Democratic National Convention formally nominated Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, making her the first woman to be nominated as the presidential candidate of a major party.
In an obvious attempt to extend an olive branch to supporters of Bernie Sanders, convention officials allowed several delegations to have both Hillary and Sanders supporters announce their vote. It was not enough, however, to prevent a group of “Bernie or Bust” delegates from walking out of Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia.
The result, though, was a relatively peaceful roll call. The best way to capture how it unfolded is to check out a couple of live threads I posted on my old stomping grounds at Daily Kos. Part 1 is here, and part 2 his here. There was a lot of speculation on there that when it came time for New York, where Hillary lives, to cast its vote, it would yield to Vermont. Under this scenario, Sanders would have moved to suspend the rules and have Hillary named the nominee by acclamation. Another scenario, as reported by NPR, called for Vermont to wait until the very end of the roll call to cast its vote
This would have been similar to how the roll call at the 2008 convention unfolded. At that time, when New York was called, Hillary moved to have Barack Obama acclaimed as nominee. In the end, it didn’t unfold that way. But history was officially made at 6:39 p.m. Eastern, when South Dakota cast the 15 votes that put Hillary over the top. PBS NewsHour captured the historic moment here.
As it turned out, when Vermont was called, it asked to put its vote on hold until the very end of the roll call. After Vermont finally cast its vote, Sanders stood up and moved that Hillary be acclaimed as the Democratic nominee. PBS NewsHour captured this moment as well.
A classy move by Sanders, who spent most of Tuesday urging his supporters to unite behind Hillary to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. It may not have seemed like it, but his supporters didn’t need much convincing. A poll conducted by Pew Research found that a whopping 90 percent of Sanders supporters will vote for Hillary in November. If these numbers hold, it will be more than enough to take the air out of Trump’s convention bounce.
Now the real battle begins–the fight to keep a man who is unfit for office by any definition out of the White House. It’s time to be stronger together.
