Clintons unite in support of Obama's historic candidacy
DENVER — Bill and Hillary Clinton put an end to their bitter battle with Barack Obama on Wednesday in a dual show of support that prompted cheers and tears from the delegates who made the Illinois senator the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party.
Obama then made an unscheduled and unscripted appearance at the Democratic National Convention arena late in the evening to join the party in celebrating his historic presidential nomination.
The nominee joined his newly nominated vice presidential running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, onstage, and they hugged and applauded each other and the convention delegates.
Obama told the roaring crowd that he wants people to understand why he is proud to have “the whole Biden family on this journey with me to take America back.”
He deadpanned at one point that he thought the convention had “gone pretty well so far.”
Bill Clinton, whose derisive comments about Obama backfired on his wife’s presidential campaign, sang a much different tune Wednesday, lauding the Illinois senator as the man who can bring common sense back to American foreign policy.
“Clearly, the job of the next president is to rebuild the American Dream and restore America’s standing in the world,” Bill Clinton said. “Everything I learned in my eight years as president and in the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.”
But it was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton who provided the most dramatic moment of the third day of the Democratic National Convention, joining the New York delegation on the floor of the Pepsi Center to move to end the roll call vote and nominate Obama by acclamation.
Greeted with cheers from Obama supporters and Clinton supporters alike, Clinton said she made the motion “in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory.”
That’s the same spirit with which Bill Clinton took the stage to the wild cheers and the waving flags of the delegates.
“Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she’ll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama,” the former president said. “That makes two of us.”
Lauding Obama for choosing Biden as his running mate, Bill Clinton said Obama would rebuild America’s relations with other nations while wisely tackling important issues ranging from terrorism to the spread of AIDS.
Obama poses a stark contrast to the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Clinton said. McCain is on the wrong side of the two great issues of this campaign: restoring the American Dream and America’s reputation in the world, Clinton said.
“Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world,” he said. “Ready to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.”
The pro-Obama speech marked a remarkable turnaround for Bill Clinton, who, as recently as last fall, dismissed the first-term senator as utterly unqualified. “I mean, when is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?” Clinton said on “The Charlie Rose Show.”
“In theory, we could find someone who is a gifted television commentator and let them run,” he added.
And last winter, Clinton said that after “all the mean things” the Obama campaign had said about him, “I should be the last person to defend him.”
Even after Obama clinched the nomination in June, Clinton has seemed less than enthusiastic about him.
Since losing a close primary battle to Obama, Sen. Clinton has been more outspoken in support of him, especially in a convention speech Tuesday that apparently swayed many of her delegates to back Obama.
Sen. Clinton got 341 votes during the roll call to Obama’s 1,549. Then came New York’s turn to vote, and that’s when Sen. Clinton called for Obama to be approved by acclamation.
“With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory,” Sen. Clinton told the delegates, “let’s declare in one voice” that “Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president.”
The crowd responded with a roar, and not a few tears — especially from the African-American delegates.
“It’s unbelieveable,” said Deborah D. Major, an Obama delegate from Williamsville. “It’s like a dream come true.”
As a once-divisive campaign ended with the band playing “Love Train,” Erie County Clerk Kathleen C. Hochul called Clinton’s floor appearance “the classiest move I have ever seen in my life. Everybody around me had tears in their eyes.”
The delegates’ move to Obama came after Clinton freed her delegates in an afternoon speech. “I’m proud of her for doing it,” said Amherst’s Jerry Schad, a Clinton delegate who went to Obama. “It was the right thing to do to help the party.”
The Pepsi Center was filled Wednesday with delegates wearing Obama T-shirts, with pro-Clinton garb nowhere to be seen.
In many ways, Obama is an unlikely nominee: the 47-yearold son of a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya who was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, a community organizer in Chicago and constitutional law professor who became one of the most admired orators of his era.
Obama will accept the nomination before 80,000 at Invesco Field at Mile High tonight.
Obama’s very presence on the stage tonight will speak to many Americans of change.
“We come to a place in history that I never really thought I would see,” said Debi Rose, an African-American delegate from Staten Island. “It really is a fulfillment of a dream of Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s prediction that we would get to the mountaintop.”
News wire services contributed to this report.
