Barack Obama made history Tuesday by becoming the first African-American to clinch a major party’s presidential nomination, hours after rival Democrat Hillary Clinton offered herself as his running mate.
Ending an extraordinary competition that spanned five months and all 50 states, Obama finally amassed the requisite number of delegates as voters in the final two contests went to the polls in Montana, which he won, and South Dakota, which Clinton won.
“Because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another,” Obama told supporters in St. Paul, Minn. “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”
It was a remarkable milestone for a first-term senator from Illinois who was largely unknown to most Americans a mere 18 months ago. The son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, Obama spent years anguishing over his mixed-race heritage. Even after entering politics, he marveled that he could succeed with a name like Barack Hussein Obama.
And yet he managed to vanquish the Democratic Party’s most formidable political machine, run by Clinton and her husband, Bill. Bitter in defeat, the former president lamented Tuesday that Obama “gets other people to slime” Hillary.
But Obama had nothing but praise for the Clintons in his victory speech, delivered in the same hall where Republicans plan to nominate John McCain as their nominee in September. Acknowledging that “we’ve certainly had our differences over the last 16 months,” Obama called Clinton a historic figure who “has done what no woman has done before.”
Clinton, who once considered the vice presidency beneath her, told supporters on a conference call Tuesday that she would be willing to serve as Obama’s running mate.
At the same time, she didnot formally give up her bid for the top spot, telling supporters at a rally in New York City that “this has been a long campaign and I will be making no decisions tonight.”
Clinton was once so confident of winning the nomination that she predicted it would all be over by early February, when two dozen states would hold contests on the same day. But when the dust settled on Super Tuesday, Obama was ahead in delegates, proving that voters preferred his promise of change to Clinton’s emphasis on experience.
Obama managed to build and maintain his lead by cobbling together delegates from small caucus states that were given short shrift by Clinton. She concentrated her efforts on large primary states, many of which she won, although the proportional allocation of delegates allowed Obama to remain ahead.
Obama managed to weather controversies over his associations with radical leftists, including his controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Rural voters were offended when Obama referred to them as “bitter” people who cling to guns and God, but the gaffe was not enough to cost him the nomination.
