Democrats Nominate Obama

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Obama is Democratic Nominee for President

The third night of the Democratic National Convention kicked off with a traditional roll call vote, in which state delegations cast votes to designate the Democratic presidential nominee. Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) will address the convention Wednesday night.

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Other Clinton states followed suit. New Hampshire, which brought her campaign back to life in January with a surprise victory, cast all its votes for Obama. Then came New Jersey, another state where Clinton trumped Obama in the primaries, which voted unanimously for him.

Two-thirds of the way through the roll call, an elaborately planned series of handoffs began to unfold. New Mexico yielded the floor to Illinois, which had passed on the first go-round. Illinois, Obama's home state, then yielded the floor to New York, Clinton's state.

Suddenly, the cameras zeroed in on Clinton within a throng of people on the convention floor moving toward the stanchion marking the New York delegation. A cheer went up as her image appeared on the big screens in the arena.

Standing next to Gov. David A. Paterson, Sen. Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Charles B. Rangel, Clinton did the honors for the man who had denied her dream of becoming the first woman ever nominated to lead a major party. "With the goal of unity," she said, "let's declare together in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president."

Clinton then moved that the convention suspend the rules and the continuation of the roll-call vote and asked that Obama be nominated by acclamation. Her motion triggered another thunderous round of applause and cheers from delegates. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) quickly gaveled the nomination to a close, triggering a demonstration that brought the party ever closer to unity.

Obama was nominated by Michael Wilson, a registered Republican and Iraq war veteran, with seconding speeches by Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.) and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Artur Davis (Ala.).

Wilson praised Obama for his opposition to the Iraq war and his willingness to meet with enemies of the United States. "You know, there's an old saying: 'If you always do what you did, you'll always get what you got,' " he said. "America needs new leadership in the White House, and that leader is Barack Obama."

Clinton was nominated by civil rights leader Dolores Huerta of California, who called the senator a champion for working people. "She has stood with hardworking people and knows how important it is to keep fighting and keep going," she said. "For many in America, working people are invisible. For Hillary Clinton, no American is invisible."

Long before the marquee speakers came to the hall, a procession of Democratic elected officials blasted McCain and Bush in an effort to undermine the GOP's advantage on foreign policy issues.

Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), an early supporter of Obama, directly addressed the question of whether Obama is ready to serve as commander in chief by holding up the current administration as an example.

"Together Vice President Cheney, [former defense secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and John McCain brought more than a century of experience to our foreign policy challenges," he said. "And what did that get us? One international debacle after another."

Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, noted that McCain had voted with the administration 90 percent of the time and that a McCain administration would look like a Bush administration. He argued that Obama would keep the country safer than McCain would.

"George Bush, with John McCain at his side, promised to spread freedom but delivered the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "They misread the threat and misled the country."

Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), who was one of the finalists in the vice presidential search, described McCain as "not the change we need" and, despite having voted for the Iraq war resolution, attacked Bush and McCain for their prosecution of that conflict.

"George Bush and John McCain were wrong about going to war in Iraq, are wrong about how to get us out of Iraq, wrong to ignore the danger in Afghanistan," said Bayh, who became an administration critic. "The time for change has come, and Barack Obama is the change we need."

Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr., Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.