Historic nomination: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to lead a major-party ticket
LA Times
Hillary Clinton made history Tuesday night, becoming the first woman ever nominated to lead a major-party ticket into the fall campaign for president.
Cheered instead of booed, as she was Monday, Clinton officially claimed the Democratic nomination after a suspense-less 90-minute roll call vote at the party’s national convention.
The result was preordained when Clinton’s chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, abandoned his candidacy and gave an enthusiastic endorsement, then followed up Tuesday by urging his backers to end their rowdy resistance.
“It is easy to boo, but it’s harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under Donald Trump,” Sanders said of the GOP nominee at a breakfast with California delegates. “Trump is the worst candidate for president in the modern history of this country.”
South Dakota’s votes delivered the prize that eluded Clinton eight years ago when she first ran for president.
But in a bit of stagecraft to promote the image of Democrats united, an announcement of the tally was delayed until Vermont — which passed on its turn in the alphabetical order — concluded the roll call by casting 22 of its 26 votes for Sanders.
He then immediately rose to his feet, took the delegation microphone and moved that the vote be made unanimous. As his wife, Jane, briefly embraced him, a sea of blue and gold Clinton signs blossomed on the convention floor and delegates, on a voice vote, roared their approval.
Several dozen Sanders delegates marched out of the hall to the media filing tents nearby, where they chanted, “This is what democracy looks like!” then sat down in silent protest.
The state-by-state balloting, traditionally a chance for local boosterism and some good-natured bragging — the birthplace of pizza, the home of tax-free shopping — briefly turned emotional when Sanders’ brother, Larry, cast his ballot as a delegate for Democrats living abroad.
A politician in Britain, Larry Sanders’ voice grew thick as he discussed his parents, their hard life and how proud they would be of “Bernard,” the candidate for president.
Bernie Sanders teared up as he watched.
Still, despite her triumph, Clinton still faces considerable remedial work.
The program for Tuesday night was devoted to a series of testimonials, being capped by former President Bill Clinton, designed to cast a more fully rounded and flattering light on the presumptive nominee, whose decades in public life have been a marriage of high achievement and serial scandal.
Opinion polling over the years has found Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator, to be one of the most admired women in the country and also, more recently, one of the most mistrusted.
A series of speakers from the worlds Clinton has inhabited — politics, women’s advocacy, child welfare, education reform — were on tap to deliver a series of flattering portraits.
The state-by-state roll call was a concession to Sanders and his supporters and an effort to help unify Democrats after they carried the fractious primary fight into the opening day of the convention.
The anger that suffused the proceedings seemed to fade some, at least inside the hall.
In contrast to Monday, when the mere mention of Clinton’s name drew a cascade of boos and jeers, Sanders supporters seemed more interested Tuesday in delivering one last hurrah for their candidate, cheering lustily when his name was formally placed into nomination. When it was their turn, Clinton supporters responded in kind.
That was due in no small part to Sanders.
Hours after delivering a wholehearted pro-Clinton speech in Monday night’s finale, he paid an unexpected breakfast call on the California delegation, a hotbed of resistance to the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“As goes California, so goes America, so I know that you know that you have an enormous responsibility,” the Vermont senator said, urging resistors to lay down their grievances and rally behind Clinton as he had.
Not everyone was convinced.
Victoria Thompson, 56, a Sanders delegate from Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento, welcomed Sanders’ visit but said she was not moved to overcome her resistance to Clinton.
“I can’t vote for her. I will not vote for her,” Thompson said. “If Bernie’s not an option, I’ll vote Green” Party.
But there were unmistakable signs that the stop-Clinton effort was in its final throes, even before the roll call formally installing her as the party’s presidential standard-bearer.
A group of delegates backing Sanders but unaffiliated with the campaign abandoned a threat to put forward a vice presidential candidate to challenge Clinton’s pick, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.
A more unified party was just one of the goals for Clinton entering the convention.
Speaking with reporters, the chairman of her campaign, John Podesta, frankly acknowledged the need to overcome voters’ deep-seated doubts about Clinton and her character by moving beyond matters such as her use of a private email server when she was secretary of State — which led to scolding from the head of the FBI — or the response to the attack on U.S diplomats in Benghazi, Libya.
“She doesn’t like hearing it, but she hears that people have issues with her,” Podesta said at a lunch hosted by the Wall Street Journal. “What we’re going to do is lay out in our convention why people can trust her to do what she’s been doing her whole life, which is to fight for women and families.”
He acknowledged the difficulty of running against a showman such as Trump, but insisted the qualities that made Trump a successful reality TV star, performing as boardroom impresario on “The Apprentice,” where not those voters seek in a president.
“Having a temperament that is quick to anger, discounts study, is impetuous, [has] probably never been thought of before as a qualification for putting your finger on the nuclear codes,” Podesta said. “While it has certain appeal for certain people who are entertained by him, I think it is quite dangerous.”
Times staff writers Evan Halper and Sarah D. Wire contributed to this report.
mark.barabak@latimes.com and chris.megerian@latimes.com
