Triumphant, Obama takes place in history

Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, said these times ‘require a wise leader.’

DENVER (AP) — Barack Obama stepped triumphantly into history Wednesday night, the first black American to win a major party presidential nomination, as thousands of Democrats transformed their convention hall into a joyful, shouting celebration.

“I think the convention’s gone pretty well so far, what do you think,” said the Democrats’ man of the hour in a jubilant late-night visit to the hall. The crowd thundered its approval, and he and running mate Joseph Biden basked in the cheers.

Former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked delegates to the party convention to make their verdict unanimous “in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory.” And they did, with a roar.

Competing chants of “Obama” and “Yes we can” surged up from the convention floor as the outcome of a carefully scripted roll call of the states was announced.

Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, is now one victory from becoming president of a nation where, just decades ago, many blacks were denied the vote.

But even as he won the nomination, there was open talk in the convention city that Obama’s race remained a stumbling block to winning the White House.

“A lot of white workers ... and quite frankly a lot of union members believe he’s the wrong race,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told a breakfast meeting of Michigan delegates.

In the general election, Obama will face Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who will accept his party’s nomination next week in St. Paul, Minn.

The polls showed a close race ahead with McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war a few days shy of his 72nd birthday, and Obama was hoping Democrats would leave their convention united despite the hard feelings remaining from a bruising primary campaign that stretched over 18 months.

Former President Bill Clinton did his part, delivering a strong pitch for the man who outmaneuvered his wife for the nomination. “Everything I’ve learned in eight years as president and the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job,” he said, to loud cheers.

Michelle Obama, watching from her seat in the balcony, stood and applauded as the former president praised her man.

The convention ends today with Obama’s acceptance speech, an event expected to draw a crowd of 75,000 at a nearby football stadium where an elaborate backdrop was under construction.

After Obama’s nomination, delegates filled out his ticket a few hours later, naming Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden vice presidential running mate, also by acclamation.

Addressing the convention, Biden said Obama was right about Iraq, a war he opposed from the start, and McCain was wrong.

“These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader,” Biden said. “A leader who can deliver change. The change that everybody knows we need.”

Sen. John Kerry, the party’s 2004 nominee, said Obama’s victory shouldn’t be a close call. In some of the strongest anti-McCain rhetoric of the convention week, he said his longtime friend is merely masquerading as a maverick. “The candidate who once promised a ‘contest of ideas’ now has nothing left but personal attacks,” he said. “How insulting ... how pathetic ... how desperate.”

Hillary Clinton’s call for Obama to be approved by acclamation — midway through the traditional roll call of the states — was the culmination of a painstaking agreement worked out between the two camps to present a unified front after their long and often-bitter fight for the nomination.

Inside the convention hall, the outcome of the roll call of the states was never in doubt, only its mechanics.

“No matter where we stood at the beginning of this campaign, Democrats stand together today,” declared Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a former Clinton supporter who delivered a nominating speech for Obama.

“We believe passionately in Barack Obama’s message of changing the direction of our country,” she said.