Denver, Colorado - Barack Obama was formally chosen as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate at the party's nominating convention Wednesday evening. Obama was nominated to a resounding cry of "aye" from the thousands of delegates in attendance at the Denver, Colorado convention.
Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, told cheering supporters that Obama had accepted the nomination, ahead of his much awaited speech planned before 75,000 people on Thursday night.
It was Obama's one-time rival, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who formally directed the convention to nominate Obama by "acclamation," ending a so-called roll call vote in which delegates pledged their support to Clinton or Obama in state-by-state announcements.
"Let's declare together in one voice right here, right now that Barack Obama is our candidate," Clinton said to loud applause.
Clinton earlier Wednesday had called on her 1,800 delegates to support Obama, just hours before the Democratic Party's delegates were to make the formal and symbolic choice between two historic firsts - an African American or woman presidential candidate.
"I am here to release you as my delegates," Clinton said in a final meeting with her delegates, sparking boos and cries of "no" from the crowd of still-bitter supporters.
Some of those delegates still picked Clinton as each state was called on to give their totals in the formal vote Wednesday night. At the moment when Clinton ended the roll call vote, the delegate count stood at 1549.5 for Obama to 341.5 to Clinton.
Senator Obama, 47, had already secured the centre-left party's nomination after the long primary election season. But some supporters of his narrowly defeated rival were holding out against Clinton's emotional appeal Tuesday evening for them to swing their votes to Obama in the interest of party unity.
The practice in which delegates from each state vote to formally name the party's candidate has become largely ceremonial, and candidates who lost the primary elections have freed their delegates to support the prospective nominee.
The move to even read Clinton's name during the vote at all aimed to defuse tension from a historic series of state-by-state primaries that pitted Clinton and Obama against each other.
All told, Clinton harvested more than 1,800 delegate votes during the brutal six-month-long primary season - the furthest any woman has come in securing a major party nomination.
The delegates represented 18 million votes, who her supporters say will feel abandoned if Obama, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have their way.
While some Clinton delegates said they felt able to go out and work for Obama to put a Democrat in the White House, there were others at the final meeting who remained very bitter.
Raymond, 47, a delegate from California who would only give his first name, said that if there was a vote by acclamation, it would be a "stab in the back for 18 million people."
"I want to make sure I get to vote! What is the purpose of this convention if it's not to vote," Maryland state senator Mary Boergers told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The vote is a traditional part of Democratic presidential conventions and allows each state to boast of its accomplishments and history and place its favourite candidate in the national limelight. It's important in mobilizing party loyalists in the November 4 general elections.
Boergers said her vote would not be against Obama but the fulfillment of an obligation they have to the voters who elected them as Clinton delegates.
Boergers also felt it's unfair that the Obama campaign has laid the responsibility to create party unity at the foot of Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, instead of directly reaching out to her supporters.
"I am so tired of people saying it's up to Hillary and Bill to bring people together," Boergers said, adding that they have already gone the extra mile.
