Delegates break into tears and dance in the aisles over choice
PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton broke through a monumental barrier Tuesday night when she became the first female presidential nominee of a major party, a historic moment that inspired many delegates at the Democratic National Convention to break into tears and dance in the aisles.
“I’m just shaking,” said Clinton delegate Diana Carpenter-Madoshi, of Rocklin, who threw her arms around the delegate standing in front of her. “I don’t even remember his name — and he was
tearing up! How good can that be?”
The moment came on a packed and boisterous convention floor during the roll call of states after Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders, in a symbolic move aimed at creating party unity, asked that Clinton be nominated by acclamation. Any protestations by die-hard Sanders delegates were drowned out by the roar of the cheering crowd.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Karen Sinunu-Towery, a former Santa Clara County assistant district attorney who had a convention pass for the event. She choked up when she remembered her grandmother, who was born in 1892.
“She got her master’s degree before women could vote,” Sinunu-Towery said. “She never missed a time to vote — ever. I wish she could see it.”
Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, will take the stage Thursday, the last night of the convention, when she’s expected to make a personal appeal to unify the party in her quest to defeat New York billionaire Donald Trump in November. It’s a task that has been made harder because of continued resistance this week from a core group of Sanders supporters.
In a surprise video appearance Tuesday night, Clinton briefly addressed the delegation.
“We just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet,” Clinton said from her suburban New York home. “If there are any little girls out there staying up late enough to watch, I may become the first woman president. But one of you is next.”
The weight of the moment was lightened when former President Bill Clinton addressed the crowd. In a folksy and highly personal speech, he described why he fell in love with the selfassured fellow law student at Yale — and how “I married my best friend.”
He was one of numerous speakers Tuesday night who tried to reintroduce Hillary Clinton to the country, many of whose citizens see her as untrustworthy, in part because of an email scandal stemming from her days as secretary of state.
Her husband spent as much time praising her accomplishments in improving education and civil rights for underprivileged children and families — “she’s the best darn changemaker I’ve ever met in my entire life!” — as he did highlighting her motherhood.
He remembered the day they moved Chelsea into her dorm at Stanford and his wife was on the floor lining the drawers with paper. He mentioned the night 18 years before when he drove her, pregnant with Chelsea, to the hospital after “her water broke.”
It was a graphic and somewhat jarring reference, but it led one person to tweet: “Hearing that the presidential nominee’s ‘water broke’ is both normal and completely revolutionary.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown announced the state’s delegate tally on Tuesday. He was surrounded by former Gov. Gray Davis, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer.
U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, called the moment “extraordinary.”
Two die-hard Sanders delegates shouted out over the governor but were largely ignored. Many gathered outside the convention hall afterward to stage a protest.
But the exhilarated Clinton supporters paid little attention to the demonstrations. To Carpenter-Madoshi, nothing would spoil the historic night.
“Women are undervalued, and we have been in the background of this country,” she said. “I’m thinking of Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Shirley Chisholm, Maya Angelou — these women paved the way.”
Clinton delegate Robert Camacho, 44, of Concord, said the nomination “meant everything” to him as well as to his mother, who died two years ago.
Camacho carried some of her ashes in his wallet, taped to the back of a Clinton campaign “Woman’s Card” so “she could be with me.”
Sinunu-Towery remembers as a child playing with a toy White House, filled with “little white presidents — all male” she would line up in a row.
She said she also had the privilege of attending the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver to witness the nomination of the first black president. She remembers watching African-American men in the delegations break down in tears.
“Now,” she said, “I know exactly what they felt.”