“I move that Hillary Clinton be selected the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States,” Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday evening, saying words he probably never hoped to say.
With this statement, Clinton was officially nominated after the roll call of states gave her 2,842 delegate votes to Sanders’ 1,865. Clinton reached the magic number of 2,383 by the time South Dakota cast its votes, and when Vermont passed on its call, it was clearly a move to give Sanders the opportunity to make the final acclamation.
The rules were suspended by Rep. Marcia Fudge, the convention chairwoman, and Sanders and his wife, Jane, filed up the stairs and away from the Vermont delegation.
It was anticlimactic because the outcome was unofficially clear with the last primary, though Sanders delayed his endorsement for several weeks. He seemed crestfallen as he departed and many of his supporters wept openly when the roll call came to an end.
When the roll call was over, there was still a long evening of speakers and entertainers, including vocalist Andra Day, actress Elizabeth Banks and the Black women who Clinton had assembled months ago to tell the nation of how their children had been victims of gun violence or police brutality.
Billed as “Mothers of the Movement,” eight of them took the stage—Lezley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown, killed in Ferguson, Mo., two years ago; Lucia McBath, mother of Jordan Davis, shot and killed by an angry white man when he refused to turn his music down in Florida in 2012; Cleopatra Pendleton, whose daughter was an innocent bystander when she was gunned down in Chicago in 2013.
Oscar Grant, who was killed in Oakland, Calif., in 2009 by a BART police officer, was represented there by his mother Wanda Johnson. Maria Hamilton was there for her son, Dontre, who was killed in Milwaukee two years ago; Gwen Carr, Eric Garner’s mother, has been with the mothers from the start. Her son was killed by an officer who applied a chokehold on Staten Island in 2014.
Among the three who spoke were Geneva Reed-Veal, whose daughter Sandra Bland died in police custody after an unlawful traffic stop last year in Texas, and Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch member in Florida in 2012. Fulton has made many appearances on talk shows and at seminars, and she told the audience that being at the convention was not a matter of politically correctness. “This is about saving our children,” she said. “That’s why we’re here tonight with Hillary Clinton.”
Not only was Bill Clinton with his wife but also during his half hour at the podium, he practically cited every productive stop on her resume, from the moment they met in 1971 to her days as the First Lady of Arkansas to the First Lady in the White House, to her years as a senator from New York. “And she is still the greatest change-maker that I have ever known,” he said to an enthusiastic crowd.
It was vintage Bill, an elegant testimonial to a woman he knows better than anyone. “She’s the real one,” he said, when comparing her to the “made-up one” coming from the Republican ranks. “And you have elected the real one.”
Only the music of Alicia Keys could top his performance, and despite the late hour, it was still early for her fans.