In a historic vote Hillary Rodham Clinton has become the first woman to be elected to represent a major American political party in the bid for the United States presidency.
“At 6:39 p.m., the hall erupted in cheers and joyful tears as South Dakota cast the decisive 15 votes to put Mrs. Clinton over the threshold of 2,382 delegates required to clinch the nomination,” wrote the New York Times of the momentous occasion.
While she couldn’t attended the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia to accept the nomination in person the 68-year-old appeared in a huge way via satellite.
The feed began with a symbolic montage of all of the former presidents shattering like glass, and then Clinton’s grinning face was there to officially accept the Democratic nomination.
Apart from thanking everyone for their support the grandmother acknowledged just how historic this moment was by offering an inspiring message for young girls everywhere.
“What an incredible honour that you have given me, and I can’t believe we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet,” she said. “And if there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch, let me just say, I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.”
Of course this nomination means that if Mrs Clinton wins office not only will she be the first female president, but her husband, former president Bill Clinton would be the ‘first gentleman.’
Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Today during a speech at the Philadelphia convention Mr Clinton made a deeply personal case for his wife to be trusted with the Presidency, including the story of when he first laid eyes on her in a classroom at Yale Law School.
Of the meeting Mr Clinton told the crowd – who reacted with an audible “Awww”– that he recalled a young Hillary had “big blonde hair, BIG glasses, wore no makeup and she exuded this sense of strength and self-possession that I found magnetic.”
“I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back – but I couldn’t. Somehow, I knew this wouldn’t be just another tap on the shoulder and I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.”
Finally, Bill mustered the courage to ask Hillary out – their date was a gentle wander around the collage campus.
“We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since,” he said.
“We’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak.”
It took Bill three tries to get Hillary to marry him – including one attempt where he advised her to decline and start her political career instead. But eventually the pair was wed in a small house in his hometown of Arkansas – a home Bill bought as a romantic gesture after Hillary remarked she liked it.
“We were married in that little house on October the 11th, 1975,” Bill told the crowd on Tuesday. “I married my best friend.”
Of his wife a nostalgic Bill Clinton said: “I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her, at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was, and I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.”
Bill branded his wife “the best darn change-maker I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
“If you were sitting where I am sitting and you have heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, every long walk, you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward, that is just who she is,” he said.
Hillary’s rival for the presidency, Republican candidate Donald Trump, has come out ahead of Clinton in the race to the White House.
The July 22-26 Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll found that 39 per cent of likely voters supported Mr Trump, 37 per cent supported Mrs Clinton, and 24 per cent would vote for neither.
Reuters reports: “Trump’s gains came as he accepted his party’s nomination to the Nov. 8 ballot at the four-day Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, and as Clinton’s nomination in Philadelphia this week was marred by party divisions and the resignation of a top party official.”
Now that nominees have been decided there will be some fierce campaigning before Americans go to the polls in November.
