Democrats nominate historic Hillary Clinton for US presidency

THE Democratic Party has made history by nominating Hillary Clinton to run for United States president as the first woman to head a major party’s presidential ticket.

Speaking via video link from New York after her nomination on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton told the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that she was honoured to have been chosen as the party’s nominee.

“I am so happy. It’s been a great day and night. What an incredible honour that you have given me. And I can’t believe that we’ve just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet. Thanks to you and everyone who has fought so hard to make this possible,” she said.

“And if there are any little girls out there, who have stayed up late to watch, let me just say: I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.”

Delegates erupted in cheers throughout the roll call of states on the floor of the convention earlier in the evening. 

“She’s got it. She has the numbers that are needed,” Al Jazeera said that from the convention when Clinton passed the 2,383 votes needed to secure the nomination.

“We knew this was going to happen because obviously we knew she was the presumptive nominee and that she had all the votes that she needed from the primaries. But what happened here was a roll call, state by state announcing their votes. How many for Bernie Sanders. How many for Hillary Clinton. And a great deal of drama in the room.”

In nominating Clinton, delegate after delegate at the convention made the point that the selection of a woman was a milestone in America’s 240-year-old history. US women got the right to vote in 1920.

Clinton promises to tackle income inequality and rein in Wall Street if she becomes president, and is eager to portray Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump, a billionaire businessman and former reality TV show host, as too unstable to sit in the Oval Office.

Trump, who has never held elective office, got a boost in opinion polls from his nomination at the Republican convention last week and had a 2-point lead over Clinton in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

After the roll call of states formalising Clinton’s nomination, Bill Clinton, the former US president, took the stage for a history-making appearance of his own convention.

Former presidents often vouch for their potential successors, but never before has that candidate also been a spouse.