Delegates celebrate historic nomination of Barack Obama

DENVER - Barack Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, claimed the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday amid chants of "Obama" and "Yes we can."

Sealing a long-anticipated moment in history, Obama won the nomination by the acclamation of thousands of roaring delegates, making him the first black man to assume a major party's mantle for the presidency.

"It's a miracle, it's a dream," said Eden Prairie delegate Tori Hill, a black travel consultant. "We've reached the mountain top. ... It's surreal. It is our time, our moment. It is America's moment."

The improbable -- but expected -- victory came after former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked the convention delegates to end the roll call of states and make it unanimous "in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory."

But first, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and the Minnesota delegation celebrated after he cast 78 of the delegation's votes for Obama, and eight for Clinton.

Obama, the 47-year-old first-term U.S. senator from Illinois, later made a "surprise" appearance at the end of a fiery acceptance speech by his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.

Explaining his decision to open his formal acceptance speech to the public tonight in a 76,000-seat stadium nearby, Obama said, "Change in America doesn't happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up."

Biden introduced himself to the nation with one of the convention's most hard-hitting speeches, attacking Republican hopeful John McCain.

"The choice in this election is clear," Biden said. "These times require more than a good soldier -- they require a wise leader. A leader who can deliver change. The change that everybody knows we need. Barack Obama will deliver that change."

The McCain campaign responded immediately with a statement: "Joe Biden is right. We need more than a good soldier, we need a leader with the experience and judgment to serve as commander in chief from day one. That leader is John McCain."

Following the Democratic strategy of wrapping McCain as tightly as possible to an unpopular president, Biden said that "the Bush-McCain foreign policy has dug us into a very deep hole, with very few friends to help us climb out."

Biden was preceded by his son Beau Biden, a Delaware attorney general and member of the National Guard who is scheduled to deploy to Iraq on October 3, a month before the election.

Biden foreshadowed some of the domestic themes Obama is expected to hammer home tonight, listing a litany of economic concerns pinching working and middle-class workers, from spiking energy costs to stagnant wages.

"That's the America that George Bush has left us, and that's the future George, excuse me, John McCain will give us," he said.

While professing a deep friendship with McCain that "goes beyond politics," Biden laid out a series of policy disagreements, from the war in Iraq to tax breaks for big corporations.

"That's not change," he said in unison with the crowd. "That's more of the same."

'The man for this job'

With the former First Lady and their daughter, Chelsea, looking on from their seats in the balcony, Clinton said, "Everything I learned in my eight years as president and in the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job."

Clinton, who had worked tirelessly to win the nomination for his wife, also followed her in asking Democrats to unify behind Obama.

"Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama," he said. "That makes two of us. Actually, it makes 18 million of us -- because, like Hillary, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November."

'Yes we can'

In a nod to Hillary Clinton's own history-making candidacy, Bill Clinton said, "in the end, my candidate didn't win. But I'm very proud of the campaign she ran."

He also gave a friendly nod to McCain, who will get the GOP nomination at next week's Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Clinton called him a "good man who served his country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam."

He also praised McCain's independence on some issues but faulted him for aligning himself too often with the policies of the Bush White House.

"America," he said, "can do better than that. And Barack Obama will."

Then, to the crowd's chants of "Yes we can," he quipped: "Yes he can. But first we have to elect him."