Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the United States, Jan. 30, 2016. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)
Hillary Clinton, who won the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday, has made history as the first woman to run for the White House on behalf of a major U.S. political party.
However, her victory was overshadowed by apparent party division following a damaging leakage of internal emails that suspected backroom bias against her former rival Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party and amid growing fears that more harmful leaks may come.
"Are we ready to make some history?" asked Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the secretary of the Democratic National Convention, when a roll call vote by delegates began.
About one and a half hours later, Clinton, the 68-year-old former secretary of state who enjoys near universal name recognition after almost a four-decade public life, easily exceeded the 2,383-delegate threshold needed to clinch the nomination amid huge applause in the hall. The tally included the overwhelming support by unpledged delegates, or superdelegates, for her.
"I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the Democratic nominee for president," said Vermont Senator Sanders, suggesting to give Clinton the nomination by acclamation in a bid to bridge the divide between his backers and Clinton supporters. Vermont was the last state of the roll call.
"We are going to win. This is a historic night," Rebecca Reed, a delegate from Missouri, told Xinhua.
"I was so happy that I cried ... I remember when women first got to vote in America when I was about 9 years old," said Geraldine Emmett, a 102-year-old delegate from Arizona who announced the state's 51 votes for Clinton during the roll call.
"When I was young, I never dreamed to see a woman become the president of the United States some day," said Emmett, "I believe in her (Hillary Clinton) and I believe she could beat Donald Trump in November."
However, minutes after the roll call, more than 100 delegates supporting Sanders marched into the media center of the Democratic National Convention and staged a protest against Clinton's nomination, waving posters and chanting "walk out" loudly.
"The system is rigged. We are taken advantage of by the system. We know there is election fraud in some states and it's been ignored," Caitlin Glidewell, a 20-year-old alternate delegate from Colorado, told Xinhua in tears.
"We are here to give voice to those voters and those other people in our country that were silenced in the primary. Unfortunately, I don't think many Americans are surprised by that and because of our complacency, we will probably wind up with either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton," said New Jersey delegate Michelle McFadden-diNicola.
Asked if they will vote for Clinton in November, some Sanders backers nodded reluctantly, some said they choose to vote for their conscience, and all answered they will not support Trump.
"I don't know what I would do in November ... but I do know that we need to keep rather than party unity in focus, we need to keep our country's unity in focus. And I can tell you now that I will not vote for Donald Trump," McFadden-diNicola told Xinhua.
The ongoing Democratic convention has been rocky with apparent division following the fallout of leaked internal emails from staff of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), forcing committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign while sparking protests by thousands of Sanders supporters in Philadelphia since Sunday, one day before the start of the four-day event.
During his speech to the convention on Monday, Sanders called for party unity, urging his supporters to rally behind Clinton so as to defeat Trump in November.
"It is not just about electing candidates," he said. "It is about transforming the country."
"Based on her ideas and her leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," said the widely respected senator.
Also on Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the website plans to release "a lot more material" concerning the U.S. elections.
"This is having so much political impact in the United States," he told CNN, referring to the leak of 20,000 internal DNC emails.
It's possible that more emails will go to the public at a time designed to inflict maximum political pain on the Democrats heading into the general election, said Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary.
