Reprinted from The Nation
The DNC's roll-call vote made Clinton the first woman to ever be nominated for the presidency by a major party.
Philadelphia--Wisconsin State Representative Cory Mason and his wife Rebecca named their first daughter Eleanor Roosevelt Mason.
They named their second daughter Amelia Earhart Mason.
And when Cory Mason cast his Wisconsin delegate vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, he said he was thinking of a quote from Earhart.
"Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done,"advised the aviation pioneer.
"It just seems so appropriate this week," said Mason. "There's a lot going on here. It's easy to get distracted. But, tonight, someone accomplished something that not that long ago they said could not be done. A woman was nominated for president."
Mason got that right. At a convention where supporters of Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders still have serious differences (and dozens of Sanders delegates staged a walkout after Tuesday night's roll call of the states), where the longtime chair of the party is stepping down after WikiLeaks published scandalous e-mails, where a candidate for vice president is being introduced to America, and where Democrats are busy framing their message for a tough campaign against Donald Trump, the historic moment came early on Tuesday night. Around 7 pm, after Sanders rose from amid the Vermont delegation and said, "I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States," the roll call was finished.
For the first time in the history of the United States, a woman became the nominee of a major political party.
America has had 44 presidents. Americans have voted in 57 presidential elections. Yet they have never had a chance to vote for a woman on the ballot line of a major political party.
Until this year.
Women have tried before. They have made serious runs as third-party candidates, and they continue to do so; indeed, when the Green Party meets next month in Houston, it will likely nominate a woman, Dr. Jill Stein, to challenge Clinton from the left.