Honestly? There was nothing else on T.V. and I just had it on for background noise. I wasn't really that interested but there is something mildly amusing about hearing each state pump themselves full of hot air. Plus, this was the roll call that was supposed to be a last chance for Hillary Clinton to sweep away the nomination at the last minute (in the fantasies of PUMA dead enders), or at a minimum honor her with an historic entry into the official minutes as a nominee with delegates counted. Anyway, things were crawling along, with Obama slowly inching his way to the required total, and with Clinton picking up a fraction of his votes in most cases (really PUMA? This is what you had in mind?), when something extraordinary happened.
Illinois had already passed when it was their turn to vote. Of course, I knew that they wanted to be the state that put Obama over the top and so they would wait until it was mathematically certain that they would do so and whichever state was next in line at that point would cede to IL in order to give them the honor. So I was really puzzled when New Mexico deferred their vote to Illinois, as Obama was nowhere near the vote total required to secure the nomination. There was something afoot but I'd be damned if I could figure out what.
Then, the Illinois delegation deferred to New York and I figured, "Ah ha. That's the story. They just wanted to make a lame gesture of deference to Hillary's home state. Shallow. Empty. Hollow. But I guess it makes somebody, somewhere feel that their ass has been sufficiently kissed." I called that one wrong.
I suppose there must have been at least a bare minimum of the self congratulatory B.S. that every state indulges in at the beginning, but I honestly don't remember. All I remember is some dude introducing Hillary and thinking, "What on Earth is she doing delivering the delegate vote?" It was just so odd. Was she going to announce her own vote total? That struck me as more than a bit self serving. But no, she immediately invoked the name of unity and I assumed that she would be doing the really classy thing of casting all of NY's votes for Obama. But she did me one better.
When she called for Obama to be nominated by acclimation I was actually in the other room, having decided that this bit of theater was just a minor show. When I heard her say those historic words I had to rush back in. The crowd, of course, enthusiastically carried the motion, and the roll call was over. Clinton had just done the most gracious, and most partisan thing I'd ever seen a politician do. That was real class on display. And for anyone that thought she hadn't done enough, or was still trying to somehow undercut Barack Obama to set herself up for 2012, well, she put that all to rest. I could not have loved her more at that moment if I tried.
When Speaker Pelosi first tried to make it official by announcing Obama's acceptance nobody could hear her. Someone had to come up to her and ask her to repeat what she had just said. "Oh," she mouthed, motioning to the microphone, "is this not on?" No, Speaker, the mic. was working fine. It was simply useless at that moment. Drowned out by history.