Obama in Texas
On this date in 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois won the Democratic presidential nomination.
This historic step made him the nation's first Black presidential candidate. Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton and set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of that U.S. military mission.
Obama, a first-term senator virtually unknown on the national stage four years prior, defeated Clinton, the former first lady, in a 17-month marathon for the Democratic nomination. The young Illinois senator's success amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved.
