Clinton to get symbolic nomination

Gesture aimed at unifying party, her supporters

Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesSenator Hillary Clinton campaigned for onetime rival Barack Obama last week in Henderson, Nev. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton's name will symbolically be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month, the latest gesture to unify the party behind Barack Obama and mollify Clinton's diehard supporters.

"I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion," Obama said in a joint statement that he and Clinton issued yesterday after painstaking, but apparently amicable, negotiations.

"With every voice heard and the party strongly united, we will elect Senator Obama president of the United States and put our nation on the path to peace and prosperity once again," Clinton added.

After the protracted and at times bitter primary fight, the role of Clinton and her supporters at the convention has been one of its most closely watched aspects. Clinton has been pushing for recognition of her 18 million votes, or, as she likes to say, "18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling." Republican John McCain has been courting Clinton supporters, and polls show that a significant number are considering voting for him instead of Obama.

Several groups of Clinton's hard-core supporters, aggrieved by what they consider to be unfair treatment by the party and the media, are planning marches and other events in Denver on Aug. 26, the anniversary of women's suffrage.

Clinton is scheduled to be the primetime "headliner" speaker that night, the convention's second evening.

The traditional roll call of the states is scheduled for the next night. The tentative plan is for the states to announce the number of delegates for Clinton and Obama, then for Clinton to turn her delegates over to Obama and cast her own superdelegate vote for him.

Obama had 2,254 delegates to 1,890 for Clinton, according to an Associated Press tally in late June. It takes 2,118 delegates to win the nomination.

President Clinton, who had a dicey relationship with Obama's campaign during the primaries and has been cooler toward Obama than his wife has been since, is also scheduled to speak that night, along with the vice presidential nominee.

"Since June, Senators Obama and Clinton have been working together to ensure a Democratic victory this November," the joint statement said. "They are both committed to winning back the White House and to ensuring that the voices of all 35 million people who participated in this historic primary election are respected and heard in Denver. To honor and celebrate these voices and votes, both Senator Obama's and Senator Clinton's names will be placed in nomination."

But the move won't be enough to bring some of Clinton's most vociferous loyalists back to the Democratic fold.

"I am thrilled to hear this is going to happen, but it hasn't changed my approach to anything," said Cynthia Ruccia, an Ohio businesswoman who cofounded Women for Fair Politics, a group of women angry about the way Clinton was treated that quickly became a leading voice in the national anti-Obama movement among former Clinton supporters.

Ruccia plans to go to Denver to join a group of former Democratic officeholders, candidates, and diplomats at a news conference during the convention to explain why they are not supporting Obama. Then she will attend the GOP convention as one of two dozen guests of McCain campaign cochairwoman Carly Fiorina.

"I don't think Barack Obama is qualified to be president of the United States," Ruccia said in a telephone interview yesterday.

She added that she has stepped down from her positions in her county Democratic Party's central and executive committees because she is upset about the party's treatment of Clinton supporters and, more generally, women over 40.

"They continue to call us racist, sour old women, sore losers," she said. "This is all very insulting, and it's very sexist and completely uncalled for."