Presidential Nominating Process: It's On

Speaker Pelosi has just hit the floor, and the Presidential nominating process has begun. Dolores Huerta is making the nominating speech for Hillary Clinton right now. People are pretty rapidly taking their seats.

It's important to note that a roll call vote is a completely perfunctory and normal process. Some may have been outraged by the fact of a roll call, but it's wholly unsurprising and will end with Barack Obama as the nominee, just as Bill Clinton became the nominee on the third night of the convention in 1992, and Clinton in '96, and Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. It's a nominating convention. This is how it works.

UPDATE: Hillary released her delegates, making them free to vote for whoever they want. As many feel the obligation to vote the way their constituents asked them to vote, Hillary will still get a lot of votes. Also, Hillary signed her ballot for Barack Obama this morning.

UPDATE: Obama is about to be nominated. The applause for Obama's nomination is defeaning. There will be no fight on this floor. A registered Republican from Tennessee, Michael Wilson, is offering the nomination. He's an Iraq war vet. "I support Barack Obama because America needs a President with the strength, wisdom and courage to talk with our enemies and consult with our allies."

UPDATE: Apparently everyone in the West wears a bolo tie.

UPDATE: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a strong Hillary supporter in the primaries and co-chair of her campaign, is seconding Obama's nomination. "No matter where we stood during the campaign, Democrats stand together today." Seriously, the disunity idiots need to stuff it.


UPDATE: The roll call is beginning, and it will continue until there is a nominee. Alabama is kicking it off, so it looks like they'll go alphabetically.

UPDATE: Alabama - 48-5 for Obama. Alaska - 15-3 for Obama. American Samoa - 9-0 Obama. Arizona - 40-27 Obama. Arkansas - 47-0 for Obama (in a call for unity; Clinton crushed Obama there).

UPDATE: So Barbara Boxer and Art Torres announced that California passed on its roll call vote. There's a very good reason for that. First of all, the floor is being managed so that a certain state puts Obama over the top. Second, if California voted now, less states would be part of the process, because when Obama reaches the threshold for nomination the roll call immediately ends. So don't go reading anything into this.

UPDATE: Actually, Chairman Torres just explained it to me a little differently. A lot of the superdelegates never checked in with their vote with him ahead of time. He's legally required to go to their delegated proxies for a vote, and a lot of them didn't know about the voting either, so he would have had to announce significantly less votes than the 441 California is granted. Anyway, that's what he told me.

UPDATE: I haven't been totally keeping up with the count, but the overwhelming majority of votes are going to Sen. Obama. It's kind of fun to be in the room for this, but calling it a "floor fight" would be kind of absurd. I'm going to try and talk to Sen. Boxer soon.

UPDATE: Right next to me, Bob Mulholland and some CDP staffers are frantically tabulating votes from Representatives and their proxies. So that appears to be the reason for the pass.

UPDATE: Gasbag emeritus David Gregory is chatting with Boxer and Torres right now. I'm sure that, after the explanation, Gregory will claim that the pass was because of disunity and Democrats who hate one another.

UPDATE: Word is that New York will ask for a voice vote and Obama will be put in by acclamation.

UPDATE: They should really have a running total somewhere in the hall. Mistake. I guess Obama was up to 744 by the time they got to Kentucky, but it's hard to keep track.

UPDATE: New Hampshire, Arkansas, and a couple others have gone entirely for Obama out of unity. New Jersey is up now and they just did the same thing. Let's see if that rumor about New York is true.

UPDATE: So New Mexico yielded to Illinois. And Illinois will yield to New York. And there will be a voice vote... and Hillary has come out to call for it. The whole crowd is on their feet.

UPDATE: It's over. Pelosi moved quickly to do the ayes and nays. It was a nice moment. Lest California delegates worry, all votes will be counted.