Tuesday night, sometime around 9 PM EDT, Hillary Clinton will stand before a crowd at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City and claim the Democratic presidential nomination, prevailing over Senator Bernie Sanders. She will stand victorious in every measurable way – winning a majority of the popular vote, a majority of pledged delegates, and having secured the 2,383 overall delegates needed to be nominated at the convention. In fact, she will stand on the stage and claim the nomination exactly eight years to the day in which she conceded the 2008 Democratic nomination to then Senator Barack Obama.
It was during the 2008 campaign that Barack Obama often uttered a belief that many of us hold dear, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
The arc will bend evermore towards justice after Tuesday night.
Hillary Clinton will become the first female major-party nominee for the presidency – and that’s a big fucking deal. It’s a victory that should be embraced not just by Hillary Clinton and her millions of supporters, but by every American out there fighting for a better, fairer, most just society.
Like the nomination of Barack Obama in 2008, this is a historic moment for our country. It’s important that we take a moment to reflect on the monumental fight it took to get here and how much work still left to be done. The nomination of the first female major-party nominee, like the nomination of the first African American major-party nominee eight years ago, is one more step towards ensuring that every American – regardless of their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or sexual identity – has the chance to run for and win the highest office in the land. I think too often we tend to pigeonhole or underappreciate the importance of moments like this, when in reality it’s seminal for those still hard at work ensuring the equality of all of our brothers and sisters.
Speaking personally as a gay man, the continued bending of this arc is of no small significance. For me, the progress of the last decade is foundational for our country’s vision of the presidency as more than just a heterosexual white male. I am more confident than ever that in the next few decades we’ll have an LGBT American as a majority-party nominee, and that reality will be made possible in no small part thanks to the ground-breaking nominations of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
It’s hard sometimes in the middle of an arguably contentious primary contest to stop and appreciate the importance of a single moment. As this primary comes to a close, unity in the Democratic party won’t happen overnight – nor should it. But we should be proud in this historic moment of the progress we continue to make and in our ability to nominate a woman who will help carry forth the mantle of justice.