MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Barack Obama is finally confirmed presidential nominee

Obama clinches bid

Barack Obama rocked a Minnesota crowd Tuesday night, making presidential campaign history.

The first African American to become presidential nominee of a major party offered his vision for a change and began to give details about how he would implement that change. And he wasted no time beginning his general election campaign, attacking Republican John McCain as someone who would continue President Bush's policies. A crowd of nearly 20,000 cheered Obama's every word, from his praise of vanquished foe Sen. Hillary Clinton to complaints about McCain supporting Wall Street over the average American. The Illinois senator continued preaching his message of change, hope, inspiration and inclusion on the night he obtained enough Democratic National Convention delegates to become the party's nominee. "Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America," Obama told the Xcel Energy Center crowd during a 27-minute speech. So many wanted to hear Obama that Xcel could not hold them all. Thousands remained outside to watch the proceeding in the street on a large screen. The Xcel center will be where McCain officially receives the Republican nomination. "The other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a debate I look forward to," Obama said. "It is a debate the American people deserve. But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon – that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize." Earlier Tuesday night, McCain called himself the candidate of change. He told a Kenner, La., audience that Obama offers the wrong type of change. "The choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between going forward and going backward," the Arizona senator said. Obama was having none of that. "It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year," Obama said. With Tuesday's final delegate surge, the 46-year-old U.S. senator from Chicago's South Side sent Clinton to the sidelines after he won enough national convention delegates to win the nomination in Denver in August. Inside St. Paul's Xcel center an age and racially diverse group heard Obama's speech. And Clinton was on their minds. "Sen. Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight," Obama said. Shortly before Obama's speech, Clinton delivered one of her own in which she refused to concede the race and asked Americans to log onto her Web site to tell her what to do next. About 20 Minnesota Clinton supporters, mostly top politicians, were in reserved seats near the Xcel stage and met with Obama late Tuesday. Thousands of Obama supporters waited outside the Xcel center for hours. Among them was a Duluth professor. Opponents like McCain should not take Obama lightly, Bud McClure of Duluth said. "One thing they have attempted to do is dismiss the inspirational nature of this young man," the University of Minnesota Duluth psychology professor said outside the Xcel center hours before Obama spoke. Obama was born in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961. His mother was a native Kansan; his father came from Kenya. After living in New York and Indonesia, he moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he was a community organizer for a church-based group. Obama earned a law degree and was elected to the Illinois Senate. He moved on to the U.S. Senate in 2004.