It’s official and unanimous.

Hillary Clinton is now officially the Democratic presidential nominee, making history as the first woman ever to secure the backing of a major American political party.

Clinton was formally nominated on the second evening of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, more than nine years after launching her first presidential bid. It was largely an evening of unity after an opening night marked by resistance from die-hard supporters of Democratic runner-up, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In a culmination of days’ worth of efforts to unify the party, Sanders himself moved at the conclusion of the lengthy state-by-state roll call vote – after Clinton had won a majority of delegates but before her formal nomination was announced to the thousands gathered in the Wells Fargo Center — to nominate Clinton by acclimation.

“I move that all votes cast by delegates be reflected in the official record, and I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States,” he announced from the convention floor as delegates roared their approval.

The first president I remember is Dwight Eisenhower, and the first political campaign I remember is Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960.  I watched my first Democratic convention on TV in 1964 from Atlantic City when Lyndon Johnson was nominated, then watched as the whole world was watching in Chicago in 1968, the tumult of Miami Beach in 1972 when George McGovern finally delivered his acceptance speech at 3 a.m.  I watched Ted Kennedy bid farewell to his presidential ambitions in 1980 as he told us the dream will never die, and cheered on my mom in 2004 was a delegate for John Kerry in Boston where we were introduced to a skinny guy with big ears and a funny name who swept us up in his vision of America.

Until then it was only a faint idea that anyone other than a white man would ever be nominated for president by any major party in America.  And then it happened, and now another barrier — or ceiling — has been shattered.  I have waited more than sixty years to see this moment in history.

I have seen history good and bad in these sixty-plus years.  But for obvious reasons this moment means more than most.  And I am very happy for the generations of Americans yet to come who will see this moment as both monumental and yet nothing out of the ordinary.