Obama, who will be the first person of color nominated for national office by a major party, focused largely on the general election against Republican John McCain at his victory rally late Tuesday in St. Paul.

"Tonight, after 54 hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end," Obama, 46, said to a huge outpouring of cheers and chants at a jammed arena. "Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States."

In New York, Clinton didn't concede the race to Obama or end her campaign, saying she would leave that decision to another day, but she did begin her speech by congratulating him and his supporters "on the extraordinary race he has run." She added, "It has been an honor to contest these primaries with him."

Earlier in the day, she suggested for the first time that she was "open" to joining the ticket as his running mate. Clinton told New York legislators that might be a way for Obama to win over Hispanics and other crucial Democratic voting blocs that have backed her, according to a key ally, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Her comments injected one more twist into what already was an extraordinary day in American politics. It included primaries in Montana and South Dakota, the final contests in a 16-month Democratic battle that broke records for fundraising, drew more than 35 million voters to the polls and spotlighted the nation's divisions of race, class and gender.

As Obama's campaign tracked Tuesday's results and unveiled a string of delegate endorsements that put the nomination in hand, he and his aides also were scrambling to deal with Clinton's remarks and to take on his new role as the party's presumptive nominee.

The day's contests ended in another split decision. Obama won Montana; Clinton, South Dakota.

However, party leaders known as superdelegates, among them former president Jimmy Carter, already had lined up behind Obama and pushed him over the 2,118 delegate total needed to be nominated before the polls closed in the Mountain West, where a total of 31 delegates were at stake.

Even as Obama declared victory over Clinton, it was clear that his complicated and often contentious relationship with the former first lady wasn't over. Her remarks about the No. 2 position on the ticket put her and the millions of supporters who wanted her to become the nation's first woman president at the top of the list of issues Obama must handle as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Obama lavished praise on Clinton in his remarks. Clinton's tone was more reserved as she invited her supporters to weigh in on their views of what she should do next. Still, she said, "I am committed to uniting our party."

Obama's other immediate concerns include a possible visit to U.S. troops in Iraq and the unveiling of a series of benchmark policy speeches as he launches his contest against McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator who clinched his nomination three months ago.

Scott Reed, who managed Republican Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996, ticks off a list of those and other immediate demands for Obama's attention.

"Other than that," Reed jokes, "he's got an easy summer."

The general election begins

Obama's ebullient rally in St. Paul was reminiscent of the celebration, precisely five months earlier, that marked Obama's sweep of the opening Iowa caucuses. That win set his campaign soaring, only to be brought down to earth by a defeat in the New Hampshire primary and a furious delegate-by-delegate battle that followed.

Now, precisely five months from today, he will stand for election to become the nation's 44th president before an electorate that is weary of the Iraq war, anxious about the economy, convinced the country has gotten on to the wrong track and paying record attention to the election debate.

Obama deliberately chose to celebrate at the Xcel Energy Center, where McCain is scheduled to be nominated at the Republican National Convention in September.

In a Tuesday evening speech in a New Orleans suburb, McCain repeatedly mocked Obama, portraying his Democratic rival as a "formidable" but flawed opponent.

"I have a few years on my opponent, so I am surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas," McCain said. "Like others before him, he seems to think government is the answer to every problem."

McCain distanced himself from President Bush and his own Republican Party.

"This is, indeed, a change election," said McCain, who criticized Obama's call for quickly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. "No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically. But, the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward."

Change was the word of the night. McCain used versions of the word 33 times. In his speech text, Obama used the word 16 times.

His new status as the presumptive Democratic nominee allows him to move full-throttle into the general election, something he could not do while he was still competing with Clinton.

Some steps are purely practical, such as putting his partisans in charge of key operations at the Democratic National Committee and the convention committee, which are both strapped for cash. "He needs to get his arms around the national party apparatus and make sure the host committee in Denver has the resources to run a good convention," Reed says.

Obama also needs to "fill out the substantive side" of his thinking on policy issues in meaty speeches between now and the convention, says Rand Beers, head of the National Security Network and national security adviser for Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004.

Among Obama's other tasks:

•Unify the party.

Perhaps most pressing, he must mend relations with Clinton and legions of women upset that she's not the nominee. Allida Black, a scholar on Eleanor Roosevelt and a Clinton surrogate, says she got calls through the night Monday and Tuesday from voters she had met on the trail, imploring Clinton to stay in the race.

Many were "enraged" when Father Michael Pfleger, speaking from the pulpit of Obama's former church in Chicago, mocked Clinton as weeping because there was "a black man stealing my show." Black says some voters "feel that Hillary has been disparaged unfairly and that Sen. Obama hasn't dealt with their concerns."

Clinton's remarks early Tuesday put her in the center of Obama's vice presidential search.

"I think both of them really need each other," Rangel says. "It's clear that most Democrats would want to see them together."

On the other hand, the idea of an Obama-Clinton ticket could be undone by scars from their rivalry and the potential complications of having former president Bill Clinton as the vice president's spouse.

Among other considerations: Should he balance his age and experience, or reinforce his change message? "You could pick someone who is older and has gravitas," says Matt Bennett, an adviser to Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign. "Or you could pick someone young and dynamic."

•Consider a trip to Iraq.

McCain has needled Obama about not having been to Iraq since 2006 and never having met with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander there. Obama has weighed a return trip and may go now that the primary campaign is over.

Obama has made his opposition to the Iraq war a key part of his platform while McCain has tied his political fortunes to a victory in Iraq. The trip would "add a credential" for Obama but might not be the best use of his limited time, Beers says. The Kerry team debated the same question in 2004.

"You can always learn something on the ground, although you really do have to make sure that you're not entirely scripted" in what you can see, Beers says. Still, "every day away" is a day the candidate can't campaign at home.

•Launch TV ads.

Obama may want to immediately counter McCain on the airwaves. The Republican has spent $1.5 million over the past two months to air TV ads in key states, including Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The spots aim to bolster his credibility on economic issues.

Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director in 2004, says the Obama campaign's deep pockets will make it easier for him to begin airing ads, too, both to introduce Obama in positive ways and to define McCain in negative ones.

Four years ago, Kerry's reputation was tarnished and Bush's burnished when the GOP candidate spent $10.5 million on ads in 16 states starting in March. The campaign contributed to an impression of Kerry as a flip-flopper.

"You can't let that chipping away get any traction," she says, because it comes back to hurt in the fall.

•Reach out to key voters.

Outreach to certain groups of voters will be a key focus. Throughout the primaries, Clinton did much better than Obama with Hispanics and white women. In Appalachia and the Rust Belt, she prevailed with white voters who don't have a college education.

Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, says Obama was doing fine with those white working-class voters in contests in Wisconsin, Missouri, Virginia and Maryland. When Obama made remarks about voters who are "bitter" about their economic situations and "cling" to religion and guns, however, Clinton "magnified" it into a race-class issue, Gans says.

"There's a lot of repair that needs to be done there, but there is a shot," he says. "We're talking essentially about Reagan Democrats. They went the other way (in past elections) because of cultural issues. … But they were always Democratic on economic issues and my guess is the economic issues are going to take precedence this year."

•Deal with race.

As the son of a white mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama has no choice but to deal with the issue of race, strategists says.

For some voters, black and white, his breakthrough candidacy will be an asset. In serendipitous timing, Obama will deliver his acceptance speech at the national convention on Aug. 28, which happens to be the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the Washington Mall.

However, he'll also need to make his case to voters who are wary about supporting a black candidate, says Steve Jarding, a veteran Democratic consultant who teaches campaign management at Harvard's Kennedy School.

"He's got to show that at any level, if people are hurting, that hurt is colorblind," Jarding says. He says Obama's message needs to be: " 'This race is bigger than that. You need help and I will deliver it. John McCain will not.' "

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, endorsed Obama Tuesday. The South Carolina Democrat told reporters he had talked to Obama after the Pennsylvania primary about how he could win more white, working-class voters.

"I said to him then, 'You have got to share with the voters your life story; you have not talked enough about those things you had to overcome to get to where you are,' " Clyburn says. "Talk about being raised by a single parent. Talk about a mother who was once on food stamps. Talk about being handed off to your grandparents because your mother was not able to do for you what needed to be done for you. …

"We have spent so much time talking about Sen. Obama the first African-American chair of the Harvard Law Review," Clyburn adds. "We have not spent enough time talking about the ordinary person raised by some extraordinary grandparents and a mother who made some significant sacrifices on his behalf."

A 'sweet and sour' ending

"We've got a sweet-and-sour ending," Lawrence Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, says of Obama's big night. "He's been able to hold off one of the most impressive political dynasties in modern American history. On the other hand … he's clearly been deflated" by the fierce primary campaign.

Frank Donatelli, a McCain ally installed at the Republican National Committee, says the Arizona senator starts with disadvantages that include "a very soft economy," an unpopular war and "an incredible percentage" of people who think the country is headed in the wrong direction. "And yet, despite all that, McCain runs roughly even with the presumptive Democratic nomination," he notes.

Obama led McCain by a narrow 47%-44% among registered voters in the new USA TODAY survey.

Donatelli says McCain and the GOP will "not let Obama talk about lofty platitudes," but will try to pin him down on specifics in hopes of tagging him as "very liberal. That gives McCain the opening to put together a center-right coalition."

Some Democrats see that as wishful thinking.

"Americans are hungry for change, and we've got a change candidate running against a more-of-the-same candidate," Bennett says. "We are about to nominate a young, incredibly charismatic African-American. That is going to put a lot of wind at his back."

Contributing: Kathy Kiely, Martha T. Moore and Fredreka Schouten

Enlarge By Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Members of the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York, say she will likely concede tonight to rival Barack Obama, the senator from Ilinois. Here the candidate is seen Monday at a rally in Yankton, S.D.

		Barack Obama — seen during an election night rally in St. Paul, on Tuesday — has effectively clinched the Democratic nomination for president, according to an Associated Press tally of convention delegates. By Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

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