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Before a crowd of cheering thousands, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. Hillary Rodham Clinton manoeuvred for the vice-presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.

“America, this is our moment,” the 46-year-old senator and one-time community organizer said in his first appearance as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting. “This is our time. Our turn to turn the page on the policies of the past.”

Mr. Obama's victory set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a first-term Senate opponent of the Iraq war and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.

And both men seemed eager to begin.

Mr. McCain spoke first, in New Orleans, and he accused his younger rival of voting “to deny funds to the soldiers who have done a brilliant and brave job” in Iraq. It was a reference to 2007 legislation to pay for the Iraq war, a measure Mr. Obama opposed citing the lack of a timetable for withdrawing troops.

Mr. McCain agreed with Mr. Obama that the presidential race would focus on change. “But the choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between going forward and going backward,” he said.

Mr. Obama responded quickly, pausing only long enough to praise Ms. Clinton for “her strength, her courage and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.”

As for his general election rival, he said, “It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 per cent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.

“It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs. ... And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave young men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.”

In a symbolic move, Mr. Obama spoke in the same hall – filled to capacity – where Mr. McCain will accept the Republican nomination at his party's convention in September.

One campaign began as another was ending.

Ms. Clinton won South Dakota on the final night of the primary season; Mr. Obama took Montana.

The former first lady praised her rival warmly in her speech before supporters in New York. But she neither acknowledged Mr. Obama's victory nor offered a concession of any sort.

Instead, she said she would spend the next few days determining “how to move forward with the best interests of our country and our party guiding my way.”

Mr. Obama sealed his nomination, according to The Associated Press tally, based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates' public declarations as well as support from 19 delegates and “superdelegates” who privately confirmed their intentions to the AP. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer, and Mr. Obama had 2,129 by the AP count.

In a campaign of surprises, Ms. Clinton's comments earlier Tuesday afternoon about joining the ticket rated high.

According to one participant in an afternoon conference call among Ms. Clinton and members of the New York congressional delegation, Rep. Lydia Velasquez said she believed the best way for Mr. Obama to win over Hispanics and members of other key voting blocs would be to take the former first lady as his running mate.

“I am open to it,” Ms. Clinton replied, if it would help the party's prospects in November, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was a private matter.

Mr. Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy – all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.

With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Ms. Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something of an overnight political phenomenon.

“We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come,” he said that night in Des Moines.

A video produced by Will I. Am and built around Mr. Obama's “Yes, we can” rallying cry quickly went viral. It drew its one millionth hit within a few days of being posted.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Ms. Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Mr. Obama's were bigger still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Mr. Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last generation.

“Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice,” she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Mr. Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favour of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.

It was not a mistake they made again – which helped explain Mr. Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Ms. Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whisky at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black candidate in history and the strongest female White House contender traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Ms. Clinton had a problem that Mr. Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.

In a reference that likened former President Clinton to Harry Truman: “There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party.”

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama exceeded expectations.

But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.

Ms. Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won primaries in six of the final nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.

It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.

But by then Mr. Obama was well on his way to victory, Ms. Clinton and her allies stressed the popular vote instead of delegates. Yet he seemed to emerge from each loss with residual strength.

Mr. Obama's bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6 offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four days later, he overtook Ms. Clinton's lead among superdelegates, the party leaders she had hoped would award her the nomination on the basis of a strong showing in swing states.

Mr. Obama lost West Virginia by a whopping 67 per cent to 26 per cent on May 13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former presidential rival and one-time North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Ms. Clinton administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later. This time, Mr. Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and turned up that night in Iowa to say he had won a majority of all the delegates available in 56 primaries and caucuses on the calendar.

There were moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate in South Carolina on Jan. 21.

Mr. Obama told the former first lady he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when “you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.”

Moments later, Ms. Clinton said that she was fighting against misguided Republican policies “when you were practising law and representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.”

And Bill Clinton was a constant presence and an occasional irritant for Mr. Obama. The former president angered several black politicians when he seemed to diminish Mr. Obama's South Carolina triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won the state.

Mr. Obama's frustration showed at the Jan. 21 debate, when he accused the former president in absentia of uttering a series of distortions.

“I'm here. He's not,” the former first lady snapped.

“Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes,” Mr. Obama countered.

There were relatively few policy differences. Ms. Clinton accused Mr. Obama of backing a health care plan that would leave millions out, and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.

Yet race, religion, region and gender became political fault lines as the two campaigned from coast to coast.

Along the way, Mr. Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

At first, Mr. Obama said he could not break with his long-time spiritual adviser. Then, when Rev. Wright spoke out anew, Mr. Obama reversed course and denounced him strongly.

Ms. Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.

Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a young girl who greeted her plane.