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ST. PAUL, Minn. — Cheered by a roaring crowd, 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 maneuvered for the vice-presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.

"America, this is our moment," Obama. 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 time to turn the page on the policies of the past."

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.

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." Americans, he added, should be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who has not traveled to Iraq, yet "says he's ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang."

McCain agreed with 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.

McCain's criticism of Obama referred to a vote last year in which the Illinois senator came out against legislation paying for the Iraq war because it did not include a timetable for withdrawing troops. At the time, Obama said the funding would give President Bush "a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path."

Obama previously had opposed a deadline for troop withdrawal but shifted position under pressure from the Demo-cratic Party's liberal wing as he maneuvered for support in advance of the primaries.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, responded tartly. "While John McCain has a record of occasional independence from his party in the past, last year he chose to embrace 95 percent of George Bush's agenda, including his failed economic policies and his failed policy in Iraq. No matter how hard he tries to spin it otherwise, that kind of record is simply not the change the American people are looking for or deserve."

Obama himself responded quickly after pausing in his speech long enough to praise 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 percent 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, Obama spoke in the same hall where McCain will accept the Republican nomination at his party's convention in September. Campaign officials, citing the local fire marshal, put the crowd at 17,000 inside the eXcel Energy Center, plus another 15,000 outside.

McCain addressed a smaller crowd by design, an estimated 600 in his audience and another 600 outside.

One campaign began as another was ending.

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

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

Instead, she said she was committed to a united party and 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."

Only 31 delegates were at stake in the two states on the night's ballot, the final few among the thousands that once drew Obama, Clinton and six other Democratic candidates into the campaign to replace Bush and become the nation's 44th president.

Obama sealed his nomination, according to The Associated Press tally, based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and support from party "superdelegates." It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer, and Obama had 2,151 by the AP count.

Obama, a first-term senator who was virtually unknown on the national stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the one-time campaign front-runner, in a 17-month marathon for the nomination.

His victory had been widely assumed for weeks. But Clinton's declaration of interest in becoming his ticket-mate was wholly unexpected.

She expressed it in a conference call with her state's congressional delegation after Rep. Nydia Velazquez, predicted Obama would have great difficulty winning the support of Hispanics and other voting blocs unless Clinton was on the ticket.

Joseph Crowley, a Queens Democrat who participated in the call, said her answer "left open the possibility that she would do anything that she can to contribute toward a Demo-cratic victory in November. There was no hedging on that. Whatever she can do to contribute, she was willing to do."

Clinton's comments raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats have called a "Dream Ticket" that would put a black man and a woman on the same ballot, but Obama's aides were noncommittal. "We're not in the presidential phase here. We're going to close out the nominating fight and then we'll consider that," David Axelrod, Obama's top strategist, told reporters aboard the candidate's plane en route to Minnesota.

The young Illinois senator's success amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved.

Obama stood for change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready, she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.

Together, they drew record turnouts in primary after primary — more than 34 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as well as Demo-crats.