To the victor go the headaches. There were no champagne toasts for Sen. Barack Obama after he clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday night. His wife Michelle and a group of personal friends returned to Chicago on a separate plane. The Illinois senator spent much of his post-rally time in Minnesota trying to reach Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the telephone before flying to Washington, where a fresh set of challenges awaited.

He had to deliver an crucial speech to Jewish leaders skeptical of his commitment to Israel.

There were troubling signs of disarray within his own party, and there was the small matter of a primary opponent who still had not dropped out of the race.

90-second walk

When his campaign plane hit a patch of heavy turbulence, Obama ignored the pilot's request for passengers to take their seats. Instead, he remained standing in the aisle, conferring with aides about the speech he had to deliver yesterday morning to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Obama was joined at the event by his old friend Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago congressman and longtime aide to President Clinton who had decided to abandon his neutrality before the former first lady removed herself from contention. But Emanuel would prove the exception among prominent uncommitted Democrats. Most stayed on the sidelines yesterday to give Clinton room to decide her fate.

As Obama moved from event to event in Washington, the Clinton drama would shadow him, unwilling to yield the spotlight. After wrapping up his well-received AIPAC speech, he bumped into Clinton in the hallway and the two took a brief stroll. An Obama aide clocked the exchange: 90 seconds.

Speaking to reporters later on Capitol Hill, Obama was peppered with questions about Clinton. What did he think of Clinton's non-concession speech Tuesday night? "I thought Sen. Clinton, after a long-fought campaign, was understandably focused on her supporters." What was the status of their relationship? "I just spoke to her today, and we are going to be having a conversation in the coming weeks."

Although Democrats saluted Obama's win and called for unity, many seemed fixated on not offending Clinton. Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado endorsed Obama by a press release, which buried the news below a paragraph praising the New York senator. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, whose name has surfaced on vice-presidential lists, said he wasn't quite ready to declare his allegiance. "We're sorting all that out," Webb told reporters as he hurried into the Senate chamber.

Party leaders issued an early-morning statement that was so vague it could have been written a month ago. Without acknowledging Obama's delegate victory, it asserted that "Democrats must now turn our full attention to the general election." The authors were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean and Democratic Governors' Association Chairman Joe Manchin.

Time for Joe

When Obama walked onto the Senate floor to vote at around noon, he was greeted by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a political independent who leans Democratic, but who had one hour earlier issued a harsh critique of Obama's AIPAC speech on a Republican conference call. Lieberman, a leading McCain surrogate, has offered to speak at the GOP convention, prompting some of his erstwhile Democratic colleagues to call for booting him from their caucus. Lieberman and Obama stepped to the side of the chamber and had a conversation that lasted considerably longer than the Obama-Clinton exchange.

"We were just talking some politics," Obama later told reporters.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, a self-described "rabid" Obama supporter, said she spoke to him by telephone on Tuesday afternoon and urged him to savor the moment. "I said, hey, take a minute tonight to quit doing what you always do - and before the conversation was over he did what he always does," which is to look ahead to the next battle against Sen. John McCain.

Her colleague Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, joined Obama on the flight back to Washington, which took off from Minneapolis at 1 a.m. Despite the late hour, no one seemed tired, the freshman senator noted, and Obama's aides were "jubilant."

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