WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is quietly planning to take over the Democratic National Committee and assemble a multistate team for the general election, the latest sign that he is putting rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nomination fight behind him.

Top Obama organizer Paul Tewes is in discussions to run the party, several Democratic officials said Tuesday.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said no final decisions have been made on general election plans and that such decisions would be premature with Obama yet to clinch the nomination.

Tewes is one of the leading architects of Obama's success in the marathon Democratic primary race. He engineered Obama's critical victory in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and then helped run campaigns in the key states of Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The campaign also is in discussions with staffers who will be dispatched to various swing states, but holding off on making announcements until Obama has won the nomination. Officials who spoke to The Associated Press about the discussions insisted on anonymity because the campaign wanted to keep the deliberations quiet.

Obama needs 2,026 delegates to clinch the nomination, and he moved within 100 of that goal after contests in Kentucky and Oregon Tuesday. Clinton was more than 250 delegates back.

The staffing decisions are a natural progression for Obama, who still is engaged in a primary campaign while Republican candidate John McCain has been free to prepare his general election team for months. Obama will have to hit the ground running to make up for lost time when, as expected, he dispatches Clinton.

McCain has put his own team at the Republican National Committee to operate a Victory Fund Committee that is corralling top GOP donors and plotting strategy for the general election. McCain took the steps shortly after locking up the nomination after primary wins on March 4.

But Obama can't afford to move too quickly toward the general election, or he will risk alienating Clinton supporters who are already emotional about the likelihood of their chosen candidate's closely fought defeat.