Barack Obama’s new ethnic majority

‘I’ve come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote,’ said President Obama at an emotional ‘last ever’ campaign meeting. ‘Because this is where our movement for change began, right here. Right here.’ And his eyes briefly moistened. The nostalgia was doubtless sincere, and the address correct, but it was misleading to describe his 2012 election campaign as a continuation of his earlier ‘movement for change’. In reality, it has been a smoothly ruthless operation to distract attention from a record that has been disappointingly bereft of change. He triumphed over himself as much as over the hapless Mitt Romney.

Until it produced a glossy economic leaflet so that the President could wave it as evidence that, like Romney, he too had a ‘plan’, the Obama campaign had concentrated on blaming George W. Bush for America’s continuing troubles. It denounced Romney as a vulture capitalist murderously hostile to ordinary people, and promised to protect women against the GOP’s supposed plan to abolish both contraception and abortion.