What I hope is in five years' time I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked but it has worked.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

In an election one needs both hope and audacity.

In the end that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33 000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

It's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town in a very modest home are just the things that I believe have won the election.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town in a very modest home are just the things that I believe have won the election.

Natural selection as it has operated in human history favors not only the clever but the murderous.

Nixon in 1968 unlike Obama 2008 was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet in 1972 he won what in some measures was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.

From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history.