Obama represented the best hope for the kind of change that could be achieved through electoral means. This was not merely because he was ‘black,’ but because he was intelligent, calm, organised, and a reassuring campaigner. His victory shows the Left what galvanises popular politics of change. His inauguration, even apart from the historicity of his ‘blackness,’ is being welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the US population as proof of the ‘mystery and majesty’ of electoral democracy. From this the Left needs to learn.