Barack Obama: “America failed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast long before that failure showed up on our television sets.”

This race is going to be close. It could determine which party controls the Senate and whether Ohioans can count on the people in Washington to be fighting for you.

People need to “rediscover what’s the story we tell about how we’re going to live together, and see each other, and recognise each other, and disagree, and yet, still care for each other”.

And I will fight for that, even if I don’t always think it’s going to win.

A drift towards extremism was "not inevitable