A lot of people like to talk about his race, but I don't think it really mattered a lot. Obama won, not because he was black and people wanted to vote for that. Obama won because we had just had 8 years of Bush, the economy was in the tank, and he was young and charismatic.

The democratic nominee always had an uphill battle against a base of R's motivated for "Change", for the same reason that the party in power tends to fall behind during the midterms.