Sometimes, distance lends perspective. From overseas, it looks as though the Democrats are in meltdown. They have lost both chambers of Congress and control only 11 state legislatures — the lowest number in nearly a century. In 2009 they had 27 state governorships and Sen. Mitch McConnell was warning Republicans that they were in danger of becoming “a regional party.” Today there are just 16 Democratic governors. Take out New York and California and the Democrats would pretty much collapse. Who’s the regional party now?

So why are Democrats confident of holding the White House in 2016? And why do American and foreign media broadly share their confidence? No one likes to say so in so many words, but the answer has to do with the changing ethnic profile of the electorate. Hispanic Americans are by far the fastest-growing segment of the population. Some 67 percent of Latino voters backed Democratic candidates in the recent midterm elections, and 71 percent voted for Obama in 2012. It’s only natural that a grateful president should want to add more Spanish speakers to the electoral rolls, ¿no?