Barack Obama, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

The slogans of both campaigns are simple: "Putting Jobs First" for Mitt Romney, "Forward" for President Obama. But when it comes to the core message that each candidate is trying to get across in TV ads and campaign appearances, Romney has boiled it down to a simple argument. Obama has not.

...The point Obama was trying to make, however inartfully, was that the private sector was performing far better than the public sector...

The nation's unemployment rate of 8.2 percent may sink President Barack Obama's re-election bid, but one detail brightens his hopes. About 10 battleground states will decide the election, and seven of them have employment levels that beat the U.S. average.

Presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney has released a Web video hammering President Barack Obama for his assertion Friday that "the economy is doing fine."

Separated at rival conferences by 1,000 miles and a world of political ideology, liberal and conservative activists are finding themselves united by a deep disappointment with the nation's economy....

After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Barack Obama would stop a proposal by his liberal allies intended to bring down medicine prices.

President Barack Obama, seeking to clarify comments about the strength of the U.S. economy, said later Friday it is "absolutely clear" that the U.S. economy is "not doing fine." Obama spoke hours after saying in a White House news conference that "the private sector is doing fine." Republicans pounced on those comments, saying they showed Obama had a lack of understanding about the nation's economic woes.

Mitt Romney’s campaign released an ad this morning that, at first glance, seems ordinary enough. It touts his economic record as Governor of Massachusetts, a rebuttal to the Obama camp’s attacks on the same. The new ad doesn’t mention Obama. But the ad does suggest a line of attack on Obama that we’ll be seeing a lot more of soon enough...

The total is a big increase over the $43.6 million raised in April, and includes money donated in the wake of President Obama’s decision to publicly support same-sex marriage.

The Obama campaign says there is plenty of evidence that the president remains strong in Wisconsin.