Related Content: Obama
Obama Resets Campaign Debate, But Not to JobsOn The Radar Any day now, someone is going to grab the wheel of the 2012 presidential election and yank it toward the issue that American voters overwhelmingly worry about: jobs. There are still 13 million Americans looking for work; the average time someone spends unemployed has soared to nearly 10 months. So the candidates can’t keep fighting over gas prices, contraception, and the specter of some ambiguously far-off debt crisis – can they? |
Judge Pokes Obama Over Court CommentOn The Radar It seems President Barack Obama’s challenge to the Supreme Court–in which he said overturning his health-care law would amount to an “unprecedented, extraordinary step”–is not going over well in certain conservative judicial quarters. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ordered the Justice Department to explain whether courts indeed have the right to strike down a federal law. |
Reeling White House Steps Into Health Care BreachOn The Radar The Obama White House, beset by a barrage of liberal criticism over an allegedly inept defense of its signature domestic policy achievement, on Wednesday defended the health care law's constitutionality not on legal grounds but on purely partisan ones. “The individual-responsibility provision was originally a Republican idea,” said White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest at the daily briefing, altering the common terminology “individual mandate” to the theoretically more politically palatable “individual responsibility.” |
The South Rises for SantorumOn The Radar Mitt Romney said Rick Santorum was at the "desperate end of his campaign," by which he apparently meant the winning end. The Pennsylvania senator won the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. He is now the leading conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, though Newt Gingrich promised to take his fight all the way to the Republican convention. |
Obama-Romney Race Toss-Up in Poll Showing Independents CriticalOn The Radar A strengthening economy and a contentious Republican primary have not translated into a wave of support for President Barack Obama, who runs even in a matchup against his likely challenger, Mitt Romney. Obama and Romney are backed by 47 percent of likely general election voters, while the president outruns the other Republican candidates, a Bloomberg National Poll conducted March 8-11 shows. |
Obama’s Super ParanoiaOn The Radar In Obamaland, the 3 a.m. phone call has become the 3 a.m. e-mail. In their own way, both speak to a crisis mentality and a groping for security. The contexts couldn’t be more different, but the anxiety—real and imagined—is no less genuine. To review, the 3 a.m. phone call was in a TV ad Hillary Rodham Clinton ran against Obama in the heat of the Texas and Ohio primaries in 2008. It asked voters to ponder the fate of America if Barack Obama were president and a national crisis struck in the middle of the night. |
Answering Those Super Tuesday QuestionsGwen's Take Remember those five things we asked you to watch Tuesday night? It turns out the voters decided to raise more questions than even we had. But here are the things we were watching for: |
Obama Mines for Voters With High-Tech ToolsOn The Radar With a “chief scientist” specializing in consumer behavior, an “analytics department” monitoring voter trends, and a squad of dozens huddled at computer screens editing video or writing code, the sprawling office complex inside One Prudential Plaza looks like a corporate research and development lab — Ping-Pong table and all. |
Obama Campaign Team: Primary Race Weakens RomneyOn The Radar War with Iran is lurking, gas prices are rising, twisters are mowing through the heartland, but if Mitt Romney is having a bad day, President Obama's Chicago campaign team is chipper. Even if Romney won six of 10 Super Tuesday contests, the president's top campaign advisers told reporters Wednesday that the former Massachusetts governor -- still the focus of their battle plan -- is a weakened candidate because of his ultra-right policies, his rhetoric, and the negative advertising deployed to help him knock out opponents. |
Obama’s Approval Numbers ClimbOn The Radar The recent run of positive economic news, modest though it may be, appears to be sinking in with voters and giving President Barack Obama his best approval numbers in a while. The latest Gallup tracking poll shows more people approving of Mr. Obama’s job performance than disapproving, by a 49%-45%. Those numbers are not overwhelming, but the trend is unmistakably good for Mr. Obama; it’s the first time he’s been in positive territory since the start of this year. |
