There hadn't been any doubt about it for several weeks, but with his win Tuesday in the Texas primary Mitt Romney has "clinched the Republican presidential nomination," according to The Associated Press.
The contest for the U. S. Senate seat in Missouri held by Democrat Claire McCaskill is turning into a very tight one, both in the Republican primary and the November general election.
While American politicians may be scripted, they're not this robotic. But whoever wins the presidency this year will preside over a U.S. economy where automation is becoming increasingly important.
Credit Eric Risberg / AP
Interest in the domestic use of unmanned drones is surging among public agencies, raising privacy concerns. Here, a Ritewing Zephyr II flies with mounted camera in Berkeley, Calif.
Credit Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images
Students show President Obama inventions they entered in a robotics competition at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., last September.
As sort-of-still-a-presidential-candidate Ron Paul continues to collect delegates at state Republican Party conventions, the question of what the libertarian Texas congressman wants has become more urgent in GOP circles.
A speaking role at the Republican convention, where Mitt Romney is expected to accept the nomination?
A seat at the party's rule-making table to advocate making it easier for non-mainstream candidates to compete in future GOP nominating contests?
This is a classic chain of events that never seems to go out of style in an election year.
First one of the presidential campaigns put out videos that it says are informational but critics say are attack ads. This time, it's President Obama's team and the target is Republican rival Mitt Romney. The point of the spots, such as this one, is to make the case that when Romney ran Bain Capital, some of the companies the investment firm took over ended up shedding jobs rather than creating them.
For the most part, Democrats love, and Republicans detest, the gov. recall in Wisconsin. Which is the opposite of how they saw the 2003 California recall.
Ron Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Even Ron Paul knows it. His acknowledgement that Mitt Romney will be the nominee is just stating the obvious.
But what exactly did he mean when he said last week that he will "no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not voted"? Was he telling us that he was dropping out of the race?
About two dozen union men and women, supporters of President Obama’s reelection, went to the gates of a closed Kansas City steel plant to attack economic policies of Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney.
The campaign for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and the Republican Party together raised $40.1 million in April, just shy of the $43.6 million that President Obama and the Democratic Party took in.
This is the first monthly report since Romney effectively wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination. And because money is one way to keep score during a presidential campaign, the news is getting a great deal of attention from the political media this morning.
TV viewers in five swing states will see an Obama ad tomorrow that highlights a bankrupt Kansas City manufacturing firm and hundreds of lost jobs at the hands of Mitt Romney’s Boston-based investment firm.
Republican Ron Paul is not shuttering his presidential campaign, his chief strategist says in a memo sent this morning to supporters and the news media.
"Let me be very clear," said Jesse Benton, "Dr. Paul is NOT dropping out or suspending his campaign."
"As Dr. Paul has previously stated, he is in this race all the way to the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August," Benton said. The campaign will, though, be "maximizing our resources" by not investing in remaining primary states, he said.
As close as the general election is expected to be, virtually everything the presidential candidates do from here until November is about maximizing the turnout of voters in their respective bases without repelling independents or moderates.
An audience member decries President Obama's economic policies as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a February campaign rally in Atlanta.
Credit Steve Helber / AP
President Obama, seen earlier this month at a Virginia rally, launched a TV and Web campaign Monday criticizing Romney's record on job creation.
As the election year began, conventional wisdom was pretty well set about the outcome of the presidential race. If the economy improved, President Obama would win. If not, he'd be a one-termer.
So what does it mean that many big economic indicators are moving sideways?
"Obama seems to be in that gray area," says Paul Pierson, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "The numbers are neither so good nor so bad that they give you a definitive answer."
Republicans rule rural areas, while any Democrat can count on running up big margins in most of the large cities in the country. That has left the suburbs as the main partisan battleground.
For several election cycles now, the presidency has been won or lost based on the vote among suburbanites in a few key states. That's likely to be true again this November.
And some political observers believe that President Obama took the calculated risk that his newfound support for gay marriage rights will boost his campaign in these all-important counties.
