WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama and his team were caught off guard by John McCain's suspension of his campaign and his call to delay the first presidential debate so he could return to Capitol Hill to work on the financial crisis -- just as they were surprised when McCain tapped little-known...

By now, a lot of people know that presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) met Michelle at Chicago's Sidley Austin law firm office when he spent a summer there between his second and third year at Harvard Law and she was already at the Loop firm. The previous summer,...

The Obama campaign and its shrewd manager, David Plouffe, have outsmarted the Clinton team when it comes to whipping up pressure on the unpledged Democratic delegates who may prove critical in determining who wins the Democratic presidential nomination.

"You know, this, this issue of how the superdelegates ought to vote,...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Now and then, I still ache from a couple of ribs I cracked when a stampede of men surrounded Sen. Barack Obama's motorcade when it arrived at Kibera, a district in Nairobi, one of the worst slums in Kenya and maybe the world.

The driver of...

With the High Holidays over, the Clinton and Obama presidential campaigns are stepping up their competition for cash from the nation's elite and well-connected Jewish Democratic donor community.

In the 2008 White House race, all the major Democratic candidates are steadfast supporters of Israel. But donors for whom Israel is...

WASHINGTON -- "She's always been the other side of Barack's brain." That's how an Obama insider described Valerie Jarrett as an Obama campaign aide announced Thursday night the former CTA chief and current Habitat Co. CEO is taking on a larger role to help her close friend win his White...

WASHINGTON -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson told The Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday night he doubted a flare-up over a remark attributed to him about White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "acting like he's white" would harm the campaign. He called discussions about the blackness or whiteness of the biracial...

WASHINGTON---In a new Iowa ad--where the Democratic presidential race is a three-way tie--White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) seems to be reaching out to independent voters by emphasizing his work with Republicans.

The spot is visually simple. Despite all that stunning exterior footage the Obama ad team has been...

WASHINGTON -- There have been enough Democratic presidential debates to conclude that White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has not mastered the short answer format. Obama demonstrated at Tuesday's Senate Foreign Relations hearing with Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker he also has trouble with questions.

The...

REHOBOTH BEACH, DEL.-- The Illinois GOP straw poll -- not influenced by the kind of pay-to-play politics that marked the Iowa balloting -- handed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday another victory and took some of the Big Mo away from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who was basking...

The Obama campaign has produced a second ad targeted to a minority audience stressing his Christianity, on Tuesday releasing a Spanish language radio spot to run in Nevada, one of the early presidential vote states. Why the emphasis on Obama's Christianity? Is there a worry that in some precincts there...

White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) hits Iowa television with ads for the first time, as Hawkeye state polls show either a tie between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Clinton, or with Edwards in the lead.

Asked the size of the buy, Clinton...

LOS ANGELES, CALIF.---The Clinton campaign polllster, Mark Penn, sent out a memo on Tuesday basically concluding that White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is in good shape, based on national polls. Seventy minutes later, a memo arrived from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe arguing Obama was on a...

WASHINGTON -- As commander-in-chief, White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would sponsor a U.S. strike in Pakistan to attack terrorists, sending a tough message to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf that if he does not act an Obama administration would.

Obama made the threat in outlining his most extensive, specific...

WASHINGTON -- Some rank-and-file potential donors to a September fund-raiser hosted by Oprah Winfrey for Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama at her California estate are being told the event is sold out.

Meanwhile, in other California 2008 presidential contest news, a forum on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender...

Until last week, White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) lived a charmed political life, never the subject during his campaigns for state Senate, U.S. House and U.S. Senate of a major negative hit, so he never had to punch back.

Accused by chief rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)...

WASHINGTON--The CNN/YouTube videos experiment turned out to be a success. The videos were a fun, inventive way to talk about policy and get around just journalists asking questions. I'm curious about whether the youth-oriented "wassup?" format ended up bringing in more and younger viewers. I looked forward to the video...

It's by design, not coincidence, that the four front-running Democrats in the race for the White House will be standing together at the debate Monday night in Charleston, S.C., with the other four rivals at the ends, where they will get the least camera time. And not all the candidates...

"There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.,'' so starts a Washington Post story about White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) running on the front page of the Friday Style section by Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer Robin Givhan.

"There wasn't...

Promoting sex education for kindergarten students -- kind of a sexy topic -- was injected into the 2008 presidential race. It conjures up visions of condoms and cupcakes passed around before the afternoon naptime. Except that it is not true.

GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor,...