For most of 2012, President Obama has been running in the Democratic primary. I know that seems odd, given that he’s essentially running unopposed. But that's not what I'm talking about.

Just as the political air is filled with talk of the inevitability of Barack Obama's re-election -- we are told that the kids at his Chicago headquarters are brimming with confidence -- in come some poll numbers showing him behind.

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It irritates members of both groups when I note the similarities of the Tea Party movement that swept the nation in the 2010 election and the peace movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But they are similar.

In the past couple of weeks, people who care about American politics and about Congress have lost two important figures: Harry McPherson and James Q. Wilson.

Has one of our two major parties ever had a weaker field of presidential candidates in a year when its prospects for victory seemed so great? My answer, after hemming and hawing a bit, was yes: the Democratic party in 1932. 

Has Barack Obama's Democratic party given up on winning the votes of the white working class? Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now with the Huffington Post, thinks so.

Edward Blum charts the degeneration of the Voting Rights Act from a law designed to remove voting barriers for African Americans to a frivolous, costly gerrymandering tool.