What makes this presidential election different from all other presidential elections? And different from what we expected when the year began? First, neither party's presumptive nominee was chosen by massive support from primary voters, as John Kerry was in 2004, George W. Bush in 2000 or Bill Clinton in 1992. That may not seem obvious in the case...

Race, the yet unclosed scab that has run deep through our history, is about to be discussed as it never has been in a presidential election. In fairness to the United States, racial attitudes (or man's view of the "other" man) is a universal phenomenon that in most countries either goes unspoken or results in straight-out ethnic cleansing...

WASHINGTON, D.C — Big-time Republican contributors are complaining that prospective presidential nominee John McCain is poorly organized for the campaign and off to a bad start in raising money. McCain begins well behind Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 money derby, and longtime Republican givers say there is no coherent plan for catching up...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Joseph Lieberman's friends are certain that if Democrats expand their one-vote Senate edge in this year's elections, they will kick him out of the Senate Democratic caucus and, therefore, oust him as Homeland Security Committee chairman. Lieberman risked the usual punishment of ejection from the party caucus when he en...

Republicans show more optimism about race relations than do Democrats. A June 2007 Gallup Poll asked Republicans and Democrats to rate relations between blacks and whites. Among Democrats, 67 percent said relations were "somewhat good" or "very good," while 77 percent of Republicans gave those answers. Similarly, 22 percent of R...

JOHN MCCAIN-SAM BROWNBACK: A darling of the Religious Right, the Republican senator from Kansas bowed out before the presidential race got interesting. He has since endorsed McCain and defended him against other Double Rs as being authentic. With Brownback, author of "From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion," M...

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is back. By winning the Democratic primaries in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island this week, Clinton has ensured the Democratic presidential nomination will be decided at the Democratic National Convention. She has also demonstrated that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is far from unbeatable. Most of all, Clinton's comeback show...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama concede that Sen. Hillary Clinton's aggressiveness rescued him from a serious blunder in last Tuesday's presidential debate at Cleveland, when he hesitated at rejecting a lavish endorsement of him by black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan. Obama deplored Farrakhan's record of anti-Semitic commen...

Hillary Rodham Clinton recently jumped on Barack Obama for what her aides called "a pretty big flip-flop" as Obama began to backpedal from a pledge to participate in the federal public campaign financing program in the general election. The program would limit each presidential nominee's spending to $85 million in taxpayer-donated dollars...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth-straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and the sooner she leaves the race the more it will improve ...