I don't think there's any shortage of tough, sometimes vicious rhetoric about President Barack Obama coming from the right. Talk radio shows dominated by conservatives.

Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern.

Mitt Romney, both did better with the military than Donald [Trump].

Beyond budget fights, the Obama second-term agenda was supposed to be about passing comprehensive immigration reform.

In 2007 the 'dagger' of an idea that killed President Bush's effort at reforming the immigration system was lax border security.

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days.

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history.