Barack Obama, Virginia | featured news

President Obama thinks he knows the key to re-election, and it's very close to the White House. Right across the Potomac River, in fact, in Virginia. "If we win Virginia, we will win this election," Obama told supporters last night at a high school in Leesburg, Va.

In a campaign fast growing nasty, the Republican National Committee is trying a gentler approach... Several Republicans who weren't involved in making the ad say a softer approach may be essential to the effort to defeat Obama in November, given polls showing him with strong personal favorability ratings. The ad is airing in Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa.

President Obama and his campaign barnstormed through Virginia on Saturday, relentlessly hammering away at Mitt Romney’s business record and releasing a mocking new ad.

Citing a poll conducted by Global Strategy Group and Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group in the battleground states of Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida, Priorities USA claimed that more voters say Romney’s experience at Bain makes them less likely to vote for him, 37% to 27%. Claiming that its own anti-Bain ads are working, Priorities USA pointed out that in the 11 markets they’ve advertised in within those five states, Obama leads Romney by eight points (49% to 41%) compared with a three-point lead in those without the ads (46% to 43%).

While nationally the two rivals are locked in a dead heat, in 12 expected battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin — Obama leads by eight points in the survey.

President Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney, and their allies have already spent $87 million on TV ads, the Associated Press reports -- most of it in nine battleground states. They are, not surprisingly, nine toss-up states that will likely decide the election: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.

President Barack Obama and thousands of ordinary West Virginians honored the late Robert C. Byrd at a memorial service in the late senator's home state Friday.

Virginia's proclamation of Confederate History Month without any reference to slavery was unacceptable, President Obama said in an interview broadcast Friday.

In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia's shore.

With a modest "tea party" protest outside, thousands rally for what the president calls a "fateful debate" that has been raging for a century.