Lee Atwater, the late Republican operative, is described by his numerous detractors as the godfather of contemporary xenophobic dog whistles to the baser instincts of a vastly Caucasian political party.  Atwater made his professional bones as chief dirty trickster for the 1978 U.S. Senate candidacy of his own godfather——fellow South Carolinian Strom Thurmond , a white supremacist who secretly fathered a child with a  black housekeeper.

As President Obama and his campaign team know, the Buffett Rule -- officially the Paying a Fair Share Act -- is a powerful symbol of many Americans' desire for economic justice and reprisal against the richest 1 percent that has arguably cached the country's wealth for itself.  So it's only rational that Obama would bring it into focus as the primaries shift to the two-man  race for the presidency. 

The real wedge issue in the election will be Obama himself. This campaign will be more explicitly racialized than the last one. In spite of the economic difficulties that Blacks face – an unemployment rate almost twice the norm - Blacks nevertheless feel better about the economy than Whites. This is simply racial solidarity. There is still a great deal of support for Obama in the African-American community. Even people who are critical, in the end, say he’s doing the best he can.

While some say health care reform may not have gone far enough, the “three big things” it delivers are greater protection for consumers against insurance companies through the new health Patient’s Bill of Rights, expansions in health care coverage and control of health care costs.

Prepping for another run for the White House, President Barack Obama recently launched an "African-Americans for Obama" campaign to target Black voters. It is expected that the Democrats would work to shore up their Black base right before the president's bid for re-election. The dampened enthusiasm among Black voters who are facing 15.8 percent unemployment and rapidly declining wealth levels is also expected. The Black unemployment number is more than double that of White Americans, which stands at 7.5 percent. Throughout the Obama presidency, White unemployment has improved, while Black unemployment has gotten markedly worse.

The great fear a year ago when President Obama unveiled his budget for 2012 was that he caved to the GOP and Tea Party hardliners, and axed dozens of vital programs and agencies. The screams were long and loud from liberal Democrats that the budget slashes would tar Obama as the first Democratic president to do what no Democrat or GOP president had dared do and that was to slash and restructure Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The fears have mostly proved groundless. 

“America is back,” President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address. That sounds muscular, very Schwarzenegger-sque. But America’s new avatar is a little different from old Uncle Sam. In 2009 in his first State of the Union, President Barack Obama said “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before … It is time for America to lead again.” What a difference one term in office makes.

From New America Media: That Black voters will again give President Obama a sky-high percentage of their vote in 2012 was never in doubt. What is in doubt is how many will make up that percentage. If Black voters had not turned the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries into a virtual holy crusade for Obama, and if Obama had not, openly in the South Carolina primary and subtly in primaries thereafter, stoked the Black vote, he could easily have been just another failed Democratic presidential candidate. 

From New America Media: PCIP is a part of President Obama's healthcare plan that guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions, who have been uninsured for at least six months. Knowing that the major changes under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) wouldn’t kick in until 2014, Democrats made sure to include provisions that would take effect quickly, as a bridge to 2014 – and before the 2012 election.

From New America Media:  As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to review the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), California health experts are confident that the state will continue to lead the way on health reform. California has the highest number of uninsured persons of any state. Through the work of health and consumer advocates, the state has focused on building the infrastructure for future coverage expansion and implementing as many of the changes as fast as it can.