Incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel sat through the second of Chicago’s three runoff debates looking as if he needed to pinch himself while trying not to look as if he wanted to punch his opponent’s lights out. He wasn’t supposed to be there. All bets were on Emanuel brushing aside his four much lesser-known challengers in…

(The Root) — Barack Obama came to a gunfight Wednesday with a rocket launcher. After almost completing his entire first term while deftly dodging any substantive discussion on gun control, 33 days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the president came out blasting. He called out Congress, announcing it’s time for Capitol Hill lawmakers…

(The Root) — If the nation plunges over the fiscal cliff at year’s end, President Barack Obama won’t take the fall. The blame will lie at the feet of congressional Republicans. After four years of sheer obstructionism — behavior that was called out during the presidential campaign season — most Americans are pointedly aware of…

(The Root) — In Republicans’ burning zeal to deny America’s first black president a second term, the GOP’s tactics and their unintended consequences ensured that Barack Obama would have four more years. GOP legislators and politicians offended African Americans. Offended women. Offended Hispanics. Offended gays. Apparently only straight, white Christian men were off-limits. Their never-ending,…

(The Root) — It has been a long and tortuous two weeks since the Republicans first began doing the happy dance and attaboying each other after the first presidential debate. Their guy, Mitt Romney, had whipped that other guy like he owned him. The polls were indicating that Big Mo was on their side. And…

(The Root) — Gwen Ifill was sorely missed during the first of the presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Had she or Candy Crowley or even Diane Sawyer moderated Wednesday night’s debate, my guess is that one issue that was completely AWOL would have been called into duty: women’s rights. Don’t get me…

(The Root) — Even the dullest knife in the drawer could predict that when the mayor of a big city drops the f-bomb on the president of the teachers union during one of their earliest meetings, subsequent strike negotiations might not go as smoothly as possible. No, they didn’t. So as Chicago schoolteachers returned to…

(The Root) — Witnesses to this week’s DNC or last week’s RNC conventions could easily come to the same conclusion: African-American issues were about as invisible as the imaginary President Obama in Clint Eastwood’s staged chair. During the Republican National Convention’s truncated three-day conference, there was Obama-bashing galore, with frequent mentions that the unemployment rate…

(The Root) — When the Grand Old Party gathers this week in Tampa, Fla., during the peak of hurricane season, the politicians’ sound and the fury on the inside of the Convention Center may well match the wind and the fury of tropical storm Isaac on the outside. For three days, one blowhard Republican after…