It's hard to think of a brand that is more in crisis today than the Republican Party. Not even JCPenney or Groupon, Kodak or BlackBerry come close.

The dimensions of the licking that the Grand Old Party took at the polls on Tuesday are still unfolding, but Republican leaders and rank-and-file members alike are trying to figure out, exactly, just where they go from here.

They certainly wasted little time in getting started. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, already was communicating via social media in the wee hours of Wednesday that his party needs a new outreach to Hispanics and other minorities — but one based on the appeal of conservative principles such as the importance of the family and hard work.

Beyond that basic formula, there's little agreement within the party ranks about where and how Republicans need to proceed in order to bolster the flagging morale of partisans, try to make back some of the lost ground in elections in 2014 and, of course, ultimately do better in capturing the White House in 2016 when two-term President Obama can't run again.Continue reading...

With all the talk of "Walmart moms" in the US election cycle, the Obama re-election team today released a direct appeal to that demographic.

The video above, distributed on the Walmart Community YouTube channel, features the First Walmart Mom, Michelle Obama, who helped launch Walmart's healthy food platform. She talks about how she and Barack started married life in debt from student loans, and points to BarackObama.com/plans and, of course, vote.barackobama.com.

And in the interests of balance if not equal time, the Walmart channel also posted an appeal for the Romney campaign by Ann Romney, whose video clocks in at 5:25 vs 3:10 for Michelle:Continue reading...

It’s hard to know right now how the good people in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada will be voting on Nov. 6, but you can get a sense of what the campaign managers for President Obama and Mitt Romney think by watching how they spend their ad dollars.

Romney seems to have given up on Michigan, where he was born and his father served as governor, for the time being since his campaign has “abandoned their (advertising) efforts” in those two states, according to CBS Boston. Wherever the money is spent, though, there will be heaps of it. Total political ad spending this year is expected to add up to $1.1 billion, and only a third of that has been spent so far, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.

With the Romney camp sharpening its messaging and Team Obama getting tougher on China by filing a complaint via the World Trade Organization, get ready to see a whole lot of political ads, America, such as the latest from the Obama and Romney campaigns, above and below.Continue reading...

When you're the president and Exhibit A in one of your centerpiece economic-development plans turns into a huge disappointment, the fallout is likely to be intensely negative. And we're not talking here about the $800 billion economic-stimulus program that President Obama launched in 2009.

Instead, it's the president's much-vaunted "green-jobs" strategy. And the brand under fire in this situation is Solyndra, a California-based solar-panel manufacturer that last week shut its doors and is now filing for bankruptcy protection despite receiving a $535-million federal loan guarantee and about $1 billion in venture capital.

The company, based in Fremont, Calif., was the first to receive funds under the Energy Department's loan-guarantee program for the clean-technology industry. Last year, President Obama visited Solyndra (its biggest US solar-panel contract: PepsiCo's Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, Calif.) and touted it for creating jobs. But facing competition from larger panel-makers, including some in China, Solyndra began to shrink almost before its new factory was built.Continue reading...

The longer America’s economic doldrums continue, and the debt-ceiling talks drag on, the more that Corporate America feels compelled to speak out, both in criticism and defense of the man in the middle of the maelstrom: President Obama.

Last week’s berating of America's corporate chieftains by GE head Jeff Immelt amounted to a sort of defense of the president and his policies. Immelt, a key figure on Obama’s jobs council, told his fellow CEOs to stop whining about the economy and the dire employment situation and to create jobs within their companies.

And earlier this week, a group of CEOs were convened for an education roundtable (at top), evidently eager to meet with President Obama to help him figure out how industry-led partnerships can help improve the prospects for America's youth — the foundation of all future job growth, of course.Continue reading...

Yesterday, President Obama answered questions in the first ever Twitter town hall. Over an hour, with the help of Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, Obama answered questions that came in via Twitter, including one from Speaker of the House John Boehner, and even tweeted a few responses himself.

One detail of the session caught the eye of many observers watching the live-stream — the covering of a logo by the president's official seal.Continue reading...

President Obama's participation in yesterday's history Facebook town hall was more than just a chance to answer questions about his Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity agenda. It was a none too subtle demonstration of his social media savvy.Continue reading...

President Obama jokingly introduced himself at yesterday's historic Facebook/White House town hall as "I'm Barack Obama, and I'm the guy who got Mark (Zuckerberg) to wear a jacket and tie. I'm very proud of that."

The hour-long Q&A, a bid to engage youth and social media users as Obama lays the groundwork for his 2012 re-election campaign, was moderated by Zuckerberg and introduced by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at FB HQ in Palo Alto, California.Continue reading...