9/29/07: Former President Bill Clinton is questioning Senator Barack Obama's readiness to be president, saying he has about as much experience as Mr. Clinton himself did in 1988, the year Mr. Clinton decided not to run for the White House.
10/3/07: For months, Senator Barack Obama has tried to set himself apart by reminding voters of his original opposition to the war in Iraq. Not only has he raised it in every debate, but his campaign also reprinted a speech he delivered in 2002, warning of a "rash war," and distributed copies to Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond. Yet Mr. Obama has struggled to persuade primary voters why it matters, particularly when he and leading rivals share similar Iraq exit strategies, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has argued that what matters is not what happened in the past, but what candidates would do in the future.
10/12/07: In the advertisement, Mr. Obama's voice played as the screen flashed photographs of Mr. Obama and fire-and-brimstone images of war.But, campaign officials said late Thursday, the audio excerpt was not from the actual speech, but was a recently recorded version of it.
10/18/07: In his third-quarter financial report filed this week with the Federal Election Commission, Senator Barack Obama did not provide a full accounting for where his campaign had spent money on travel, catering or a variety of other expenses.
10/23/07: Senator Barack Obama is drawing criticism for signing up a gospel singer with controversial views about gay men and lesbians for his campaign in South Carolina.
10/25/07: The nation's largest gay rights organization criticized Senator Barack Obama of Illinois yesterday for scheduling a gospel concert on Sunday with a singer who has made controversial statements about homosexuality.
12/10/07: In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois legislature -- to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from African-Americans, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate. In the end, Mr. Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted "present," effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.
12/16/07: Former President Bill Clinton made an unusually direct attack Friday night on Senator Barack Obama, one of his wife's leading rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, suggesting that voters who would support someone with Mr. Obama's experience were willing to ''roll the dice'' on the presidency.
1/5/08: But a closer inspection of the results in Iowa's 99 counties also underscores some of the challenges for Mr. Obama as the presidential campaign continues beyond the early voting states. A detailed map of the caucus results suggests that his argument was not convincing to Democrats in many rural areas.
1/8/08: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has become the open and accessible candidate -- sharing beers with reporters, taking endless questions from voters at campaign events and showing rare glimpses of emotion. Senator Barack Obama, meantime, has been cautious, guarded and strenuously on message -- Clinton-like, in other words, at least Clinton-like until a few weeks ago.
1/12/08: Unlike the case in Iowa, where his support was somewhat broader, Mr. Obama drew most of his strength in New Hampshire from voters under 40, affluent Democrats, and independents. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton succeeded with voters who make up the traditional Democratic base: older, less affluent Democrats and those with less education. The problem here is that Mr. Obama's pattern of support in New Hampshire, should it be repeated elsewhere, would place him squarely in the tradition of the classic liberal insurgent -- this year's Bill Bradley or Howard Dean.
1/29/08: A federal judge here revoked bond on Monday and ordered Antoin Rezko, once a major fund-raiser for Senator Barack Obama, held in jail after prosecutors accused him of lying to the court about his finances.
2/03/08: "I just did that last year," he said, to murmurs of approval. A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks. Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama's comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.
2/5/08: But as the campus played host Monday morning to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were plenty of young voters expressing a preference for her as a leader who speaks to their heads, not their hearts.
2/7/08: But once again -- as in New Hampshire -- the result on Tuesday did not match the fervor that had been signaled by Mr. Obama's dramatic march of rallies across the nation leading up to the vote. In that dynamic rests one of the central questions about the Obama candidacy, which may well go the heart of whether he can win the presidency. Is this campaign a series of surges of enthusiasm, often powered by the younger voters who form long lines waiting to hear Mr. Obama speak, that set expectations that are not met at the voting booth?
2/9/08: Mr. Obama's account of his younger self and drugs, though, significantly differs from the recollections of others who do not recall his drug use. That could suggest he was so private about his usage that few people were aware of it, that the memories of those who knew him decades ago are fuzzy or rosier out of a desire to protect him, or that he added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.
2/18/08: Senator Barack Obama adapted one of his signature arguments -- that his oratory amounts to more than inspiring words -- from speeches given by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts during his 2006 campaign.
3/1/08: The challenge of meeting the concerns of the Jewish electorate, a cornerstone of the Democratic base, was evident Tuesday when Mr. Obama was asked at the Democratic debate in Cleveland about Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has endorsed him.
3/2/08: None of that stopped Mr. Rezko, a politically connected developer, and Senator Barack Obama from completing real estate deals a few years ago that resulted in the Obamas obtaining their dream house and the Rezkos buying an empty lot next door.
3/11/08: An e-mail message made public on Monday in the fraud trial of Antoin Rezko, a businessman and political contributor, brought attention to Senator Barack Obama's role in discussions involving a state health planning board that Mr. Rezko is accused of improperly influencing.
3/15/08: Senator Barack Obama said Friday that he had made repeated lapses of judgment in dealing with an indicted Chicago real estate developer, Antoin Rezko, and acknowledged that Mr. Rezko had raised more money for his political campaigns than he had previously disclosed.
3/17/08: The new pastor of Senator Barack Obama's longtime church in Chicago took it upon himself to issue a statement Sunday to defend the record of his predecessor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose incendiary sermons have been played on cable television and the Internet in recent days.
3/18/08:Faced with what his advisers acknowledged was a major test to his candidacy, Senator Barack Obama sought on Monday to contain the damage from incendiary comments made by his pastor and prepared to address the issue of race more directly than at any other moment of his presidential campaign.
3/20/08: Senator Barack Obama on Wednesday tried to steer his campaign from a focus on race that had threatened to envelop his candidacy and back to the economy, war and a host of other concerns.
3/21/08: Yet this week, Mrs. Clinton's electability argument has taken on a new dimension that for her and her advisers is both discomfiting and unpredictable, but also potentially helpful. Some Democrats are now looking at the racially incendiary and anti-American remarks of Mr. Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and wondering if that association could weaken Mr. Obama as a nominee.
4/4/08: Senator Barack Obama's support among Democrats nationally has softened over the last month, particularly among men and upper-income voters, as voters have taken a slightly less positive view of him than they did after his burst of victories in February, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The survey suggests that Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, may have been at something of a peak in February, propelled by a string of primary and caucus victories over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and that perceptions of him are settling down.
4/13/08: Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities.
4/19/08: Heading into the final weekend before the crucial Pennsylvania primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned Senator Barack Obama's toughness, a tactic her campaign called an 11th-hour message to uncommitted superdelegates who may have lingering concerns over his electability.
4/26/08: In a sign that the racial, class and values issues simmering in the presidential campaign could spread into the larger political arena, Republican groups are turning recent bumps in Mr. Obama's road -- notably his comment that small-town Americans "cling" to guns and religion out of bitterness and a fiery speech by his former minister in which he condemned the United States -- into attacks against Democrats down the ticket.
4/29/08: Mr. Obama made his remarks at a hastily called news conference on the tarmac of the airport here late in the day, with the engines of his campaign plane buzzing in the background. His decision to address the issue directly reflected the extent to which Mr. Wright has emerged once again as a problem for his campaign. And at a sensitive time: Mr. Obama has been seeking to appeal to white and blue-collar voters who voted in big numbers for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania, and is trying to persuade uncommitted superdelegates to rally to his side.
5/1/08: Senator Barack Obama's aura of inevitability in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has diminished after his loss in the Pennsylvania primary and amid the furor over his former pastor, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
5/13/08: Faced with doubts about his support for Israel and American Jews, Senator Barack Obama has stepped up his efforts to reach out to the Jewish community over the past month, giving speeches and granting interviews to confront questions about the militant Palestinian group Hamas and his commitment to Jewish causes and values.
5/15/08: Seven months ago, Senator Barack Obama said he did not feel compelled to wear a flag pin, saying he would prove his patriotism in deed, not apparel.
5/22/08:At the Aberdeen Golf and Country Club on Sunday, the fountains were burbling, the man-made lakes were shining, and Shirley Weitz and Ruth Grossman were debating why Jews in this gated neighborhood of airy retirement homes feel so much trepidation about Senator Barack Obama.
5/29/08: With his experience and leadership credentials under sharp criticism, Senator Barack Obama and his advisers are trying to clarify what has emerged as a central tenet of his proposed foreign policy: a willingness to meet leaders of enemy nations.
5/31/08: Reverberations from the Sunday sermon of a Roman Catholic priest who mocked Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at Senator Barack Obama's home church here continued to spread Friday, after the priest offered an apology and the archbishop of Chicago gave him a public reprimand for "partisan campaigning."
6/5/08: Antoin Rezko, a once-powerful fund-raiser who helped propel the career of Senator Barack Obama, was found guilty on Wednesday by a federal jury of 16 counts, including fraud, money laundering and bribery in an influence-peddling scheme that touched the highest levels of the administration of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois.
6/7/08: The morning after claiming the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama spoke to skeptical members of a pro-Israel lobby and made a pledge that some of them found pleasantly surprising: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." That statement generated a storm of controversy in the Middle East, with one Kuwaiti daily calling it "a slap in the face" to Arabs. And over the last 24 hours, as Mr. Obama and his campaign have sought to explain his initial remarks, and suggested that an undivided Jerusalem would be hard to achieve, they have been accused of backtracking, which has generated a new round of criticism, this one here at home among Jewish groups.
6/12/08: James A. Johnson, the consummate Washington insider whom Senator Barack Obama tapped to head his vice-presidential search effort, resigned abruptly on Wednesday to try to silence a growing furor over his business activities.
6/19/08: At a rally for Senator Barack Obama in Detroit on Monday, two Muslim women said they were prohibited from sitting behind the candidate because they were wearing head scarves and campaign volunteers did not want them to appear with him in news photographs or live television coverage.
6/20/08: His decision to break an earlier pledge to take public money will quite likely transform the landscape of presidential campaigns, injecting hundreds of millions of additional dollars into the race and raising doubts about the future of public financing for national races.
6/23/08: When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry's most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon -- and so did Senator Barack Obama.
7/2/08: Senator Barack Obama's decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.
7/4/08: Senator Barack Obama said Thursday that he might "refine" his policies for Iraq after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But hours later he held a second news conference to emphasize his commitment to the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
7/13/08: Now, however, after critics have accused Mr. Obama of shifting positions on issues like the war in Iraq, the Bush administration's program of wiretapping without warrants, gun control and the death penalty -- all in what some view as a shameless play to a general election audience -- Ms. Shade said she planned to switch back to the Green Party. "I'm disgusted with him," said Ms. Shade, an artist. "I can't even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this 'audacity of hope' stuff, it's blah, blah, blah. For all the independents he's going to gain, he's going to lose a lot of progressives."
7/13/08: On Friday night, the comedian Bernie Mac, a longtime friend and supporter of Senator Barack Obama, set out to entertain a crowd at a $2,300-a-head Obama fund-raising event with humor touching on issues like menopause and prostitution. But by the time Mr. Mac was wrapping up his remarks, some in the crowd had turned on him, and when Mr. Obama took the stage, he told the comedian to "clean up your act."
7/16/08: The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama's candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.
7/25/08: On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history. But he was vague on crucial issues of trade, defense and foreign policy that currently divide Washington from Europe and are likely to continue to do so even if he becomes president -- issues ranging from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to new refueling tankers and chlorinated chickens, the focus of an 11-year European ban on American poultry imports.
7/29/08: For four days, Senator John McCain has sought to keep alive a story about how Senator Barack Obama called off a visit to American troops recuperating from war wounds at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
7/31/08: After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Mr. Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.
8/1/08: Senator John McCain's campaign accused Senator Barack Obama on Thursday of playing "the race card," citing his remarks that Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out that he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
8/3/08: Mr. Obama, a Democrat, has continued to support race-based affirmative action, calling it "absolutely necessary" when he was a state senator in Illinois and criticizing the Supreme Court for curtailing it in his time in the United States Senate. But in his presidential campaign, he has unsettled some black supporters by focusing increasingly on class and suggesting that poor whites should at times be given preference over more privileged blacks.
8/10/08: A federal investigation of Democratic Party leaders in Cuyahoga County could pose problems for Barack Obama's campaign in Ohio, party insiders and political analysts say.
8/12/08: In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of "Unfit for Command," the book attacking Senator John Kerry's record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger damaging campaign against Mr. Kerry's war credentials as he sought the presidency. Almost exactly four years after that campaign began, Mr. Corsi has released a new attack book painting Senator Barack Obama, the Democrats' presumed presidential nominee, as a stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up "extensive connections to Islam" -- Mr. Obama is Christian -- and questioning whether his admitted experimentation with drugs in high school and college ever ceased.
8/15/08: For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
8/15/08: Senator Barack Obama appears to be altering his proposals for extending Social Security payroll taxes and raising the capital gains tax, by delaying the increases or scaling them back.
8/16/08: As Senator Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination next week, party leaders in battleground states say the fight ahead against Senator John McCain looks tougher than they imagined, with Mr. Obama vulnerable on multiple fronts despite weeks of cross-country and overseas campaigning.
8/17/08: Democrats face a number of imperatives at their convention, none trickier than making more voters comfortable with the prospect of putting a candidate with a most unusual background -- the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia -- and his family in the White House.
8/19/08: Senator Barack Obama has started a sustained and hard-hitting advertising campaign against Senator John McCain in states that will be vital this fall, painting Mr. McCain in a series of commercials as disconnected from the economic struggles of the middle class. Mr. Obama has begun the drive with little fanfare, often eschewing the modern campaign technique of unveiling new spots for the news media before they run in an effort to win added (free) attention. Mr. Obama, whose candidacy has been built in part on a promise to transcend traditional politics, is running the negative commercials on local stations even as he runs generally positive spots nationally, during prime-time coverage of the Olympics.
8/22/08: A new conservative group co-founded by a former campaign aide to Senator John McCain said Thursday that it would begin a major advertising campaign against Senator Barack Obama emphasizing his association with Bill Ayers, the 1960s radical and Weather Underground founder.
8/24/08: During the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, his son had a consulting agreement that lasted five years with one of the largest companies pushing for the changes, aides to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign acknowledged Sunday.
8/24/08: Mr. Obama has received overwhelming support from black voters, many of whom believe he will help bridge the nation's racial divide. But even as they cheer him on, some black scholars, bloggers and others who closely follow the race worry that Mr. Obama's historic achievements might make it harder to rally support for policies intended to combat racial discrimination, racial inequities and urban poverty.
8/24/08: Delegates to the Democratic National Convention arrive in Denver having largely put aside the deep divisions of the primary fight between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, although some hold lingering concerns about Mr. Obama's level of experience, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.
8/30/08: Mr. Bowman-Henderson, 19, and some other young voters who were part of the nucleus of Mr. Obama's presidential bid said the convention process had left them marginalized as more centrist views on issues like offshore drilling took hold.
9/9/08: After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama's fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign's decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it.
9/9/08: For one of the few times in his presidential candidacy, Mr. Obama is suddenly not the freshest and most telegenic figure on the ballot. While he seems to have settled on a line of attack against Mr. McCain, his campaign appearances in the past 12 days make clear that he is still grappling with his approach to Ms. Palin.
9/11/08: Pennsylvania has voted for Democrats for president since 1992. But no one ever said winning it would be as easy for Senator Barack Obama as, say, ladling Cheez Whiz onto a Pat's steak.
9/11/08: Senator Barack Obama will intensify his assault against Senator John McCain, with new television advertisements and more forceful attacks by the candidate and surrogates beginning Friday morning, as he confronts an invigorated Republican presidential ticket and increasing nervousness in the Democratic ranks.
9/13/08: Senator Barack Obama portrayed Senator John McCain as out of step with America's concerns as he opened an aggressive front on Friday in television advertisements and campaign appearances that were intended to pacify Democrats who are jittery over the direction of the presidential campaign.
9/20/08: Could Senator Barack Obama's popularity among black voters hurt gay couples in California who want to marry?
9/22/08: Senator Barack Obama has shown himself at times to be a great orator. His debating skills, however, have been uneven.
9/25/08: Unlike Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black leaders whose fulminations could scare white voters, Mr. Obama is not from and of New York, Detroit, or the segregated South; he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. To some degree Mr. Obama faces the opposite challenge from fiery black leaders who came before him: Is he too cool for a crisis like this one?
9/27/08: The presidential campaigns roared out of here Saturday morning facing a task arguably as difficult, and as important, as the debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain itself: influencing the public perception of who won an encounter that produced no clear winner or loser.
9/28/08: When Mike Pyne and other union foot soldiers knock on doors to promote Senator Barack Obama, they often confront a tricky challenge: how to persuade union members to vote on the basis of their wallets rather than on issues like abortion, gun rights and race.
10/9/08: Last December, someone using the name "Test Person," from "Some Place, UT," made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.
10/14/08: Unlike Mr. McCain, a fixture in American politics for nearly a generation -- he has appeared on "Meet the Press" 51 times, second only to Bob Dole among politicians, while Mr. Obama has appeared 8 times -- Mr. Obama entered these debates at once famous and unknown.
10/17/08: Mr. Axelrod is certainly familiar with the ways that corporations seek to influence government and public policy. A look at his consulting business shows that in addition to a successful career working for more than 150 political campaigns, he has also provided his communications skills to a roster of corporations and nonprofit groups. Like his counterpart at the McCain campaign, he has often the goal of swaying government decision makers in favor of his clients.
10/26/08: But the penalty in Massachusetts is picayune compared with what some health experts believe Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, might impose as part of his plan to provide affordable coverage for the uninsured. Though Mr. Obama has not released details, economists believe he might require large and medium companies to contribute as much as 6 percent of their payrolls.
10/29/08: Alleging media bias in favor of Democrats, Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin seized Wednesday on The Los Angeles Times's refusal to release a five-year-old videotape of Barack Obama at a dinner honoring a Palestinian rights advocate.
11/1/08: Responding to a report that a Kenyan relative of Senator Barack Obama was living in the United States illegally, his campaign said Saturday that he had no knowledge of her immigration status and that "any and all appropriate laws" should be followed.
11/2/08: Both candidates have campaigned as reformers and declared that repairing the public financing system for presidential campaigns would be a priority in their administration. But Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, apparently did not absorb much by way of political cost when he broke a pledge to accept public financing if his opponent did as well. Mr. Obama built a huge financial advantage over the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, which may have written the epitaph for the current system.
