(CNN) - After repeatedly pinning the president for the unemployment level, which now sits at 8.1%, Mitt Romney pledged he could cut the rate by two points if he makes it to the White House.

"I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," the presumptive GOP nominee said in a TIME interview published Wednesday.
FULL POST

(CNN) - Mitt Romney, who is spending this week promoting a plan for America's public school system, spent Thursday morning defending his stance that smaller class sizes don't necessarily equate with better learning in schools.

Romney participated in an education roundtable at a charter school in Philadelphia the day after laying out his education plan to Latino small business owners in Washington. Romney's plan emphasizes school choice over other factors, including efforts to reduce the number of students in classrooms.
FULL POST

(CNN) – Call it coast to coast fundraising.

While President Barack Obama raises campaign cash for his re-election bid at an event Thursday morning in California, Vice President Joe Biden does the same in the battleground state of North Carolina.
FULL POST

(CNN) – New polls released Thursday show Democrats ahead of Republicans in three big Senate races, all of which take place in crucial presidential election battleground states.

Starting with Ohio, incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown enjoys a 14-point lead over Republican challenger and state treasurer Josh Mandel. According to the NBC-Marist survey, 51% of registered voters said they would support Brown, while 37% said they would pick Mandel.
FULL POST

(CNN) - With 12 days to go until the recall election of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, two new polls indicate the Republican governor holds a single digit advantage over his Democratic challenger.

According to a St. Norbert College/Wisconsin Public Radio survey, 50% of people likely to vote in the June 5th recall election say they support Walker, the first term governor, with 45% backing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Democratic challenger, and 5% unsure. Barrett won his party's primary earlier this month, setting up a rematch with Walker from the 2010 election that the Republican won by five points.
FULL POST

(CNN) – Mitt Romney, who on Wednesday said he would bring the nation's unemployment rate to 6% as president, offered three ways he would achieve that goal in an interview Thursday.

"Well, there are a number of things," Romney said on Fox News. "You start off by saying, let's stop something that's hurting small business from creating jobs and that's 'Obamacare.' Get rid of it. No. 2, have an energy strategy that takes advantage of our natural gas and oil and coal, as well as our renewables. Those low cost energy fuels will ultimately mean jobs come back here, even manufacturing jobs that left here. And finally, get a handle on the deficit so that people understand if they invest in America, their dollars will be worth something in the future."
FULL POST

(CNN) - Jurors in former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' corruption trial were set to begin a fifth day of deliberations Thursday, weighing the former North Carolina senator's fate after four weeks of testimony.

The eight-man, four-woman jury began deliberations Friday. On Monday, jurors asked to review exhibits related to two of the six counts against Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee. On Tuesday, they asked to see two more exhibits. They made no requests for exhibits Wednesday.

(CNN) - President Barack Obama holds a narrow advantage over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in three crucial battleground states, according to new polling.

NBC News/Marist surveys indicate Obama with identical 48%-44% advantages over Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, among registered voters in Florida and Virginia. And the poll, released Thursday, indicates the president with a 48%-42% lead over Romney in Ohio.
FULL POST

(CNN) – Mitt Romney took his Democratic rival to task Thursday, saying a remark from President Barack Obama's stump speech revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the term "productivity."

President Barack Obama made the quip at a campaign event in Denver, where he was campaigning Wednesday after speaking at the commencement ceremony of the U.S. Air Force Academy.
FULL POST

(CNN) - Cutting the federal deficit and standing up to China on trade are two of the "day one" promises offered by likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney in a new television ad his campaign announced Thursday.

"Day One, Part Two" is the sequel to Romney's first general election television ad, which the campaign unveiled one week ago. In that ad, Romney listed another set of proposals he would begin to enact his first day in office: approving the controversial Keystone Pipeline and beginning to repeal President Barack Obama's sweeping health care law.
FULL POST

(CNN) - President Barack Obama continues a west coast fund-raising swing, and then travels to Iowa, Thursday, while Mitt Romney holds a campaign event in Philadelphia before heading to Boston to meetings and private finance events.

Also on the trail Thursday: Vice President Joe Biden, who will hold a fund-raiser for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Virginia, former Gov. Tim Kaine.

See the full schedule after the jump.
FULL POST