Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on it adds up.

These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country and they are the reason why it is so expensive or one of the reasons it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.

I supported my friend Congressman Shuler over former Speaker Nancy Pelosi during our party's leadership elections in November citing a need for new leadership.

I also know that there have been many times in our history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind of leadership and consensus-building that produce progress in our democracy.

I have run a general election campaign pregnant and ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign commuting to London with a new baby so I already have my system set up.

While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection I have never been surprised by his leadership dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.

To my mind the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man's leadership.

Leadership can not be measured in a poll or even in the result of an election. It can only be truly seen with the benefit of time. From the perspective of 20 years not 20 days.

That U.N. Security Council resolution requires getting Syrian troops and intelligence officials out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese can have elections here this spring that are free and fair and free of outside influence.

What I hope is in five years' time I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked but it has worked.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

In an election one needs both hope and audacity.

In the end that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33 000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

It's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town in a very modest home are just the things that I believe have won the election.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town in a very modest home are just the things that I believe have won the election.

Natural selection as it has operated in human history favors not only the clever but the murderous.