Barack Obama’s love for his BlackBerry phone has been well documented in photographs and news stories, and history may very well know him as the BlackBerry President. Unfortunately for the phone’s maker, Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), the BlackBerry itself may also be history.

At a time where Research in Motion’s finances have been hurting, BlackBerry phones have been losing market share among one of its core constituencies: the power brokers in Washington.

As it stands, BlackBerry still has a strong grip in D.C. Of the estimated 10,600 smartphones distributed to House staffers, 9,000 are BlackBerrys, 1,500 are Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhones, and 100 are Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android devices. Read 

In the aftermath of an anemic May jobs report, which showed the economy only adding 69,000 jobs and unemployment rising to 8.2%, it has been rough going for President Barack Obama lately. However, Obama may be relieved to hear that average Americans don’t share his opponents’ negative views on those figures.

According to a Gallup poll released today, 42% of Americans had a somewhat or very negative view of the jobs report. Another 40% said their views on the report were mixed, while 9% had a positive view of the report. About one in ten of those polled said they had no opinion.

This is good news for Obama, whose critics have attacked the numbers as “devastating,” “pathetic” and “extremely troubling.” The figures were widely seen as disappointing, and it could have gotten much worse for Obama than the polls indicated. Read 

Mitt Romney has finally caught up to Barack Obama in one important aspect of his campaign: fund-raising.

In May,  the first month where direct, head-to-head fund-raising figures between Romney and Obama were available, Romney and the Republican National Committee raised $76.8 million. Obama’s campaign, and the Democratic National Committee took in $60 million in May.

How did Romney take such a large lead on Obama? There are many factors, among them that May was the first month Romney could fully dedicate to campaigning against Obama, and not just running for the GOP nomination. Also, it’s possible that Obama’s public statement in support of gay marriage energized the social conservative base of the Republican Party. Read 

Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, told Charlie Rose in an interview that aired today on CBS This Morning that he will not be Mitt Romney’s No. 2 on the presidential ballot this November.

“I’m not going to do it,” Bush emphatically answered Rose’s inquiry. “I’m not going to be asked. And it’s not going to happen.”

Just to be certain, Rose posed a followup question: “Under no circumstances?” Read 

Republicans are seizing on comments made by former National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers to claim that extending Bush-era tax cuts is an idea with bipartisan support. Whether or not that’s what he meant is still up for debate.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Summers was asked what advice he would give to President Barack Obama. His response?

“The real risk to this economy is on the side of slowdown, certainly not on the side of overheating, and that means we’ve got to make sure we don’t take gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year. That’s got to be the top priority.” Read 

A bill that backers claimed would help close the pay gap between men and women failed to move out of the Senate today, after a vote to break a filibuster failed.

The vote to end the filibuster was short of the 60 needed votes, with 52 voting to move towards actual debate on the bill and 47 voting against. No Republicans supported the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted against the bill in a procedural move that allows him to bring the bill up again.

The bill would have put the burden on employers to prove that a difference in pay between men and women was anything other than the result of gender, would forbid retaliation against employees who share salary information, boost Labor Department training initiatives, and provide grants for programs to help women negotiate better pay. Read