President Obama to formally launch re-election bid on May 5th

By Richard K. Barry

It's hard to believe we're not already right in the middle of high campaign season in the 2012 election cycle, but I guess all things have their formal starting points.

RealClearPolitics is reporting that President Obama will "officially" launch his re-election campaign on May 5th with rallies in Columbus and Richmond.

A pithy and very accurate comment in the story is that this will be "akin to opening night after a thousand preview appearances."

After a lot of silly speculation that someone other than Romney might be the GOP nominee, from me too, Mitt's the one.

Here we go. Pre-season is over. Game on. Whatever other metaphor you can think of. There are a mere 195 days before Election Day. The political junkies among us are going to enjoy this. My apologies to the rest of you.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)