Romney’s Hometown Paper Backs Obama

This has got to hurt. The Boston Globe, the largest and most important newspaper in Massachusetts--a state where Republican Mitt Romney once served a single term as governor--today gave its enthusiastic endorsement to Democratic President Barack Obama’s re-election. The editorial reads, in part:

A fresh mandate in November would help to free Obama from a congressional Republican leadership that made his destruction its top priority. It would open the door to a balanced solution to the nation’s fiscal problems. It would clear the way for desperately needed improvements in education and infrastructure. It would give new impetus to a president whose thoughtful engagement with the world has ended wars, disrupted terrorist networks, and rebuilt alliances. It would put America on a sustainable path, with an economy built on human capital, not financial engineering.

Obama’s reelection would also curb the growing power of special interests, who so often hide their self-serving agendas behind a facade of fist-in-the-air patriotism and promises of low taxes. Anyone who lived through the crash of 2008, and now sees Republicans in Congress seeking to thwart the Dodd-Frank law’s protections, should sense the true impetus behind all the pronouncements about unleashing the job creators. The Supreme Court’s wrongheaded Citizens United decision, granting corporations unlimited power to influence campaigns, provided yet another weapon for the powerful to deploy against the general interest.

Obama is both the key to a brighter future and the bulwark against a return to the chaos of the Bush years. He stands between the divides in American society, so some say he must therefore be the source of division. But as president, Obama has reached out repeatedly to Republicans and shied away from the I’m-the-decider pronouncements of his predecessor. He’s been diligent and responsible--to a fault. If anything, he’s been too little of a politician, not enough of a persuader. But he’s built a record of major accomplishments in the face of intense pressures, and fully deserves reelection.

You can read the complete editorial here. The Globe also backed U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren over incumbent Scott Brown in an editorial yesterday.

Meanwhile, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich gives his thumbs up to Obama for being on the right side of what he says is “the biggest issue” in this campaign:

As we go into the final days of a dismal presidential campaign where too many issues have been fudged or eluded--and the media only want to talk about is who’s up and who’s down--the biggest issue on which the candidates have given us the clearest choice is whether the rich should pay more in taxes.

President Obama says emphatically yes. He proposes ending the Bush tax cut for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and requiring that the richest 1 percent pay no less than a third of their income in taxes, the so-called “Buffett Rule.”

Mitt Romney says emphatically no. He proposes cutting tax rates on the rich by 20 percent, extending the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, and reducing or eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains.

Romney says he’ll close loopholes and eliminate deductions used by the rich so that their share of total taxes remains the same as it is now, although he refuses to specify what loopholes or deductions. But even if we take him at his word, under no circumstances would he increase the amount of taxes they pay.

Obama is right.

There’s more of Reich’s column to read here.