“Our Country’s Future Hangs on This Election”

After remaining silent through the Democratic Party’s months-long presidential nominating contest, former President Barack Obama today endorsed the man he once chose as his vice president, Joe Biden, to become the 46th president of the United States. From HuffPost:

“Joe has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery,” Obama said in a 12-minute video filmed at his home and posted on YouTube.

“I know he’ll surround himself with good people ― experts, scientists, military officials who actually know how to run the government and care about doing a good job running the government, and know how to work with our allies, and who will always put the American people’s interests above their own,” he continued. …

He praised the medical professionals, emergency services personnel and others at the front lines of the crisis, in addition to everyone “making their own sacrifice at home with their families, all for the greater good.”

“But if there’s one thing we’ve learned as a country from moments of great crisis, it’s that the spirit of looking out for one another can’t be restricted to our homes or our workplaces or our neighborhoods or our houses of worship,” Obama continued. “It also has to be reflected in our national government. The kind of leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace ― that kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitols and mayors’ offices. It belongs in the White House.”

Again, you read this whole article here.

Rank Disapproval of Trump

This is Presidents Day here in the United States. What better occasion could there be to release a brand-new ranking of the best and worst chief executives in this nation’s history? The New York Times recently asked the 170 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section for their best assessments of all 44 men who have held America’s highest elected office. “Since our previous survey in 2014,” the paper observes, “some presidential legacies have soared (Barack Obama’s stock has climbed into the Top 10), while others have fallen (Andrew Jackson toppled to 15, out of the Top 10).” Meanwhile, “James Buchanan, who was at the helm as the United States careened into civil war, was dislodged from his position as our nation’s worst president by our current president, Trump.”

Here are the 10 presidents winning top honors, in order:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Harry Truman
7. Dwight Eisenhower
8. Barack Obama
9. Ronald Reagan
10. Lyndon B. Johnson

At the other end of the list, these are the lowest-ranked 10:

35. Zachary Taylor
36. Herbert Hoover
37. John Tyler
38. Millard Fillmore
39. Warren G. Harding
40. Andrew Johnson
41. Franklin Pierce
42. William Henry Harrison
43. James Buchanan
44. Donald Trump

In his report on this Times survey, The Maddow Blog’s Steve Benen notes that low opinions of Trump’s performance in office are shared across the board by APSA members, regardless of their political leanings. “When the scholars are broken down by party affiliation,” Benen explains, “Trump ranks #44 among Democratic scholars, #43 among independents, and #40 among Republican scholars. In other words, according to scholars of every stripe, our current president is off to a truly abysmal start and is well on his way to historical ignominy.”

Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll of U.S. voters finds that Trump’s approval rating has fallen yet again. Only 37 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion of him, compared with 59 percent who harbor negative opinions of that mendacious former real-estate mogul.

READ MORE: “Donald Trump Is America’s Worst, 2nd Worst, or 5th Worst President,” by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones).

GOP Plans Would Make Lives Worse, Says Obama

Former President Barack Obama issued a statement earlier today, via Facebook, in response to the Senate Republicans’ newly announced scheme to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) and replace it with a regressive, financially unsustainable, and hastily assembled (in secret!) plan that has the potential to steal health care insurance away from more than 20 million Americans, while giving yet another tax break to the wealthy minority among us.

As the ever-astute Steve Benen remarks in The Maddow Blog, “The Democrat’s 1,000-word statement is worth reading in its entirety, and it clearly has more than one audience in mind. Part of Obama’s message clearly intends to encourage health care advocates and their allies to remain engaged and fight to prevent the nation from falling backwards. But the other part of the message appears to be a challenge to Republican policymakers to do the right thing.”

Here is Mr. Obama’s message in its entirety:

Our politics are divided. They have been for a long time. And while I know that division makes it difficult to listen to Americans with whom we disagree, that’s what we need to do today.

I recognize that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what’s really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did.

We didn’t fight for the Affordable Care Act for more than a year in the public square for any personal or political gain—we fought for it because we knew it would save lives, prevent financial misery, and ultimately set this country we love on a better, healthier course.

Nor did we fight for it alone. Thousands upon thousands of Americans, including Republicans, threw themselves into that collective effort, not for political reasons, but for intensely personal ones—a sick child, a parent lost to cancer, the memory of medical bills that threatened to derail their dreams.

And you made a difference. For the first time, more than ninety percent of Americans know the security of health insurance. Health care costs, while still rising, have been rising at the slowest pace in fifty years. Women can’t be charged more for their insurance, young adults can stay on their parents’ plan until they turn 26, contraceptive care and preventive care are now free. Paying more, or being denied insurance altogether due to a preexisting condition—we made that a thing of the past.

We did these things together. So many of you made that change possible.

At the same time, I was careful to say again and again that while the Affordable Care Act represented a significant step forward for America, it was not perfect, nor could it be the end of our efforts—and that if Republicans could put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we made to our health care system, that covers as many people at less cost, I would gladly and publicly support it.

That remains true. So I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win, that there’s a reason we all chose to serve in the first place, and that hopefully, it’s to make people’s lives better, not worse.

But right now, after eight years, the legislation rushed through the House and the Senate without public hearings or debate would do the opposite. It would raise costs, reduce coverage, roll back protections, and ruin Medicaid as we know it. That’s not my opinion, but rather the conclusion of all objective analyses, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that 23 million Americans would lose insurance, to America’s doctors, nurses, and hospitals on the front lines of our health care system.

The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.

Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.

I hope our Senators ask themselves—what will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage? What will happen to pregnant mothers, children with disabilities, poor adults and seniors who need long-term care once they can no longer count on Medicaid? What will happen if you have a medical emergency when insurance companies are once again allowed to exclude the benefits you need, send you unlimited bills, or set unaffordable deductibles? What impossible choices will working parents be forced to make if their child’s cancer treatment costs them more than their life savings?

To put the American people through that pain—while giving billionaires and corporations a massive tax cut in return—that’s tough to fathom. But it’s what’s at stake right now. So it remains my fervent hope that we step back and try to deliver on what the American people need.

That might take some time and compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But I believe that’s what people want to see. I believe it would demonstrate the kind of leadership that appeals to Americans across party lines. And I believe that it’s possible—if you are willing to make a difference again. If you’re willing to call your members of Congress. If you are willing to visit their offices. If you are willing to speak out, let them and the country know, in very real terms, what this means for you and your family.

After all, this debate has always been about something bigger than politics. It’s about the character of our country—who we are, and who we aspire to be. And that’s always worth fighting for.

(The boldfacing is mine, for emphasis.)

Thank You So Much, Mr. President!

READ MORE: “The Most Successful Democrat Since FDR,” by David Leonhardt (The New York Times); “The ‘Most Successful’ Dem President Since FDR Ends on a High Note,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “The Time Has Come to Say Goodbye to Obama. ‘Godspeed, Brother. You Did Us Proud,’” by Leonard Pitts Jr. (Miami Herald); “Thanks for Everything, President Obama. We’re Going to Miss You,” by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones); “Missing Barack Obama Already,” by Nicholas Kristof (The New York Times); “A Presidential Giant Exits the Stage,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “How the Presidency Changed Obama,” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis (The New York Times); “How the Presidency Changed Obama,” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis (The New York Times); “My President Was Black,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic); “To Obama with Love, and Hate, and Desperation,” by Jeanne Marie Laskas (The New York Times Magazine); “Lessons Taught: Obama’s Legacy as a Historian,” by Jennifer Schuessler (The New York Times); “Pete Souza’s Intimate Portraits of the Barack Obama Years,” by William Boot (The Daily Beast); “Goodbye to All That: What We’ve Learned from Obama’s Presidency,” by Julie Azari (Vox); “The Challenge Posed by Obama’s Calm, Dignified Competency,” by Nancy LeTourneau (Washington Monthly); “The Literary Dividing Line Between Trump and Obama,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “Every Book Barack Obama Has Recommended During His Presidency,” by Ruth Kinane (Entertainment Weekly); “Obama to the Press: ‘America Needs You,’” by James Warren (Poynter); “Obama Granted Clemency Unlike Any Other President in History,” by Charlie Smart (FiveThirtyEight); “Obama Has Now Granted 212 Pardons, and More Commutations Than Any President in U.S. History,” by Jen Kirby (New York); “Saying Goodbye: President Obama, Michelle Obama Thank America in Farewell Posts,” by Matthew Rozsa (Salon).

Reasons to Be Thankful

“It Is About Power”

Well, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives made shameful history today. By a party-line vote of 225-201 (with all but five Republicans voting for the measure, and all 199 Democrats opposing it), Congress’ lower chamber authorized Speaker John Boehner’s much-talked-about--and ridiculed--lawsuit against President Barack Obama. That’s right: Rather than dealing with the nation’s continuing unemployment situation, trying to pass comprehensive immigration legislation, relieving pressure on veteran’s hospitals overwhelmed by the influx of soldiers caused by George W. Bush’s short-sighted bellicosity, or working with the president to reduce crippling student debt, curb greenhouse gases that are endangering the planet’s future, and ease financial burdens on the middle class, Republicans would rather spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a frivolous lawsuit against President Obama for doing his job, for acting while Republicans sit on their hands, complain, and do almost nothing to earn their paychecks.



This is the height of idiocy, nothing but a partisan power grab. Republicans--who’ve tried to undermine President Obama since the first day he took office--now hope to stir up their fear-gripped, anti-government and, yes, hateful base in advance of November’s midterm elections. Yet the result of all this is just as likely to be that it stirs up fierce opposition from Democrats and Independents, who remember the 1990s and what then-Speaker Newt Gingrich sought to do: impeach another Democrat, President Bill Clinton, because they didn’t want him sitting in the White House, either. A recent poll showed that perpetually angry, bigoted Republican extremists--the folks who seem to be in charge of that once “grand” party right now--want to impeach President Obama. And when Boehner’s lawsuit fails, as it likely will, they’ll demand that impeachment hearings commence post haste--even though launching them, with such an obvious dearth of provocation, only further trivializes the significance of an impeachment. This ugly, ultimately self-defeating partisanship and legislative gridlock will only worsen if Republicans manage not only to hold onto their majority in the House in November, but win control of the U.S. Senate as well.

If you think that nothing of any value is coming out Congress at the present juncture, just imagine what will happen if Republicans--opposed to minimum-wage hikes, fighting to restrict women’s access to abortion and other health services, hoping to kill the Affordable Care Act that has finally brought health-care coverage to millions of Americans, and rattling their sabers in favor of brand-new wars in the Middle East--are rewarded with greater power on Capitol Hill. President Obama will then be the only bulwark against a new flood of extremist, religion- and paranoia-rooted bills coming out of both chambers.

Ed Schultz of MSNBC’s The Ed Show devoted a good-sized segment of his broadcast tonight to the cost and pointlessness of Boehner’s games-playing. I have embedded that above. It’s well worth watching.

READ MORE: “The Not-So-Secret GOP Strategy for Everything: Do Nothing, and Blame Obama,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “Even by ‘Do-Nothing’ Standards, This Congress Is Useless,” by Henry Decker (The National Memo).

Promises, Politics, and Progress

From Salon’s coverage of today’s anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom:

If you listened to President Obama’s commemoration of 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech at the March on Washington, and heard a mere paean to the civil rights movement, you weren’t paying enough attention.

At its core, Obama’s speech was a reminder--almost a warning--to minorities and equality advocates not to lose sight of the fact that politics is central to the cause of advancing the causes of the progressive movement King helped unleash.

When Obama’s opponents lambaste him for politicizing the anniversary of the March, as they already are, they’re not basing their criticisms on anything illusory--they’re hoping to diminish its impact.

That’s because Obama beseeched his politically detached supporters to remember that the things they want to see happen in the country won’t happen if they stay that way.

“To secure the gains that this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency,” Obama said. “Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuing that the scales of justice work equally for all and the criminal justice system is not simply pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance.”

You can read the whole piece here. And a full transcript of the President’s “stirring speech on inequality” can be found here.

READ MORE: “President Obama Shows the Progress We’ve Made. His Speech Shows How Terribly We’ve Failed,” by Ezra Klein (The Washington Post); “Obama and the Promised Land,” by Ed Kilgore (Washington Monthly); “Nastiest Responses to Today’s March on Washington,” by Alex Halperin (Salon); “A Partisan Advantage at the Lincoln Memorial,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “Boehner, Cantor Turned Down Chance to Speak at March Anniversary,” by Emma Dumain (Roll Call).

The First, a Second Time

It’s a very satisfying, reassuring day in the United States.



READ MORE: “Inauguration Front Pages Combine Obama’s Second Term, Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy,” by Julie Moos (Poynter); “Obama Becomes First President to Mention Gay Rights in Inaugural Address,” by Sahil Kapur (Talking Points Memo); “Obama Pushes Back on ‘The 47 Percent’: Entitlements ‘Do Not Make Us a Nation of Takers,’” by Annie-Rose Strasser (Think Progress); “An Expansive Case for Progressive Governance, Grounded in Language of Founding Fathers,” by Greg Sargent (The Washington Post); “The Inauguration of Struggle,” by Irin Carmon (Salon); “Looking Out ‘One Last Time,’” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “The Liberation of Barack Obama,” by E.J. Dionne (The National Memo); “Obama II: Older, Wiser, Stronger,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “What to Expect in Obama’s Second Term,” by Evan Soltas (The Washington Post); “How Obama Made Good on the Promises of His First Inaugural,” by Jamelle Bouie (The Washington Post).

A-OK

This beautiful cover of The New Yorker actually comes from that magazine’s November 17, 2008, issue. But with President Obama’s re-election this week, it just seems appropriate to post. The illustration, by Bob Staake, is titled “Reflection.”

Double Billing

Has anybody else happened to mention this anomaly in American history? Barack Obama is now the third recent U.S. president in a row to be elected to two terms in the White House, following Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009).



The last and only other time three men were elected consecutively to two terms as president was back at the beginning of the 19th century: Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), James Madison (1809-1817), and James Monroe (1817-1825).

Obama Wins Big, McConnell Goes Small

One of the things that struck me last night, after U.S. TV networks declared that Democrat Barack Obama had been re-elected as the 44th president of the United States, was the pettiness of the response to that history-making event by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).

Rather than being gracious in defeat, and acknowledging that Republicans had received a thrashing at the polls--not only losing the presidency, but failing (as a result of several poor and alienating candidates) to win back control of the U.S. Senate--McConnell chose once more to snub this democratically elected leader he had previously committed his party’s machinery to driving out of the White House after a single term.

After briefly and bloodlessly congratulating Obama on his victory, McConnell opined in an official statement:

The American people did two things: They gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives.

The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control.

Now it’s time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office.

To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way.

What a small man is Mitch McConnell, what a boorish man. Recognizing that he will have to run for his seat again in 2014, and perhaps fearing that the hateful Tea Partyers--who have already taken down other once-influential Republicans (among them Delaware’s Mike Castle and Indiana’s Richard Lugar)--might remorselessly cut his head off, too, if he doesn’t further burnish his right-wing ideologue creds, McConnell took the low road last evening. No doubt, he and his Republican henchmen are currently scheming to keep America’s political system in gridlock--something they’ve been doing ever since the 2010 elections, despite the crying needs of the public for new jobs-creation programs and fiscal common sense.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the next thing McConnell says, is that President Obama didn’t win a mandate for change with this election. It’s the same sort of thing Republicans always claim when a Democrat wins the White House; in fact, there are already conservatives spreading this message to the media.

Now, a case could certainly be made that McConnell and others are correct in dismissing the notion of a mandate. As Ed Kilgore observes today in his Washington Monthly blog, “the ‘mandate’ talk is in general a myth, and sometimes a destructive myth. Voters pull the lever for candidates, not agendas, and this year, at least, they largely voted for parties, not candidates.”

But then, what was the significance of yesterday’s nationwide elections? It may have been less about handing Obama a mandate to make more sweeping changes, and more about voters doing two other things: (1) reaffirming their faith in his leadership, and (2) slapping down Republicans for their obstructionist behavior over the last two years as well as their destructive policy proposals in this election cycle. Here’s Kilgore again:

Forget about “mandates” for a moment and just think about the practical consequences of Obama’s re-election, particularly since there will still be a Democratic Senate. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 will be implemented (with some obstruction from Republican-controlled states, to be sure, but implemented nonetheless), with its most important provisions kicking in prior to the 2014 midterm elections. Obama will also instantly possess superior leverage on the “fiscal cliff” issues that reflect the two parties’ most fundamental differences on taxes, spending, and the very role of government, for the simple reason that no “solution” can be reached without his and his party’s consent, with inaction producing an outcome much closer to Democratic policy preferences.

That means Republicans are the ones, far more than Obama, who will have to decide what happens next. Do they want to commit themselves to a midterm referendum on Obamacare that means actually reversing existing health insurance coverage for 40 or 50 million Americans? Is their opposition to high-end tax increases (reiterated by John Boehner just last night) so fanatical that they will reject any fiscal compromises no matter what happens, knowing that high-end taxes will in fact go up if they don’t bend?

In a post this morning, The New Republic’s Jonathan Kohn picks up on that latter point about Republican responsibilities in the forthcoming Congress, and how the president has a stronger hand now in dealing with recalcitrant right-wingers:

But what about the next four years? Doesn’t Obama still need a governing plan? Sure. And if Obama has been relatively silent lately on some urgent issues--chief among them, climate change--he’s been quite clear when it comes to economic policy. He’s produced plans for strengthening the recovery. He’s laid out principles for reducing the deficit: Relatively modest reductions in spending coupled with higher taxes on the wealthy. And with the coming debate over the spending sequester and expiration of the Bush tax cuts, both set for January 2013, Obama will get a chance to apply those principles.

The stakes in this fight are large: Depending on the terms, they will define the scope of the federal government for at least a generation to come. And, unlike in recent fiscal debates, Obama should have leverage--more, perhaps, than at any time since the earliest days of his presidency. He can hold out in the debate over the sequester and Bush tax cuts, because the default action--doing nothing--is far worse for Republicans than it is for him. And with the newly elected Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren joining the re-elected Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate, Obama should have a more unified and incrementally more liberal congressional party behind him. (Hopefully they will push Obama, even as they get his back.)

How this plays out depends a great deal on the Republicans, of course. At least since early 2010, after the bruising fight over health care, Obama has been predicting that the Republicans would not become a responsible governing party until they experienced the consequences of extremism. Now that has happened. Republicans effectively ceded winnable Senate seats by nominating far-right candidates. And they lost a potentially winnable presidential election by nominating a candidate who ran on the Paul Ryan budget and even named Ryan as his running mate.

Maybe some moderates will react to Tuesday’s GOP debacle by breaking with the Tea Party, and reaching out to Obama. Or maybe they will be too scared of reprisals from the right wing, as they have ever since Obama took office. I have no idea. But, whatever happens over the next four years, Obama’s re-election guarantees that the laws passed during his first term stay on the books. That instantly makes him one of the most accomplished presidents of modern times. Already Obama and his allies have shaped this country in ways that will last for generations--making life more secure, and creating new opportunities, for tens of millions of Americans.

My guess is that cranky old McConnell hopes the Republicans in Boehner’s dysfunctional and do-nothing House majority will balk at the Obama administration’s every effort to legislate and compromise, so he himself won’t have to do all the dirty road-blocking work and therefore endure not only the president’s arm twisting, but also that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). However, with Obama no longer having to face re-election, and with Republican extremists having made McConnell’s job significantly more difficult, the minority leader isn’t in a strong position to make demands on this newly re-energized White House. Especially if, as anticipated, yesterday’s GOP disaster leads to a blood bath within the party.

Sometimes you don’t need a mandate for change. Sometimes all you need is the opposition to be petty and out of step.

McConnell fits that bill.

FOLLOW-UP: Jamelle Bouie of The Washington Post offers more on McConnell’s determination to obstruct: “Negotiations about the ‘fiscal cliff’ are set to begin soon, and Mitch McConnell is already signaling that he doesn’t intend to budge or cooperate. If anything, in the wake of Tuesday’s election, he is signaling that Republicans will adopt a strategy of categorical opposition even faster than he did after Obama’s victory four years ago.” Read more here.

READ MORE: “He, the People: Obama’s Transformation of America,” by Tom Junod (Esquire); “President Obama’s Mandate for Fairness,” by Neera Tanden (The New Republic); “Four More Years to Enact a New Great Society,” by Jamelle Bouie (The American Prospect); “Barack Obama’s Decisive Victory for Liberal Government,” by Ari Melber (The Nation); “Why Revenge Is Sweet,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “Whites-only GOP Meets Its Demographic Destiny,” by Rich Benjamin (Salon); “The Unappreciated Virtues of Doing Nothing” and “Beware of Beguiling Explanations for Obama’s Victory,” by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones); “Obama’s New Cabinet: 7 Candidates, Plus 4 Supreme Court Options” (San Jose Mercury News).

“A Presidency of Historic Consequence”

From tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show:

Your Vote Is Too Important to Waste

By this point, few people need reminding that tomorrow, November 6, is Election Day in the United States. Billions of dollars have been spent, advertising on behalf of Democratic and Republican candidates around the country--including $1 billion on the presidential race alone. And TV news and opinion programs have been crowded for months with pundits and partisans of all sorts, trying to analyze who’s ahead in the races and what the fallout of projected wins might be. Despite efforts by Republican officeholders in Ohio and Florida, as well as by right-wing tea party activists, to hold down early voting efforts (which favor Democrats), voters seem highly engaged in this election, and the Pew Research Center is expecting a “big turnout.”

Yet there are still people who don’t think it’s important to vote. They may be frustrated that their views aren’t represented by the candidates, or they don’t care to be part of the political process and don’t see the issues at stake as important to their lives.

I can’t speak to the former viewpoint, as I disagree with it, but the latter one strikes me as odd. There are important votes on the line at every level, from choosing the leaders of city councils and state legislatures, to broader ballot measures that would establish marriage equality and curb corporate contributions and expenditures in elections. The presidential contest, by itself, offers a sharp contrast between opposing views on the role of government and the need to ensure that all Americans are given affordable health-care benefits and retirement security.

Wealthy Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who served one term (2003-2007) as the governor of Massachusetts, has given his thumbs-up to an agenda--put forth by his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin)--that would undermine and eventually force the collapse of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He also wants to take away a woman’s right to choose, and make abortion illegal in the United States once more. He hopes to eliminate environmental protections and roll back the clock on equal rights for gays and lesbians. And he intends to immediately overturn the Affordable Care Act, and thereby put bottom-line-driven insurance companies back in control of whether Americans can pay for and be covered adequately by health insurance. Romney has even suggested he would favor starting a new war, this time on Iran. Although history tells us that businessmen make lousy presidents, Romney insists that his background as a venture capitalist gives him the qualifications necessary to repair an economy that was sent into recession by the last Republican president, George W. Bush. Of course, Romney offers few specifics on what he’d cut to bring the American economy back into balance, or on how his economic agenda would actually differ from Bush’s. Instead, he talks about more tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens and more military spending, and tells the rest of us just to trust him. (This coming from a man with a poor record of honesty during this campaign.)

Meanwhile, Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama is defending his pretty impressive list of accomplishments over the last three and a half years, but also trying to preserve a fragile social safety net that increasingly radical right-wingers hope to shred. “Viewed through the lens of history, Obama represents a new type of 21st-century politician: the Progressive Firewall,” writes historian Douglas Brinkley in a recent piece for Rolling Stone magazine. “Obama, simply put, is the curator-in-chief of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. When he talks about continued subsidies for Big Bird or contraceptives for Sandra Fluke, he is the inheritor of the Progressive movement’s agenda, the last line of defense that prevents America’s hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion.”

Obama’s second-term agenda includes spending more on education, boosting manufacturing jobs, creating more clean energy jobs, tackling the issue of climate change (a subject brought into even greater focus by Hurricane Sandy), and raising taxes on the wealthy in order to reduce the nation’s debt. (Republicans have spent years shifting the costs of government to a middle-class that simply can’t bear it, in hopes of building animosity toward government.) “We are going to have to get a handle on our deficit and debt,” the president told Rolling Stone, “but we need to do it in a balanced way that doesn’t simply stick it to middle-class families. I’m confident we can get that accomplished, in part, because the Bush tax cuts lapse at the end of this year, and we’ll have a showdown about how we’re going to fund the government that we need to grow in a sensible way, in a balanced way. Immigration reform I believe we’ll get done, because the Republican Party will start recognizing that alienating the fastest-­growing segments of our society is probably not good politics for them--not to mention the fact that immigration reform is the right thing to do.”

Anybody who thinks that his or her vote doesn’t matter this year is wrong. Yes, influential poll-watcher Nate Silver now gives President Obama an 86.3 percent chance of winning, and it appears that Republican dreams of capturing the U.S. Senate have been foiled. But all of these prognostications could still be incorrect; polls disagree on the outcome of tomorrow’s ballot contests, and much could be decided simply on the basis of turnout, on who shows up to cast their votes--and who doesn’t.

Despite all of the sports analogies pundits apply to politics, politics itself is not a game. Your vote decides your future, in concrete ways, as well as the futures of your community and your nation. It is not a right to waste or to treat cavalierly. If you haven’t already cast a ballot, please remember to do so tomorrow.

READ MORE: “Whatever It Takes, Get Out and Vote!” by Michael Winship (Salon); “Obama Makes His Case for Re-election” (TalkLeft); “Will Mendacity Win?” by Bob Moser and Jaime Fuller (The American Prospect).

Backing Barack

Heading into the final weekend of campaign 2012, let’s check out a few more of the high-profile endorsements given to President Obama’s re-election:

From The Washington Post:

Much of the 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the key questions are who could better lead the country during the next four years--and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government on a more sound financial footing.

That second question will come rushing at the winner as soon as the votes are tallied. Absent any action, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts will take effect Jan. 1 that might well knock the country back into recession. This will be a moment of peril but also of opportunity. How the president-elect navigates it will go a long way toward determining the success of his presidency and the health of the nation.

President Barack Obama is better positioned to be that navigator than is his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

We come to that judgment with eyes open to the disappointments of Mr. Obama’s time in office. He did not end, as he promised he would, “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on fiscal matters. But Mr. Obama is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases. Mr. Romney, by contrast, has embraced his party’s reality-defying ideology that taxes can always go down but may never go up. Along that road lies a future in which interest payments crowd out everything else a government should do, from defending the nation to caring for its poor and sick to investing in its children. Mr. Romney’s future also is one in which an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth resides with the nation’s wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing.

The Post followed up that editorial with another one, this titled “Mitt Romney’s Campaign Insults Voters”:

Through all the flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.

How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers--the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.

How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.

The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda. Mr. Romney promised to replace the Affordable Care Act but never said with what. He promised an alternative to President Obama’s lifeline to young, undocumented immigrants but never deigned to describe it.

And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich--but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited “studies” that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.

Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg--who has shifted over the years from being a Democrat, to being a Republican, to finally declaring himself an independent--announced his support of President Obama on Thursday. He said his endorsement was heavily influenced by the damage caused this week by Hurricane Sandy, and the president’s commitment to leading on the issue of climate change. Bloomberg explains:

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be--given this week’s devastation--should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

But we can’t do it alone. We need leadership from the White House--and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year. ...

When I step into the voting booth, I think about the world I want to leave my two daughters, and the values that are required to guide us there. The two parties’ nominees for president offer different visions of where they want to lead America. ...

One sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the influential Lexington Herald-Leader, in the very red state of Kentucky, also supports Obama for a second four-year term:

Romney’s a great salesman, but it’s impossible to know what he’s selling or predict what he would do if elected. This makes him a risky choice.

Barack Obama has a record as president, and though he has not led us to his post-partisan promised land, he has provided steady, principled leadership during an economic crisis.

Obama's approach--tax cuts for working people and businesses combined with stimulus spending--pulled us back from a depression. If you doubt it, look at Europe, which chose austerity over stimulus and keeps sliding back into recession, while the U.S. economy slowly digs out of a very deep hole. ...

Despite Republicans' determination to deny him any victories, Obama has a list of accomplishments that speak well for his priorities: Consumers have new protections against rip-offs by credit card and mortgage companies. The student loan program is freeing up $62 billion over 10 years by cutting out banks as subsidized middlemen. (Romney wants to reinstate the banks and subsidies.) Obama also gave graduates longer to repay loans, making it affordable for them to work in public service jobs such as teaching.

Americans will no longer have to die or go broke because they fall ill or injured. Modeled on a Republican plan that Romney signed as Massachusetts governor, the Affordable Care Act is coming on line slowly, but already in Kentucky, 48,000 young adults have gained coverage and 477,953 Medicare recipients have received free preventive care. This year 249,275 Kentuckians will receive rebates totaling $15 million; eventually almost 700,000 uninsured Kentuckians could gain coverage.

As for protecting America from external threats, Obama has been smart and strong, as evidenced by Romney’s embrace of Obama’s foreign policy in their last debate. That might have been just for public consumption, though; Romney has surrounded himself with belligerent neoconservative advisors who led the previous president disastrously astray.

READ MORE: “Business Abandons Romney as Bloomberg andThe Economist Endorse Obama,” by Sarah Jones (PoliticsUSA); “Mr Romney Is Stillin the Cloud-cuckoo-land of Thinking You Can Do It Entirely Through Spending Cuts.... Backing Business Is Important, but Getting the Macroeconomics Right MattersFar More,” by Kent Jones (The Maddow Blog); “The Simple Case for Saying Obama Is the Favorite,” by Nate Silver (The New York Times); “Frank Rich: Right Will Rage If Obama Wins,” by David Daley (Salon).

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.

Taking Sides

With just over two weeks until Election Day, newspaper endorsements of President Obama are rolling from some of the most important players on the U.S. media scene.

From The New York Times:

The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown disaster. An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us. Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.

That is the context for the Nov. 6 election, and as stark as it is, the choice is just as clear.

President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery. ...

For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that Americans need.

From today’s Detroit Free Press:

What’s the best case Barack Obama can make for re-election? Let’s start with the stunning record of accomplishments he has compiled over the last four years:

• General Motors and Chrysler are thriving--a long, long way from the edge of insolvency, which is where Obama found them on his first day in office. Bridge loans and managed bankruptcies turned them around, and stable growth followed soon after. Is there anything more important to people here in Michigan?

• The economy has grown jobs for the past 30 months, after hemorrhaging 4.9 million in 2009. The bleeding began to stop when Obama convinced Congress to authorize $831 billion in federal stimulus funds, and employment has grown, slowly but inexorably, since the beginning of 2010.

• The Affordable Care Act, a broad set of private-sector and government reforms, is bringing millions of formerly uninsured Americans under the umbrella of reliable health care. It’s a quantum leap forward that has bested both legislative and legal challenges.

• Of the two costly wars started during the Bush administration, one is over and the other winding down. Osama bin Laden and at least 14 other al-Qaida leaders are dead, and their terrorist network is in tatters. Meanwhile, Moammar Gadhafi, responsible for the deaths of more Americans than anyone except bin Laden, was deposed with U.S. help. Not since the fall of the Berlin Wall have the nation’s geopolitical fortunes improved so markedly.

• That’s to say nothing of the president’s lower-profile victories: for women, who regained the right to seek legal redress for pay discrimination when Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law; and for the thousands of gay and lesbian Americans who won the right to serve their country without lying about who they are.

On the strength of those achievements alone, Obama’s second four-year term ought to be a no-brainer. Most two-term presidents can’t claim to have gotten as much done.

The country is safer. Its economy and its largest industry have been restored to health. And health care reform, fought out over 50 years in the U.S. Congress, has at last begun in earnest. When Republicans say pejoratively that Obama “can’t run on his record,” they’re peddling partisan nonsense and indulging a myopic fiction.

The Free Press enthusiastically endorses Barack Hussein Obama for four more years as president.

And finally, from Ohio’s Toledo Blade:

A second term for President Barack Obama would be a better outcome for Ohio, Michigan, and the rest of the country--and would offer more hopeful prospects for the next four years--than would his replacement by his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. The Blade recommends the President’s re-election.

During his administration, President Obama has provided pragmatic, steady, centrist leadership that has served the nation well. He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home and turmoil abroad, much of which he inherited from his predecessor. The stimulus he promoted--along with the auto and bank bailouts--helped prevent the recession from becoming a depression.

The Daily Kos is keeping track of presidential endorsements here.

“Move This Country Forward”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the rapper-songwriter will.i.am put together a couple of outstanding, star-studded videos to support Democrat Barack Obama’s election--the best-known “Yes, We Can” as well as “We Are the Ones.” Now there’s a new and equally inspiring music video making the rounds, again incorporating the president’s hopeful words. It’s titled “Forward,” in echo of Obama’s 2012 re-election slogan, and is credited to the executive producer behind the “Yes, We Can” video.

Stocks and Bonding

If performance of the Dow Jones industrial average is an accurate predictor of who will win America’s quadrennial presidential races--as it has so often been in the past--then President Obama should be planning for a second term.

“The stock market has done better than average during his tenure,” The New York Times notes, “not to mention better than during either of the two terms of his predecessor. In the past, such a healthy stock market performance has usually been followed by a victory for the incumbent party.”

Meanwhile, newspaper editorial pages continue adding to Obama’s list of endorsements. Among the latest advocates for his re-election is The Miami Herald, which writes: “In the end, Mr. Obama’s policies across the board--the environment, social policy, taxes and immigration--offer a more generous vision for America. The issues he has fought for, coupled with the lingering doubts about Mr. Romney’s persona and his true intentions, make this a clear choice.”

Obama’s Re-election “a Matter of Great Urgency”

“The choice is clear,” The New Yorker concludes in its October 29 endorsement of Democratic incumbent Barack Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in this year’s presidential race. The editorial is a long and thorough critique of Obama’s first term in the White House, and will probably prove more influential because it’s so detailed and articulate.

It begins by recalling the daunting challenges that faced the 44th president when he first took office in January 2009:

Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only more evident with time. Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation. On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency. In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost--up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month. The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent. Housing prices collapsed. Credit markets collapsed. The stock market collapsed--and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions. Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied. The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy. Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering. It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications. However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.

Although the magazine acknowledges that Obama has “disappointed some of his most ardent supporters” (which is partly “a reflection of the fantastical expectations that attached to him”), it adds that “The President has achieved a run of ambitious legislative, social, and foreign-policy successes that relieved a large measure of the human suffering and national shame inflicted by the Bush Administration. Obama has renewed the honor of the office he holds.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--the $787-billion stimulus package--was well short of what some economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, thought the crisis demanded. But it was larger in real dollars than any one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures. It reversed the job-loss trend--according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 3.6 million private-sector jobs have been created since June, 2009--and helped reset the course of the economy. It also represented the largest public investment in infrastructure since President Eisenhower’s interstate-highway program. ...

Obama’s most significant legislative achievement was a vast reform of the national health-care system. Five Presidents since the end of the Second World War have tried to pass legislation that would insure universal access to medical care, but all were defeated by deeply entrenched opposition. Obama--bolstered by the political cunning of the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi--succeeded. Some critics urged the President to press for a single-payer system--Medicare for all. Despite its ample merits, such a system had no chance of winning congressional backing. Obama achieved the achievable. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the single greatest expansion of the social safety net since the advent of Medicaid and Medicare, in 1965. Not one Republican voted for it.

This editorial goes on to praise President Obama for his commitment to civil rights, as well as his steady hand as commander-in-chief and his determination to withdraw American troops from Iraq. But it also makes the case that, because of his flip-flops, extremist economic and social commitments, and determination to once more outlaw abortion in the United States, Romney is the wrong man to replace Obama in the Oval Office.

... Romney has embraced the values and the priorities of a Republican Party that has grown increasingly reactionary and rigid in its social vision. It is a party dominated by those who despise government and see no value in public efforts aimed at ameliorating the immense and rapidly increasing inequalities in American society. A visitor to the F.D.R. Memorial, in Washington, is confronted by these words from Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, etched in stone: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.” Romney and the leaders of the contemporary G.O.P. would consider this a call to class warfare. Their effort to disenfranchise poor, black, Hispanic, and student voters in many states deepens the impression that Romney’s remarks about the “forty-seven per cent” were a matter not of “inelegant” expression, as he later protested, but of genuine conviction.

Romney’s conviction is that the broad swath of citizens who do not pay federal income tax--a category that includes pensioners, soldiers, low-income workers, and those who have lost their jobs--are parasites, too far gone in sloth and dependency to be worth the breath one might spend asking for their votes. His descent to this cynical view--further evidenced by his selection of a running mate, Paul Ryan, who is the epitome of the contemporary radical Republican--has been dishearteningly smooth. He in essence renounced his greatest achievement in public life--the Massachusetts health-care law--because its national manifestation, Obamacare, is anathema to the Tea Party and to the G.O.P. in general. He has tacked to the hard right on abortion, immigration, gun laws, climate change, stem-cell research, gay rights, the Bush tax cuts, and a host of foreign-policy issues. He has signed the Grover Norquist no-tax-hike pledge and endorsed Ryan’s winner-take-all economics.

But what is most disquieting is Romney’s larger political vision. When he said that Obama “takes his political inspiration from Europe, and from the socialist democrats in Europe,” he was not only signalling Obama’s “otherness” to one kind of conservative voter; he was suggesting that Obama’s liberalism is in conflict with a uniquely American strain of individualism. The theme recurred when Romney and his allies jumped on Obama’s observation that no entrepreneur creates a business entirely alone (“You didn’t build that”). The Republicans continue to insist on the “Atlas Shrugged” fantasy of the solitary entrepreneurial genius who creates jobs and wealth with no assistance at all from government or society.

In its way, this is an old-fashioned variety of editorial--impassioned, well-reasoned, bereft of equivocation, and ultimately, inspiring.

The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama--and exemplified by both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act--takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.” That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work.

The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney--a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama’s America--one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality--represents the future that this country deserves.

You will find the full New Yorker endorsement here.

READ MORE: “Compelling Reasons Why Obama Will Win,” by Robert Creamer (The Democratic Strategist); “Will Mitt Get Your Kids Killed?” by Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo); “‘A Striking Coincidence’: New Yorker and New York Observer Covers Compared” (Jim Romenesko.com).

Swinging in Obama’s Direction

In the run-up to tomorrow night’s final televised debate between Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Willard Mitt Romney, we’re seeing newspaper editorial boards across the country take sides in this increasingly important race. In addition to his big endorsements by North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal and, very surprisingly, Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune, this weekend has found the president three more important advocates, all in swing states.

Ohio’s largest daily, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, opines:

Today, we recommend President Obama’s re-election. He has led the nation back from the brink of depression. Ohio in particular has benefited from his bold decision to revive the domestic auto industry. Because of his determination to fulfill a decades-old dream of Democrats, 30 million more Americans will soon have health insurance. His Race to the Top initiative seeded many of the education reforms embodied in Cleveland’s Transformation Plan. He ended the war in Iraq and refocused the battle to disrupt al-Qaida and its terrorist allies. He ordered the risky attack inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. ...

Not only do we still believe this president can do those things, we think he can do it with policies most likely to lift Ohio and Ohioans. Obama's leadership has made a difference when it mattered most. His stimulus package helped avert an even worse economic collapse and initiated investments in education, manufacturing and green energy that should yet pay dividends. His commitment to a balanced path toward deficit reduction won’t please the most zealous members of either party, but it makes sense for the nation.

Meanwhile, The Denver Post begins by declaring President Obama “a steady leader who keeps the interests of a broad array of Americans in mind.” It then goes on:

The Obama administration can be fairly criticized for leaning too heavily on regulations that hamper business, but on balance we have seen enough to believe the president will pursue policies--and compromise, when necessary--that protect the vulnerable, invest in the middle class, and deliver an economy that drives us to a better future.

Obama has moved the country in the right direction on school reform. On higher education, he has taken steps to address affordability through increasing Pell Grants and streamlining the student-loan process. His executive order that allows qualified illegal immigrants brought here as children a chance to pursue college degrees is a positive step--though much remains to be done on immigration reform.

As commander in chief, he has demonstrated himself capable in a tough situation. He eliminated the military's discriminatory “don't ask don't tell” policy, limited this country’s involvement in Libya while still playing a role in the ouster of Moammar Khadafy, and hasn’t allowed the U.S. to be drawn into the Syrian civil war. He has remained a friend to Israel, but isn’t engaging in war talk over the Iranian nuclear issue. Moving forward, the administration owes the American public a thorough explanation of the troubling events surrounding the murder of four Americans in Benghazi last month.

The Post also raises serious doubts about the math Romney uses to support his still too-vague campaign promises:

We know that many have a different view, and point to Romney’s record in Massachusetts as ample reason for his election. Unfortunately, he never seriously campaigned as a centrist alternative to Obama.

From running to the far right on immigration and women’s health in the primary and then saddling his campaign with Rep. Paul Ryan’s extreme and unrealistic budget, the Romney of this election cycle is not the man elected in Massachusetts.

Instead, we must judge him on the menu of options he has repeatedly put forward during this campaign. On policies ranging from tax reform to immigration, from health care to higher education, none of Romney’s numbers add up. Moreover, he has been unwilling or unable to outline for voters specifics that demonstrate his math works--probably because it doesn't.

Romney has said he will repeal Obamacare, yet insists he can keep its most popular provisions without fully explaining how he would pay for it.

He’s calling for 20 percent tax rate cuts across the board. Independent analysts say the government can't come close to making up for that lost revenue without closing popular deductions like those for home-mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Romney’s explanations for how he would do that don't wash.

And his pledge to create 12 million jobs in four years sounds good, but Moody’s Analytics has predicted that type of job growth regardless of who is elected.

Interestingly, the red-state Arizona Daily Star, headquartered in Tucson, recommends President Obama’s re-election as well:

When we look back four years, we see the steps we’ve made, not as quickly as anyone would like, but there is progress in health care, job creation and tax policy. It’s not an easy road.

Changing course would undercut that progress and create further uncertainty--two things we cannot afford. We can and must move ahead. And no matter who we elect to the White House, we’ll still have a divided Congress. Anything possible and good must first come through consensus-building leadership in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. No president will be successful without one unified American agenda.

Principled leadership, consensus and time are required. Obama’s accomplishments and positions on health care, higher education, and economic and social issues continue to make him the best choice for the interests at home in Southern Arizona and in our country.

This is why the Arizona Daily Star endorses Barack Obama for a second term.

You’ll find still more swing-state editorials calling for Obama’s re-election here and here.