More Endorsements

The last legs of  presidential campaigns are filled with major endorsements and last minute polls.  The WAPO editorial board and former Bush SOS General Colin Powell have both endorsed the president.

Powell criticized Romney’s foreign policy as inconsistent and questioned the former Massachusetts governor’s ability to address the deficit and looming defense cuts.

“I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we’d be getting with respect to foreign policy,” Powell said, calling Romney’s foreign policy “a moving target.”

As for the U.S. budget, he added: “It’s essentially, let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things, but that compensation does not cover all the cuts intended or the expenses associated with defense.”

Powell has been critical of Romney’s foreign policy advisers and has taken issue with the former business executive’s stance on countries such asRussia.

A moderate Republican, Powell served under President George W. Bush. Some of Romney’s advisers are more conservative veterans of the Bush administration.

“There’s some very, very strong neo-conservative views that are presented by the governor that I have some trouble with,” Powell said on CBS.

WAPO’s endorsement and the Powell endorsement were really no surprise.

We come to that judgment with eyes open to the disappointments of Mr. Obama’s first term. 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.

Even granting the importance of the fiscal issue, a case might still be made for Mr. Romney if Mr. Obama’s first term had been a failure; if Mr. Romney were more likely to promote American security and leadership abroad; or if the challenger had shown himself superior in temperament, capacity and character. In fact, not one of these is true.

The Poll Front still shows the President is likely to win the electoral college and thus, the election.  A Time poll shows Obama up 5 points in the important state of Ohio which will probably determine the election result.

Buoyed by early voting in his favor, Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by five points in the pivotal state of Ohio, according to a new TIME poll.

Counting both Ohioans who say they will head to the polls on November 6, and those who have already cast a ballot, Obama holds a 49% to 44% lead over Romney in a survey taken Monday and Tuesday night.

The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll makes clear that there are really two races underway in Ohio. On one hand, the two candidates are locked in a dead heat among Ohioans who have not yet voted but who say they intend to, with 45% of respondents supporting the President and 45% preferring his Republican challenger.

Even weird ol’ Joe Scarborough says: Two new polls scream ‘advantage Obama’.

Two polls released yesterday show President Obama stubbornly clinging to his electoral advantage. TIME Magazine released a new Ohio poll that has Mitt Romney trailing in the Buckeye State by 5 points. Last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey also had Romney behind by 5.

TIME’s poll should rattle the nerves of Romney supporters because the results run contrary to Team Romney’s ongoing claim that their internal polls show a dead heat in the Buckeye State. Maybe that’s the case among voters planning to go to the polls on election day but it looks like early voters are tilting dramatically in the president’s direction. If the TIME poll is accurate, it means Mitt Romney will have to grab most of Ohio’s remaining undecided voters if he wants to win this critical battleground state.

PPP released a Nevada survey yesterday that also shows President Obama holding a lead in this key swing state that remains outside the margin of error. Like Ohio, Nevada remains stubbornly in the Obama column. While Mitt Romney has made up ground in the three Southern swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, voters in Ohio, Nevada and Wisconsin seem do not seem inclined to be easily swept into Romney’s camp.

Obama appears to lead in Virginia also.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia, conducted on behalf of Health Care for America Now, finds Barack Obama expanding his lead in the aftermath of his debate victory Monday night. He now has 51% to 46% for Mitt Romney, up from a 49/47 advantage last weekend.

Key findings from the survey include:

-Obama’s seen a 7 point net improvement in his favorability rating among Virginia voters from a -3 spread last week (48/51) to now +4 at 51/47. Romney’s numbers have headed in the other direction. He’s dropped 7 points from a +2 spread on our last poll (49/47) to now -5 at 46/51.

-Voters trust Obama more than Romney on several major issues in the election. Those include who voters think will stand up for the middle class (52/44) and who they think will do more to protect Medicare (50/46).

-Obama leads 57/41 with women, 88/8 with African Americans, and 53/42 with young voters. Romney has a 50/45 advantage with men, a 57/41 one with whites, and a 57/41 edge with seniors. Obama’s moved from being slightly behind with independents last week at 45/44 to now slightly ahead at 47/45.

One of the weirdest observations that I’ve seen in awhile is how the US election maps seem to reflect the same kind of boundary lines we saw when we were fighting over the issue of slavery. Even actual Confederate hold outs see this. Steve Pinker has some interesting thoughts on the redness and blueness of some states.  I can tell you, it’s not pleasant to live in a red state if you’re a woman, a child, or a minority.  There’s an emphasis on a plantation style economy, education goals that are out of step with modernity, and ensuring the primacy of white, christian, men.  Abortion and birth control restrictions, ensuring the taxes don’t impact the rich, and enacting radical religious views on all kinds of things have been their priorities. Your only hope is to stay in a red state’s biggest city or move.

 Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.

So, this election is important.  We can’t afford to have these extremist religious agendas dictating our national policy.  I say that as I listen to many of my friends who are rape survivors being traumatized all over again by troglodyte white, extremist christian, men who identify more with a fertilized eggs than women and children.   We need to send the entire Republican agenda and its goosestepping arm of religious freaks into oblivion.  PERIOD.