The record shows that President Barack Obama was reelected in 2012 by defeating Mitt Romney with 332 electoral votes to 206. Even though Obama won the popular vote by a single percentage point (50% to 49%), many consider the election to be a landslide, because Obama’s margin in the Electoral College was 62% to 38%.

What’s wrong with the way things are?

There are those who would like to see the Electoral College abolished. It has several clear shortcomings. First and most importantly, it is not based on the popular vote of the people. As recently as 2000, Democrat Al Gore received more than a half million more votes than George Bush. However, with the shenanigans in Florida, Bush won the Electoral College, 271-266. In a country that prides itself on one person-one vote, this was clearly a travesty.

Second, in recent elections,approximately ten states have been considered swing states. This means that there is considerable uncertainty about whether they will go to the Democratic or the Republican candidate. The remaining forty states are considered to be solidly for one candidate or the other. They are considered to be sure bets for one candidate or the other. This is what happened in 2012.

The three largest states in the country, California, Texas, and New York (actually tied in size with swing state Florida at 29 votes) were essentially ignored by the candidates, except for fund raising purposes. California and New York were solidly for President Obama; Texas for Governor Romney. The 82.6 million voters in these states, representing one-fourth of the population of the entire country, received virtually no visits from the candidates. There were no big rallies or parades in these states. The citizens had no value to the candidates, except for a few fat cats who provided money to the candidates’ campaigns, or the Super PACs that worked on their behalf.

Abolish the Electoral College?

The idea of abolishing the Electoral College has been around for a long time. However, the existence of the Electoral College is clearly stated in the Constitution. Article II, Section says:

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed.

To change this would require a constitutional amendment. The process for that would be for an amendment to be proposed in either the Senate or the House and then have it approved by two-thirds of the members of each chamber. That is hardly the end of it; the proposed amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states, meaning now thirty-eight of the fifty states. Amending the U.S. Constitution is a cumbersome process and has not happened since 1992 when the 27th Amendment  was passed. It was a relatively minor one regarding congressional salaries.

Award electoral votes proportionally by state popular vote?

The other way to change how we vote for president would be for each state to change the way  it instructs its electors vote. Forty-eight states require that all electors in their state vote for the candidate who received the largest popular vote in their state. The other two states, Maine and Nebraska, use a somewhat different system, which at most can only change one electoral vote for the entire state. However, if each of the states agreed to allot their electors proportionally to the popular vote in the state, we would have a completely different outcome from what normally happens in presidential elections. It would be very close to the outcome of a popular vote election:

2012 Electoral Vote: Obama 62%; Romney 38%

2012 Popular Vote: 50%, Romney 49%

2012 Proportional Electoral Vote by State: Obama 51%, Romney 49%

Beneath these numbers is the reality that with proportional electoral voting by state, the outcome would be just one percent different from the popular vote. It would be much closer to the will of the people than the present Electoral College. It would clearly be a much more democratic process. However, this method would only work if all fifty states agreed to allocate their electors proportionally. The likelihood of that would be less than that of passing a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with the popular vote.

Some people have suggested proportional electoral voting in each state. However, the conclusion is that while it would advance the cause of democracy, it is not a realistic proposal. Until both the federal Congress and the state legislatures see the wisdom of amending the constitution to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote, we will continue to have both an undemocratic system and one in which one candidate can win the popular vote and another the Electoral College. There has to be a better way to build a democracy.

PROPORTIONAL ELECTORAL VOTES BY STATE, 2012

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For the first time in history, an Israeli prime minister took sides in an American election. The right wing, saber rattling prime minister of Israel, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, broke tradition and openly endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

Before November 6, Bibi, and everyone else, assumed he would coast to victory in the upcoming January 22 elections. But, thanks to his backing loser Mitt Romney, overnight, he has become a loser in the eyes of the Israeli people. The general feeling among Israelis is that he intervened where he shouldn’t have and, by doing so, foolishly endangered U.S. Israeli relations.

It’s no secret that, during his first term, Obama and Netanyahu had a chilly relationship. That Netanyahu meddled in the election and backed Romney doesn’t bode well for their future relationship. Larry Derfner writing on November 7 at liberal Israeli web magazine +972:

If Romney had won, people here would be hailing Bibi right now as a genius, a prophet. But Obama won, which makes Bibi, in Israeli eyes, a screw-up of historic magnitude. He went and tracked mud on the Oval Office carpet right in front of the president’s eyes. The president couldn’t say anything during the campaign because of American domestic politics, but the campaign’s over and now Israelis are wondering when and how this newly liberated president is going to take revenge on them for their prime minister’s spectacular arrogance. Conclusion: The only way to get America back on our side is to get rid of Bibi. That, I believe, is the mood in Israel on this fine morning.

Another first: Republican Party brought Israeli politics into election

In another post, Derfner points out that Netanyahu was not the only one who broke new ground. For the first time, the Republican Party brought Israeli right-wing politics into a U.S. election:

This was the first U.S. presidential election in which one of the two parties took the Israeli right-wing line, attacking the other party for endangering Israel’s existence, and calling on American Jews (as well as Christians) to vote for it and donate money to it at least partly on that basis. This wasn’t a marginal, low-key theme, either; in heavily Jewish states, especially the swing state of Florida, the message was as bombastic as can be. Roughly 6.5 million American Jews had this message drummed into their skulls by the Republicans (who took their inspiration and much of their phrasing from the leader of world Jewish nationalism, Bibi Netanyahu): that voting for Obama meant “throwing Israel under the bus.” This was the first time Israel became a left/right issue in a presidential campaign, and the right flogged it with absolutely all their might.

Why did Netanyahu insert himself into the U.S. elections? Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, owner of the influential Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, and a stalwart backer of Netanyahu, enlisted Netanyahu’s help in supporting Romney. Although Adelson spent $100 million trying to get Romney elected, his efforts failed, and failed spectacularly with the Jewish community. Result? 70% of American Jews voted for Obama.

Thanks to his arrogance and poor judgment in openly backing Romney, Netanyahu faces the upcoming Israeli elections weakened. The newly emboldened center-left political parties of Israel, those dedicated to peace in the Middle East, are scrambling to decide whom to run against him.

Moderate Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel 2006 to 2009, who resigned from his party after being charged with corruption, has in recent days been addressing the American Jewish community promising to play a strong role in the upcoming elections and hinting a return to public life. Derfner writes:

The politicians making this case [that they could beat Netanyahu] are Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Separately or together, in Kadima or in a new party, they have the potential to knock over Netanyahu in January, form a center-left coalition government, and resume the negotiations they started with Abbas in 2007, when Olmert was prime minister and Livni foreign minister, then left off at the end of 2008 when they launched Operation Cast Lead.

Because of that war and the long siege of Gaza that preceded it (which continued under Netanyahu), I have no love for Olmert or Livni. My natural inclination is to vote for Meretz [Zionist social democratic political party]. But regardless of which left-wing party one votes for, it is absolutely necessary that Olmert and/or Livni enter this election, because there must be a major party running on a peace platform, and only they can fill the bill.

Who lost besides Netanyahu and Romney?

. . . this election was a tremendous blow to the American Jewish right, which has just been getting stronger and more extreme in step with Israel and the Republicans. It’s a blow to AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby. It’s a blow, of course, to Netanyahu, particularly because of his unprecedented support for one of the candidates, who happened to lose. It’s a blow to the whole Israeli right.

And they’re all connected – the Republicans, the American Jewish right, the Israel lobby, Netanyahu, Likud-Beiteinu, the settlers, the rest of the Israeli right. Jewish nationalism, all of it, from the inner core to the outer shell, just experienced an earthquake, and there’s a lot of broken stuff lying around.

Larry Derfner’s commentary underscores the fact that the presidential elections in the United States have profound consequences at home and around the world. One can only hope that America’s turn to the left will continue to weaken right-wing forces in the United States, and give Israel encouragement to elect a a more peaceful, progressive government on January 22.

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When my friend who worked in the Obama campaign’s analytics department told me about Project ORCA, I thought he was talking about an environmental initiative to protect marine life. In our post-election, post-elation debrief, Asher relayed to me the stress he felt on election day while monitoring exit poll results. He had observed that Obama supporters were not showing up to the polls at the rates originally projected while more Romney supporters were going to the polls than projected. Upon analyzing the data, however, he found it to be weak as Obama supporters were far less likely to report back. (Collective sigh of relief.) While the Obama campaign’s “Get out to vote” (GOTV) efforts may have shown weak, troublesome data, the mechanism of reporting, analyzing, and utilizing such data worked.

Project ORCA was the Romney campaign’s sophisticated, high-tech poll-monitoring GOTV strategy. When Asher told me about its massive failure, I did not fully understand how it failed or what it’s objective was… that is, until I read the following first hand account from a Romney campaign volunteer: “The Unmitigated Disaster Known as Project Orca.”

While I am extremely happy about the outcome of the election, I can’t help but feel sorry for the tens of thousands of fired up Romney supporters whose energy was under-utilized –dare we say suppressed?—on election day. This failure mirrors the GOP’s go-to tactic of throwing money — rather than people — at an issue.

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It’s November 5, the day before the 2012 presidential election. If polling guru Nate Silver is right, President Obama will win his second term. But if he doesn’t, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole has some interesting—actually downright scary—thoughts about what a Romney presidency would bring.

In short, Cole says Romney would steer us towards a capitalist dictatorship—an updated, high tech, 21^st century form of fascism—that would privilege corporate interests over everything else.  Here’s what Cole, writing at Alternet, has to say about fascism 2.0:

Capitalist dictatorship has many similarities to fascism, but differs from it in lionizing not the workers of the nation but the entrepreneurs of the nation. Fascism seeks a mixed economy, whereas capitalist dictatorship privileges the corporate sector and attacks the non-military public sector. But both try to subsume class conflict under a hyper-nationalism. Both glorify military strength and pick fights with other countries to whip up nationalist fervor. Both disallow unions, collective bargaining and workers’ strikes. Both typically privilege one ethnic group within the nation, marking it as superior and setting up a racial hierarchy.

Sound familiar? Sounds like the platform of the current Republican Party, which has two parts: a) enact policies that will enrich the already rich, and b) suppress the vote among likely Democratic voters: the poor, the elderly, students and people of color. Sounds like the politics of Wisconsin Republican Governor Walker, who with the help of his benefactors, the billionaire Koch Brothers, destroyed the state’s public unions. Sounds like Mitt Romney and his plans to bloat the military budget so we can get back to conducting two wars at the same time. And re: disdain for democracy, Romney’s compulsive lying speaks volumes.

One big difference between capitalist democracy (as in contemporary Germany and France) and capitalist dictatorship is the willingness of the business classes to play by the rules of democratic elections, to allow a free, fair and transparent contest, to acknowledge the rights of unions, and to respect the universal franchise. Businessmen in such a society share a civic ethic that sees these goods as necessary for a well-ordered society, and therefore as ultimately good for business. They may also be afraid of the social disruptions (as in France) that would attend any attempt to whittle away workers’ rights. Attempts to limit the franchise, to ban unions, and to manipulate the electorate with bald-faced lies are all signs of a barracuda business class that secretly seeks its class interests above all others in society, and which is not afraid of workers and middle classes because the latter are apolitical, apathetic and disorganized.

Romney, vulture capitalist extraordinaire, is indeed, a member of the “barracuda business class.” And, what Cole says is painfully true: we workers, and members of the middle class are “apolitical, apathetic and disorganized.” After the frenzy of the election, political participation among most of us will drop down to practically nothing. Meanwhile, the right wing and the barracuda business class it supports never sleeps.

Whether Romney or Obama wins, what Cole describes is already happening. A significant part of the business class in the United States is voting for Romney because they want him to head up a capitalist dictatorship. Those who are not as well off, who vote against their economic interests, have been manipulated and duped into doing so.

For decades, big money has dominated politics in Washington DC and in State Houses across the nation seriously undermining the democratic process. It’s absurd that under both Democrats and Republicans corporate lobbyists write legislation. It’s absurd that ALEC, an organization funded by corporations, churns out a thousand right wing model bills per year for the express purpose of promoting corporate interests at the state level.

Cole is right: a Romney presidency, indeed any Republican presidency, would fast track us to a capitalist dictatorship. On the other hand, a second Obama term has the potential to stop this dangerous trend and restore democracy. If he is reelected, and I hope he will be, restoring democracy will require that he flush out the corporate/Wall Street influence from his inner circle, and begin to work with, and support, progressives in the House and Senate.

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It’s no surprise that the liberal leaning New Yorker is endorsing Barack Obama for president. Although predictable, it’s worth a read because it offers one of the more thoughtful looks at a complicated president who has disappointed many but, nonetheless, achieved a remarkable record. It begins with a reminder of the utter failure of the Bush presidency.

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.

The endorsement continues with a discussion of Barack Obama’s naïve aspiration to lead as a post-partisan president and rightfully criticizes him for not effectively communicating his policies to the country. It then praises the President for his ambitious legislative, social, and foreign policy successes that “relieved a large measure of the human suffering and national shame inflicted by the Bush Administration.” Rather than cheerleading, the endorsement offers a thoughtful and balanced chronicle of Obama’s achievements. It ends with the following:

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 re-election 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.

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Barring feasible foul play by Republicans, Barack Obama will probably win the Electoral College in 2012, which means that he will serve for another four years as President. Much is being said about Ohio as a swing state, along with Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Colorado. Obama carried all of them in 2008, along with North Carolina, a onetime swing state. As of Sunday, October 28, 2012, Nate Silver of www.fivethiryeight.com gives Obama a 73.6 percent  likelihood of winning the Electoral College with 295 votes, twenty-five more than is needed for victory. However, Obama’s lead over Romney in the popular vote is only 50.3% to 48.7%.

There are a number of progressive issues that President Obama passed or tried to pass in his first term. This list does not include abolishing, or at least reforming the Electoral College. In the history of the United States, there have been three elections in which the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency in the Electoral College. The most recent was 2000, when Al Gore had nearly a half million more popular votes than George W. Bush. Had the election been decided by the popular vote, it would have been of little consequence that Bush supposedly received 537 more votes than Gore in Florida.

So let’s suppose that Mitt Romney wins the popular vote in 2012. This would be an increase of only 1.4 percent of the vote. At the same time, President Obama triumphs in the Electoral College and wins a second term. Conceivably, this could make the Republicans mad enough that they would feel that they were gypped, because their candidate received more votes than the Democratic candidate. At the same time, Obama along with other Democrats would continue to recognize that the Electoral College is extremely unfair and essentially disenfranchises voters in the more than 40 states that are not considered swing states.

While the President is not involved in the process of amending the Constitution, there could be bi-partisan support for an amendment to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with the popular vote. Republicans would have the motivation of thinking that they had been cheated in 2012; Democrats would have the motivation of advancing the cause of true democracy.

In practicality such a change would probably help the Democrats in the short run. With intense campaigning in states such as California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Maryland, they would pick up millions of popular votes. The Republicans would pick up at least hundreds of thousands of votes in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri. The raw numbers would favor the Democrats, but as each census reflects the migration of Americans from the north to the south, the long-range advantage would go to the Republicans.

It is indeed difficult to handicap to party would benefit most from a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with the popular vote. However, each party would have convincing reasons to feel that it would benefit in the long range. The one winner would be American democracy. President Obama, please put this measure on your second term agenda.

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In 2008, the Des Moines Register endorsed then Senator Barack Obama for president over Senator John McCain. For largely inexplicable reasons, this year the Register endorsed former Governor George Romney over President Obama.  This is the first time that the Register has endorsed a Republican for president since 1972, when it urged readers to give Richard Nixon a second term, rather than supporting Senator George McGovern and his efforts to end the Vietnam War.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell shows the absurdity of the Register’s thinking.  He reveals how the very reasons that the paper endorsed Obama in 2008 are even more apropos in 2012.  He shows how the reservations that it had about Nixon in 1972 in many ways apply to Romney in 2012.

Below, you can read a short summary of O’Donnell’s comments of Tuesday, October 30.  The full presentation is available in the following video.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 …O’Donnell accused The Des Moines Register of “adopting Mitt Romney’s magical thinking” by endorsing the Republican candidate for president.

In the Rewrite segment on Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word, he called their decision one of the “most embarrassing endorsements in the history of that newspaper.”

His bone to pick with the Iowa paper’s editorial board revolved around how they argued the case for Romney, not their specific choice of candidate. It’s “not because they chose Romney,” O’Donnell said. “Not because they chose a Republican, but because they gave absolutely no rational reason for it.”

The Register justified its entire endorsement on the basis of  consumer confidence.

The op-ed main’s rationale for Romney: “Consumers must feel more confident about their own economic futures to begin spending on the products and services that power the economy. A renewed sense of confidence will spark renewed investment by American companies. Industry will return to full production and hiring will begin again.”

O’Donnell said it’s the result of “pure magical thinking that the very sight of Mitt Romney taking the oath of office will suddenly make consumers run out to Best Buy and load up on TVs made in Japan.”

The last time the paper got behind a Republican candidate for president was in 1972, when they endorsed Richard Nixon.

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Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered

I’ve seen lots of funny men,

Some will rob you with a six-gun,

And some with a fountain pen

-Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd” (1939)

Leave it to Woody Guthrie, our great American poet, to stick it to the man in four short lines. Woody was about as blunt a fellow as you can imagine.  He was certainly not one to mince words when it came to calling out economic injustice and the exploitation of working people.

Investigative reporter and author David Cay Johnston is another blunt man. Johnston also pulls no punches when he warns middle-class voters about the devastating effects of Romney/Ryan economics:

Under Romney’s plan your economic future would be determined the same way it was in 18^th century France—primarily who you picked as your parents, not by hard work, perseverance and that illusive element of luck

If you’re looking for someone who can explain the Romney/Ryan tax proposals in a clear, understandable way then Johnston, president of Investigative Reporters, is your guy. In an article published on September 7, 2012, entitled “Romney and Ryan’s Dangerous Tax Roadmap,” Johnston explains how the tax structure Romney and Ryan are selling as simplified and fair is in truth a scam proposal for “tax-free living for the richest Americans.”

In case voters don’t get what a Romney/Ryan economy will look like, Johnston explains that “lower taxes for the already rich and highly paid” will inevitably mean “heavier burdens on the middle class along with cuts in government service.”

Shall we put the Republican tax plan into context so we can understand what’s going on here?  According to CNN Money, if the Republicans have their way on just one element of the tax code—eliminating the estate tax—the Republican presidential nominee’s estate could save at least $90 million. If Romney/Ryan are given the chance to legislate their tax vision, Johnston explains that “more than $21 million of Romney’s 2012 income of $21.6 million would be untaxed.”  (I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions on the “appearance” of a conflict of interest.)

And on the gift tax and our possible new president’s family? It’s uncertain how the Romneys have gamed the system so successfully:

His [Romney’s] plan would retain the gift tax, but it is already so porous that, as Reuters reported in January, the five Romney sons enjoy tax-free  income from a $100 million trust fund on which no gift taxes were paid. Only about $2 million could have originally gone into the trust without triggering gift taxes.

Johnston, along with independent economists and tax experts, is hoping (probably in vain) that voters understand that the Romney/Ryan tax proposals are no more than a reprise of the catastrophic Republican economic policies of the Bush era. As Johnston recalls,

those policies ushered in flat to falling incomes for the vast majority, weak job growth, but skyrocketing incomes for the top one percent of the top one percent, including Romney.

And how about Romney and Ryan’s math?  Well, Johnston thinks they need to go back to elementary school to relearn some basic math skills:

Slashing tax rates, keeping the share of income taxes paid by the top unchanged and increasing military spending without any additional red ink may win votes from innumerates, but it is a mathematical impossibility.

Johnston has earned his reputation as a meticulous researcher who trusts the experts, assembles the facts, and ignores the spinners and big talkers—like the statistics-spewing Paul Ryan. (I’m with Johnston on giving the experts their due.  I once hired a New Jersey burglar-turned-locksmith who confided to me:  “Who better to advise you on how to secure your windows than a guy like me who knows firsthand the in’s and out’s?”)

One of Johnston’s sources who also knows the in’s and out’s is Edward Kleinbard, a highly successful, and now repentant, tax lawyer who “spent decades . . . finding creative ways for clients to defer or escape their obligations.” According to Kleinbard,

The Roadmap [the Ryan Budget] is a mechanism for redistributing tax burdens down the income scale.  Most ordinary Americans would see their tax burdens increase by around 50 percent, while the most successful individuals would see reductions in their labor income tax rates and elimination of all capital tax burdens – including the elimination of the gift and estate tax.

Kleinbard, as Johnston points out, has studied the Republican tax plan and concuded that it would

. . . turn individual and corporate income taxes into the equivalent of two large payroll taxes with the burden falling almost entirely on workers, not  owners and executives.

Evidently, Romney and Ryan wouldn’t have hired my burglar-turned-locksmith expert just like they won’t be hiring tax experts from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center whose conclusions they reject.  Here’s Johnston again:

The Romney campaign told me it pays no heed to analyses by the Tax Policy Center, even though Romney cited its work when it favored him in   the primaries.  The nonpartisan center is led by Donald Marron, a former economic official in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush.

By the end of his article Johnston is unequivocal in his unmasking of Romney and Ryan as two pen-wielding, wannabe robbers:

Romney and Ryan would shove the burden onto those with less, a radical plan by an oligarch and his partner in promoting tax-free living for the richest Americans.

.

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“We’re gonna have to have a president who can work across the aisle,” Romney said in his closing statement in the final presidential debate on foreign policy.

Given Romney’s many references to his “successful” governorship–the executive experience he never neglects to mention–you might think the former governor was a shining beacon for bipartisan leadership; a haven for right and leftwing moderates. As with many things he says, however, Romney and reality part ways on the issue of working across the aisle. As Sarah Jones with PoliticusUSA notes:

In 2006, his last year as Massachusetts’ Governor (in which he was absent more than half of the year), Romney issued 250 vetoes, all of which were overturned by what the Romney camp dubbed a “hostile” legislature. It’s not just Democrats who didn’t get along with Romney, though.

“I was in a state where my legislature was 87% Democrat. I learned how to get along on the other side of the aisle,” says Romney on national television, closing the debate. The reality?

A Republican state representative said that Romney had a tough time dealing with the legislature, especially in his first year, because he was used to giving orders as an executive, rather than working with people to reach a consensus. Republican George Peterson said, “He was used to being a top executive, ‘and this is where we’re going, and this is how we’re going to do it.’ And this animal [the state Legislature] doesn’t work that way. Not at all. Especially when it’s overwhelmingly ruled by one party.”

Romney had such a “tough time” during his four years as governor of Massachusetts that he vetoed more than 800 pieces of legislation during his tenure. 700 of those vetoes were overridden, some of them unanimously:

Vetoes don’t scream bipartisanship, and Romney had so many of them that it’s obvious he was on bad terms with the legislators from both parties as Governor. All told, Romney issued 800 vetoes in his one term as Governor. 800. Nearly all of them were overridden – 707 to be exact.

As we liberals are well aware, sometimes to our chagrin, the President has practically made a case study of reaching across the aisle. Contrast Romney’s record as governor with Obama’s as president: In nearly four years, the president has used two vetoes while congressional Republicans have broken filibuster records.

Since we can safely assume Romney does not indeed have a case of Romnesia and does clearly recall his four years as governor–or at least can read about it online like the rest of us–the only logical conclusion is that his insistence on an ability to compromise was an implicit endorsement of the only major candidate with experience doing so: President Barack Obama. Finally, Mr. Romney gets something right.

The post Romney endorses Obama for a 2nd term appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Favorite son? Not any more. Mitt Romney’s home-state newspaper has published a smack-down editorial endorsing President Obama for re-election and calling Romney a “shameless” “shape-shifter” unworthy of a first term. In its editorial, entitled “Too Many Mitts,” the Salt Lake Tribune ruefully remembers the good old days when Romney was viewed as the savior of the Salt Lake City Olympics and as a moderate, bi-partisan governor of Massachusetts [images that may or may not ever have been true]. Since those glory days, says the Tribune, Mitt Romney has morphed into someone–or someones– unrecognizable and undefinable. The editorial offers withering criticisms of Romney, describing him and his ideas as “radical,” “bellicose, “inflammatory,” “bereft of detail,” and “worthy of mistrust.”

From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: “Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?”

…If this portrait of a Romney willing to say anything to get elected seems harsh, we need only revisit his branding of 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, yet feel victimized and entitled to government assistance. His job, he told a group of wealthy donors, “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Where, we ask, is the pragmatic, inclusive Romney, the Massachusetts governor who left the state with a model health care plan in place, the Romney who led Utah to Olympic glory? That Romney skedaddled and is nowhere to be found.

As to the candidate that the Tribune is endorsing–President Obama–the editorial credits his decisive efforts to stimulate the economy, particularly through the badly needed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  In addition, “The president also acted wisely to bail out the auto industry, which has since come roaring back. Romney, in so many words, said the carmakers should sink if they can’t swim.”

On foreign policy, President Obama is the clear choice, says the Tribune:

Obama’s foreign policy record is perhaps his strongest suit, especially compared to Romney’s bellicose posture toward Russia and China and his inflammatory rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Obama’s measured reliance on tough economic embargoes to bring Iran to heel, and his equally measured disengagement from the war in Afghanistan, are examples of a nuanced approach to international affairs.

Bottom line:

Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.

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