E.J. Dionne: The 2012 campaign began on Aug. 2, 2011, when President Obama signed the deal ending the debt-ceiling fiasco. At that moment, the president relinquished his last illusions that the current, radical version of the Republican Party could be dealt with as a governing partner. From then on, Obama was determined to fight — and to win.
It was the right choice, the only alternative to capitulation. A Republican majority both inspired and intimidated by the tea party was demanding that Obama renounce every principle dear to him about the role of government in 21st-century America. And so he set out to defeat those who threatened to bring back the economic policies of the 1890s.
…. Romney may have flipped and flopped and flipped again on issues he didn’t care about, but his view of American capitalism and American government never wavered. If Teddy Roosevelt fought against the policies of the Gilded Age, Obama is fighting a Republican Party determined to bring the Gilded Age back and undo the achievements of a century.
And so, beneath the attacks, the counterattacks, and the billions invested by small numbers of the very rich to sway the undecided, we face a choice on Tuesday that is worthy of a great democracy. My hunch is that the country will not go backward, because that’s not what Americans do.
A boy listens to President Obama speak at The Community College of Aurora, Nov 4
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Today (all times ET):
11:45: President Obama delivers remarks at MLK Boulevard, Madison, Wisconsin
12:0: VP Biden and Jill Biden deliver remarks at Claude Moore Park in Sterling, Va.
12:55: PBO departs Madison
2:05: Arrives Columbus, Ohio
3:15: Michelle Obama in Charlotte
4:10: PBO delivers remarks at Nationwide Arena, Columbus (need to check time for this – some schedules say 2:25 )
6:10: Michelle Obama in Orlando
7:0: VP Biden and Jill Biden deliver remarks at the American Civil War Center in Richmond, Va.
8:25: PBO departs Columbus
10:0: Arrives Des Moines, Iowa
10:50: President Obama and Michelle Obama deliver remarks in Des Moines
12:0: Depart Des Moines
1:05: Arrive Chicago
(President Obama (and Romney) will both participate in interviews to air during halftime of the Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints. The interviews with ESPN’s Chris Berman will be taped earlier Monday)
Steve Benen: The voting fiasco in Florida reached truly farcical levels yesterday, with Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, explaining, “We’re looking at an election meltdown that is eerily similar to 2000, minus the hanging chads.”
…. The early-voting debacle in the Sunshine State is deliberate …. Florida Republicans designed the system to work this way.
…. I’ll just conclude with Rachel’s conclusion: “It is frankly an outrage that there are forces at work in our politics right now that not only make this type of situation possible, but that make it inevitable – who see problems like this and go out of their way to try to make it worse…. If you are one of those people being forced to stand in those long lines tonight or tomorrow or on Election Day, honestly, your country needs you to do it. Your country needs you to do it, not only because it’s your civic responsibility, but also because there are people trying to profit politically off of you not doing it.”
Michael Tomasky: Whatever the result tomorrow, voter suppression is one of the big stories of this campaign and its enduring scandal. The Republican Party before 2012 was a party that certainly did not want black and brown and poor Americans voting, so it’s long been officially racist and classist in this particular sense.
But up to now its measures were local and somewhat haphazard … now, though, in these past couple of years, the GOP strategy has been institutionalized …. For example, read here about what the secretary of state in Ohio is trying to do right now. It’s rather incredible.
…. Republicans: Are you really proud to be in a party that tries to rig the rules so that people who vote for the other side have a harder time voting? …. This is really a disgrace. The new Jim Crow, enforced not with burning crosses but with fountain pens, to paraphrase Woody Guthrie.
Charles Pierce: It appears that, while I was watching the president this afternoon, I missed another big moment in the ongoing mess that is the early voting being conducted here in the World’s Greatest Democracy, when all hell broke loose down in Miami-Dade county. The nonpartisan, but very conservative, mayor of Miami jumped in with both feet, with entirely predictable results….
Elections officials, overwhelmed with voters, locked the doors to their Doral headquarters and temporarily shut down the operation, angering nearly 200 voters standing in line outside — only to resume the proceedings an hour later….
…. Nearly all the voters stayed in line until a campaign worker reported her car had been towed from a private parking lot across the street. Scores of people ducked out of the line to check on their own cars. A second car had been towed.
