P-I endorsement: Elect Obama (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

[struggle4progress]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

... The issues and the superiority of the Obama-Joe Biden team have become clearer than ever in the past few days. Obama spoke the unvarnished truth when he called the need for a record-breaking economic rescue plan a "final judgment." It was a sweeping verdict not just on the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush but also on the Republican deregulatory obsessions that Sen. John McCain has shared broadly.

Over the weekend, McCain and his campaign began what may be a go-for-broke, desperate attempt to save the Republican control of the White House by swamping the country with irrelevant, negative slander of Obama as a dangerous radical. The real issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the attempt to ignite fear over the fact that the resolutely optimistic, well-balanced Obama has had scant connection with a onetime radical ...

At home, rebuilding the economy will test the next president, even one like Obama who warned relatively early of the mounting home mortgage problems. His willingness to regulate will be critical to again providing adequate protection against reckless conduct in the country's financial system. He has recognized that he will have to adjust some of his plans to recognize the federal budget's deteriorating position. That's what needs to be understood now. We don't expect restoring budget responsibility will be anything but difficult, but as former President Clinton showed, a Democrat is likely to be the better choice, or the only one, for balancing the budget. We have little faith in what would happen on any financial issues under McCain, whose party has deliberately metastasized the nation's debts and who has relied on ideologue ex-Sen. Phil Gramm for economic counsel.

Obama has been reasoned in his proposals for dealing with health care, where economic insecurity most directly threatens Americans' lives. We think he should endorse a single-payer system, not least for how it would help U.S. competitiveness economically, but at least he understands the need for universal coverage. McCain's obsession with the free market is so deep that he would help fund new health care accounts by attacking the most successful parts of medical coverage, Medicare and Medicaid. That's a formula for putting the country even further behind other countries in treating health care as a universal right ...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/382005_obamaed.html

[Old Codger]

1. The difference

Is so diametric as to be almost unexplainable in words.... Obama is a light attempting to lead us from the dark days of republican charlatism, mclamy is an anchor tying us to the past he refuses to look at or even seemingly refuses to admit exists.... If reasonable people cannot see the correct way to go we are in fact doomed to live in this "groundhog day" existance that the current regime has us caught up in.