Newspaper Endorsements: The End

Obama:

Haaretz endorses Obama, calling him 'good for Israel.
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Toronto's Globe and Mail at least admits Obama has some flaws:

In this election, Mr. Obama has set out a moderate agenda that would use a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to tame the country’s vast debt. He has promised, in time, also to reduce corporation taxes. If re-elected, Mr. Obama must help shift the emphasis from government stimulus to a private-sector-led phase of growth. Public spending at current levels is not sustainable, and is verging on catastrophic. The proportion of deficit to GDP has declined, but much more work needs to be done.

There are doubts about Mr. Obama’s ability to find bipartisan support for his plan. This is in large part the responsibility of hard-line Republicans in the House of Representatives, but it is also the fault of Mr. Obama, who has been aloof and ineffectual in his dealings with his political opponents. He is the poster president for failed bipartisanship – this in contrast to the post-partisanism he advocated in the 2008 election.

The only way one can work with those assholes is to be one. Obama has been trying to do it.
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Romney:

Grand Forks Herald:

President of the United States — Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan

That's it.
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None of the Above:

The St. Paul Pioneer Press, like several other papers in the country, has done away with political endorsements:

In a rare but increasingly common industry move, the Pioneer Press has ditched political endorsements — at least for now. “We just wanted to do it this way, this year,” editor Mike Burbach says. “At this moment, it’s more comfortable for me.”

Burbach was the editorial page editor in 2010, but has since ascended to editor without giving up opinion-page responsibility. In other words, the PiPress can’t plausibly say, as the Strib does, that “our newsroom and editorial staff are separate.”

Readers have never quite trusted the imperviousness of such a barrier, which is why editorial editors like the Strib’s Scott Gillespie repeatedly explain them. Some papers, like Florida’s Halifax chain and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, have given up. In dropping endorsements at Montana’s Great Falls Tribune, editor Jim Strauss was blunt: “Simply put, we don’t want to undermine the hard work of our reporters covering the races.”

Note the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also stopped with endorsements.

The Medford Mail Tribune here in southern Oregon quit doing it, too.

The number of newspaper endorsements this year as opposed to 2008 and 2004 has dropped off considerably.












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