Lies and Defiance

It was bad enough when Mitt Romney lied in his stump speech, saying he'd read somewhere that Jeep was thinking about sending all its American jobs to China.  Jeep--through its owner, Chrysler, denied it immediately.  The facts were even opposite: Jeep is increasing its American production jobs--by over 1100, just in Ohio.

But this is a man who wants to be President in the worst way.  The worst way includes lying over and over, no matter what the facts are, no matter who corrects him.  Now he's repeating this same lie in a TV ad in Ohio.  The Obama campaign quickly issued the above corrective ad.

This level of lying, while hardly out of character for Romney and his campaign, pretty much signals that he knows he's in trouble in Ohio.  Partly because early voting there is going gangbusters, and it's going against him. A Time Magazine poll suggests it may be a 60-30 split.  If that holds, and early voting reaches the expected 45% of total votes, Romney would have to wrack up 60% on election day.

The evidence is clearer in Iowa and Nevada, where President Obama is building a big early voting lead, and Colorado, where it is smaller but still an advantage.  And reports coming out of the first few days of early voting in Florida are very encouraging.  By Saturday, the Obama early vote had almost erased the GOPer advantage in their traditional absentee votes.  And then came Sunday, with an enormous outpouring from black communities.  Black churches, with only one Sunday of early voting allowed, organized buses and car pools.  Lines began to form at 7 a.m. Some slept in tents outside polling places the night before.

"I think the going sentiment was that Obama wouldn’t get the same rally cry this year as last time," said Rev. Eugene W. Diamond of the Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, "but Florida woke up a sleeping giant that’s showing its defiance. I hate to say it, but Republicans probably would have done better if they had not tampered with early voting."

But African Americans may not be the only group disrespected by the GOP to be defiantly awakened.  In what may be the best news yet for the Obama campaign, a new poll shows Latinos are fired up and ready to vote at a high percentage (87%), and they favor President Obama by a 73-21 margin.