Clear-eyed, unsentimental Presidential endorsements from HARPER'S magazine.

From "Easy Chair: The Maintenance Crew" by Thomas Frank:
"We now know that Barack Obama is no Superman.  He has been unimaginative and conventional.  On his watch, the banks got bigger.  The oceans continued to rise.  The wars sputtered on.  But at least he has been a conscientious administrator of the state.  He is not flamboyantly corrupt, in the manner of Tom DeLay and his congressional cohort, or gleefully perverse, in the manner of the Bush Administration's Department of Labor.  And that makes the choice easy for me, despite my disappointment.  I will choose the safe over the venturesome, the maintenance crew over the wrecking crew.  It doesn't make for a soaring slogan or an existential journey, but it's the best we can hope for this time around."

From "Why Vote?: When Your Vote Counts For Nothing" by Kevin Baker:
"So yes, go out and vote.  Go vote for Barack Obama, and whatever other Democrats or progressives are running for office where you live.  To vote for a Mitt Romney--to vote for the modern right anywhere in the West today--is an act of national suicide.  The right is hollow to its core; it has no dreams, no vision, no plans to deal with any of the problems that confront us, only infantile fantasies of violence and consumption.  But it is, at the moment, well-funded, well-organized, and feeling especially threatened.  It is capable of anything."

Recommending Kevin Baker's article "The Vanishing Liberal" in April's issue of HARPER'S.

Worth buying HARPER'S at the newsstand (or subscribing online) for this article, subtitled "How the Left Learned to Be Helpless."
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/04/0082894