Obama, Romney get more major endorsements

AMERICA has entered the final hours of its presidential election scheduled for tomorrow with President Barack Obama getting endorsements that have brightened his prospects.

Support for Obama’s reelection came from former United States (U.S.) President Bill Clinton and erstwhile Secretary of State Colin Powell. The New York Mayor and billionaire, Mike Bloomberg, a conservative who became mayor first as a Republican before becoming an independent has also backed Obama.

But his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney is also not lagging behind as some religious leaders in the American Christian right movements are packing an onslaught against Obama, paving the way for Romney.

Bill Clinton told a crowd of 24,000 people on a chilly night in an outdoor concert venue in Bristow, Virginia, that Obama had done his best with “a bad hand” and deserved to be reelected, and in his folksy southern way, he went about dismantling Romney’s record and his ability to serve as president.

“I have given my voice in the service of my president,” a hoarse Clinton said on the latest of more than two dozen campaign events for Obama.

In his endorsement of Obama at the weekend, Bloomberg, who is also a media mogul said he would have endorsed Romney, who “in the past has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care.”

However, the New York Mayor argued alongside the lines of what has become the main criticism of the Republican candidate: His many reversals of views and policy stances.

According to Bloomberg, Romney “has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the health-care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.”

In a rather dismissive manner, Bloomberg added that “if the 1994 or 2003 version of Mitt Romney were running for president, I may well have voted for him.”

But even in his endorsement, Bloomberg still complained about the slow pace of economic recovery in the U.S. after the global crisis of 2008-2009, saying “like so many other independents, I have found the past four years to be, in a word, disappointing.”

In his own endorsement of Obama, Powell said the direction Obama was leading America was the right one.

Powell, a former African-American four-star general is regarded as a folk hero in the U.S. and his endorsement of Obama, being himself a Republican is seen as a significant push for the first black president of America.

Currently, Powell’s message supporting the U.S. president is now being widely distributed by the Obama campaign offices across the country.

In the message, Powell said when Obama took over the country was undergoing a worsening recession almost heading into a depression. He added that the U.S. President had now stabilized the country.

“The housing industry is back, he saved the auto industry, I think we need to keep on the track that we are on”, he said.

For a critical section of American evangelical Christians however, Obama is the enemy of the nation.

In an e-mail he sent to all U.S. pastors at the weekend, a noted evangelical pastor and author, James B. Richards contended that Obama is indeed the problem.

He said: “By his own admission Barack Obama is committed to a socialist, extreme leftist agenda and to the reduction of America. If Obama stays in office for a second term, the American idea, based on constitutional government and godly values, may be too far gone to save.”

In addition, Richards who sent the e-mail using the Church Report Daily to deliver his message said Christians in America could easily determine the winner of tomorrow’s election.

He said Obama won the 2008 presidential election by 10 million votes, but Christians alone had over 30 million votes who failed to vote in that election.

According to him, “we could have been the deciding factor but we weren’t! We stood on the sidelines! If we do that again, we will lose our country and our freedoms.”

Richards has, however, been challenged by other U.S. pastors who question his subtle support for a Mormon believer. Many evangelical Americans do not consider Mormons to be Christians, especially because of their different doctrines including those based on their second ‘bible’, the book of Mormons.

Both Romney and Obama campaigns are now actively mobilising their supporters to come out to vote tomorrow, and the recent opinion polls continue to reveal a very tight race, however, with most predicting an eventual victory for the sitting president, even if narrowly.

Tomorrow’s U.S. presidential election will be run using an electoral college where each state is given a number of votes based on its population. The candidate who wins 270 Electoral College votes then becomes president.