After another weekend of endorsements, we stand at:
Clinton: 184 (including 80 that did not endorse in 2012 and 38 that endorsed Romney)
No Endorsement: 34 (including 21 that endorsed Romney and one that endorsed Johnson in 2012)
Not Trump: 9 (including one that endorsed Obama and two that endorsed Romney in 2012)
Johnson: 6 (including two that endorsed Obama and three that endorsed Romney in 2012)
Trump: 5 (including two that did not endorse in 2012)
Not Clinton: 1
Notable over the weekend were the number of papers supporting Romney in 2012 that decided to support Clinton., the first "Not Clinton" endorsement and the Trump endorsement from Sheldon Adelson's newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
While a lot of these endorsements don't say anything new, this section from the Cedar Rapids, Iowa endorsement of Clinton is worth a mention.
Quote:This election has been a wake-up call for voters, many of whom find themselves wondering what to believe. Trump’s apocalyptic visions of the present and future of this country are wrong. We are living in difficult times, but face no challenges that we can’t meet. This is not the end of American ideals and American promise.
But it is a reckoning.
We voters have become complicit in a system that treats politics like a football game or a war to be won at any cost. Politics should be about examination of important public issues, about respectful deliberation, discussion and compromise. Only voters can change that.
The first step is to resist Trump’s selfish attempts to stir up our disillusionment and dissatisfaction into a rage that threatens to have long-term consequences for our country, our communities and our common vision for the future.
The next step it to stay engaged and demand more substantive reforms.
Our current political crisis has been a long time in the making. Resolving it will require electing officials at all levels who wholeheartedly commit to transparency, responsiveness and accountability, and then holding them to those commitments over the long term.
Too many of us think only of about our rights as U.S. citizens. Those rights come with responsibilities. This presidential contest is exactly what it looks like when we neglect to stay informed and allow our democracy to languish. But the answer is not to give in to anger or despair.
Do not throw up your hands and say the game is rigged. Do not put your faith in a candidate who has proved in business and his personal life that he does not have a long-term strategy; that he cannot hold his temper; that he has utter disregard for the common good; that he lacks the basic understanding of governance, public service or what many of us would consider common decency.
It may be tempting to cast a vote simply to punish a political class that in many ways has failed us, but cooler heads must prevail.
The system may be broken, but our democratic republic is worth saving. We know how to do it. We are, in fact, stronger together.
