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High profile New York blogger Jeff Jarvis, reacting to the last wave of "spit and bile and venom" from ultra-partisans as the presidential campaign comes to a close, posts this pledge and invites other online denizens to agree:
After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.
He writes that the tone of today's readers comments at his blog has been particularly "off-its-meds" and reveals he has been killing comments: "I fear a crescendo of nastiness online and on the talk shows and in the bars over the next 36 hours."
The L.A. Times, meanwhile, did not endorse, but runs a long editorial today titled A Failed Presidency that begins:
If elections were solely a job performance review, President George W. Bush would lose in a landslide. He has been a reckless steward of the nation's finances and its environment, a divisive figure at home and abroad. It's fair to say that Bush has devalued the American brand in the global marketplace.What keeps this a close race is voter discomfort with Sen. John F. Kerry and the success of Republicans in stoking concerns about Kerry's fitness for office.
It's a similar take to The Economist, which runs photos of Bush ("The incompetent") and Kerry ("The incoherent") on its cover and says inside: "America's presidential election is a contest between two deeply flawed candidates." The magazine, however, picked Kerry, "with a heavy heart."
Editor & Publisher's running tally of newspaper endorsements, incidentally, stands today at 208 for Kerry, 188 for Bush. Bush picked up 21 papers in the closing days, compared to five for Kerry. More than 60 daily papers that backed Bush last time have switched to Kerry or taken no endorsement, compared to 10 that have shifted after endorsing Al Gore in 2000.