Just spoke with my brother who tried to get into the Romney rally in West Chester, Ohio.   He said he arrived over an hour-and-a-half before it was supposed to start and he couldn’t get it.  The line when he gave up was over 1/2 mile long.  And the rally was only just starting.

“When the history of Campaign 2012 is written,” wrote Kyle Smith in this morning’s New York Post

. . . let it not be forgotten that Barack Obama has spent more money on character assassination than anyone at any time in the entire history of humanity. The man who once predicted that Republicans would say about him, “He’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?” has run a campaign based on exactly that level of substance. The shrinks call this “projection.”

For the most part, Obama hasn’t even tried to campaign on his actual accomplishments, because voters made it clear they didn’t think much of them at the time and haven’t changed their minds. He doesn’t mention the $800 billion of wasted stimulus, barely talks about ObamaCare and omits mention of how he ignored the recommendations of his own blue-ribbon debt-reduction commission.

His campaign, like his presidency has not brought the post-partisan healing he promised.  Instead, it has exacerbated the nation’s divisions.  Should the Democrat win, George Will quipped, “Mr. Obama will have a mandate not to be Bain Capital.”

And how, I wonder, will Obama be able to unite a country that he divided in order to stay in office?

The venue is already starting to overflow.  They passed out just under 34,000 tickets and initial crowd estimates are 30,000.  (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE:   Jim Hoft says only 28,000 showed up.  Still, this crowd in a state no Republican has won since 1988 is considerably larger than the crowds Obama has been drawing.

UP-UPDATE: Maybe it was 30,000.

UP-UP-UPDATE:  To show just how great was voter enthusiasm, Powerline’s Scott Johnson includes a report from a readers who reporter than participants seemed to walk over that metaphorical broken glass to show up; “a large number of locals still lack electric power (including me), and the weather took a nasty cold snap.“

More evidence that the enthusiasm this time around is clearly on our side.  From my old stomping grounds of Arlington, Virginia (where Obama won with 71.71% of the vote in 2008), a blog reader reported than he and a friend “pounded pavement . . . for Romney/Ryan” and added

I have to say, I felt like I was in Texas there were so many Republicans in the area. Yard signs were 50/50 but we know RR supporters are afraid to show their support or their cars will get keyed and their signs will be destroyed along with their yard. That is why, in MD, I do not show my support openly unless asked. It was great – there were people flooding the office looking to help where ever they could. Felt like 2004.

No wonder people are concerned.  In Ohio, cars with Romney bumper stickers have been keyed.

This is our official GayPatriot Election Night Electoral Map.

This is not our “prediction” map. This is our Decision Desk map projections based on polls, historical trends and — importantly — actual votes.

Late last week, I announced that based on actual early voting stats, I was calling North Carolina for Mitt Romney. Today, we are calling the state of Florida for Mitt Romney based on final early voting in the Sunshine State.

All of the other states that have been colored have been projected due to the overwhelming likelihood those states will go traditionally as in the past.

The gray states are toss-ups and will most likely remain that way until polls close on Tuesday. Unless I see some important actual early voting stats in a certain state.

Finally, yeah I’m going out on a limb with NC & FL. If the actual voting patterns on Tuesday warrant it, we will certainly pull a state back and/or switch our projection altogether.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

If Obama wins on Tuesday, he will owe much of his success to his most immediate Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton. That one-time Arkansan gave the most memorable speech at their party’s convention — and offered the best case for Obama’s reelection despite the sluggish economic recovery.

And yesterday, after Clinton spoke at an Obama rally in Virginia, the president wonder if he were a “sort of a prop” in his own campaign.  Does seem like some of the participants thought so as well.  As the Democrat was still speaking, Charlie Spiering reports, “many people took their cue and began making their way to the exits to beat the parking lot traffic on the way out.”

Better to avoid traffic than to hear the presidential candidate you support?

No wonder that a New York Times reporter finds that “There’s a real sense of enthusiasm for the Romney Campaign… And, on the other side, the excitement and enthusiasm is not there.”

SOMEWHAT RELATED:  Bill Clinton:   Obama’s best frenemy.

UPDATE: Obama campaign getting crowds totally excited about voting for Bill Clinton on Tuesday

ALSO SOMEWHAT RELATED: Obama points to Clinton’s example in final days of race:

Mr. Obama also leaves unstated that his own economic policies have yet to produce strong growth. (more…)

One thing which makes me suspicious of polls showing a tight race is the superabundance of reports we read of one-time Obama backers switching to Mitt Romney.  We have reported the number of newspapers which had backed Obama in 2008, but have, this time, switched to Romney.  Earlier today, John Fund reported that over 30 had switched.

And bear in mind that human beings make those endorsements, many of them caught up in the hope-and-change fervor 0f 2008.

Kurt shares this report about another life-long Democrat casting her first vote for a Republican:

Bryna Franklin of Jerusalem is a lifelong Democrat and a former chair of Democrats Abroad Israel. She voted for a Republican for president for the first time in her 80 years when she voted this year for Mitt Romney.

Bryna, who served for years as vice chair of the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee in Missouri and was a delegate to the 1992 Democratic National Convention, explained her decision as stemming from deep disappointment in President Obama on a range of issues. (more…)

National polls remain tight, but do so polls in states that haven’t gone Republican since George H.W. Bush ran as Reagan’s heir in 1988.

One thing is clear though the excitement this time around is all on the Republican side — even in states extremely likely to go Democratic on Tuesday.  From Ulster County in up “in purple upstate New York“, Richard Brookhiser observes that whereas his valley “was sown with Obama signs” in 2008,

This year has brought a complete flip. Romney signs have sprouted like mushrooms, including a big one promising a Romney-Ryan victory celebration on election night. I have also seen two empty chairs, labeled Obama or Nobama. I have spotted only a couple Obama signs.

It’s not just that Romney voters are more enthusiastic in the Empire State, at least two newspapers in the state which endorsed Obama in 2008 are now casting their lot with the Republican.  Newsday began its endorsement of Romney by citing Obama’s failure:

Had Barack Obama done the job of president with the same passion and vision he displayed in seeking it, he would likely deserve another term. He did not.

Against this we must weigh Mitt Romney, an imperfect candidate but one who has a special track record too. From his creation of a vast personal fortune to his successful stewardship of the threatened Salt Lake City Olympics to his governing of Massachusetts, Romney’s life is a tale of success after success, many of them achieved in difficult circumstances.

The New York Daily News was equally brutal, noting how New Yorkers have suffered under Obama:

New Yorkers have fared no better. The state is alone among the 50 in suffering significantly rising unemployment over the last 12 months, with the rate now at 8.9%. The city’s pain index is 8.8%, and the five boroughs have been trading down in salaries. (more…)

“When Bush left office,” Tim Stanley writes in the Telegraph,

. . . unemployment was 7.8 per cent; today it is 7.9 per cent. Debt is up, food stamps are up, income is stagnant. Bush bailed out Wall Street and so did Obama – even Obama’s much vaunted “rescue” of the auto industrywas actually kick started by Bush. If Bush suffocated civil liberties with the Patriot Act, Obama blew them to Kingdom Come with that awful kill list.

In many ways, the policies and performances of Obama and Bush are rather similar. There are some differences. First, Obama accelerated big government trends that he inherited from W – debt as a percentage of GDP is way, way up.

(Via Sarah Hoyt @ Instapundit.) After citing the parties’ “cultural” differences, Stanley concludes that both W and Obama are New Dealers:  ”If Bush was Roosevelt Lite, Obama was Roosevelt Max Strength.”  Only problem is “that the moment when the hardcore Roosevelt fans finally got the keys to the candy store was the exact moment when it had run out of candy.”

Simply put, all that government spending had depleted the Treasury.

And Obama never asked the American people to pay for all the “candy” he wants to shower upon them.  He filled up our shopping carts with items he, to borrow an expression, just “didn’t pay for.”  He only talked about raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, tax hikes which would barely put a dent in the deficit.  He didn’t ask other Americans to pay their fair share for programs designed to benefit them.

Although Obama promised four years ago to change politics as we know it, the only real change he has offered has been to accelerate the pace of government spending.  ”The Romney/Paul [sic] ticket”, has, by contrast, Stanley offers, seemed to grasp “that America simply cannot continue the way it is going. (more…)

The latest poll out of the Keystone State shows the race a dead heat, with President Obama and Mitt Romney tied at 47 percent, not a good place for an incumbent to be in a state considered safe for his team as recently as three weeks ago.

What makes the numbers even worse for the Democrat is that

Nearly 60 percent of people say the country is on the wrong track, and economic concerns continue to dominate. Almost half of likely voters say economic issues are the primary driver of their choice for president.

“I’m concerned about all the young people graduating from college, whether they’re finding jobs,” said Pauline Hoxie, 84, a Republican from Jersey Shore in Lycoming County. Her grandson graduated with a degree in graphic design but works a manual labor job because he can’t find openings in his field, she said.

There’s hope and change for you.

With Republican enthusiasm up (likely to be increased by Romney’s visit to the state) and late deciders tending to favor the challenger, it seems very likely that the Keystone Stone could be in the Republican column for the first time in 24 years.

Via Instapundit.

This gal has guts, daring to wear a Romney-Ryan T-shirt to a Hollywood Trader Joe’s:

Posted with her permission.

BUILDING ON A READER’S COMMENT: Eric said he’d ”LOVE to have heard the comments she got wearing that shirt!”  When I saw the T-shirt and introduced myself, she was already engaged in a conversation with a woman in late middle-age delighted to discover someone so open about her support for Mitt Romney.

We had a nice chat and even took on a left-of-center patron shocked to see such a T-shirt. . . .