Hardly cause for dancing in the streets; it merely means the current election gives America a choice between Romneys trickle down policy and Obamas crony capitalism, blithely ignoring the reality that they are identical. Obama punting will not make Romney running up the score any better for the nation; it just highlights the absence of any legitimate alternative to him, since both parties are united on policy, "separated" only in irrelevant deceptive rhetoric. Public recognition of that policys utter failure makes Obama the best person to maintain it, since it can no longer be sold on its merits and must instead be marketed as its antithesis, but all roads lead to Rome (in numerous senses.)

Let us consider the situation objectively:

In the 2008 campaign (and through 2009,) Romney demanded the federal public healthcare mandate he devised, and Obama ran hard against it.

Just four years later, Obama affirms that mandates legitimacy as staunchly as he opposed it then, while Romney campaigns vigorously against his own creation.

Honestly, what is the point of even having elections anymore? The presidency has been reduced to an honorific bestowed on the winner of a popularity contest determining no more than who signs laws inevitably enacted whoever is elected. Obama will most likely be re-elected for no better reason than that the conceit he represents populist socialism rather than the aristocracy of wealth is the only thing preventing rioting in the streets. That does not, however, mean anything will improve; campaigning on socialism (with the rhetorical aid of ones "opponents") is vastly different from enacting it, however critical it may be.

Americas people have the wit and will to make necessary sacrifices, but the nation is as bankrupt politically as it is economically. Politicians, ever creatures of the wealthy elite, are concerned solely with slowing the bleeding and protecting that elite long enough for its children to inherit the problem of its unsustainability. They seem to have taken the old folk saying that we borrow the planet from our children rather than inheriting it from our parents a bit too literally.

"The foundation is strong;" America retains impressive natural and human resources, but may need to clear away a great deal of rubble to restore the kind of robust constructive government we enjoyed during our century and a half climb from obscurity to grandeur. Obamas attempt to claim Sammaels "Betrayer of Hope" title is certainly ominous; all the rhetoric in the world cannot obscure the steady erosion of Americas economic, diplomatic and strategic stature since the Moon landing. Beyond a certain point, hungry people stop listening to rhetoric, and desperate alienated nations do desperate alienated things (e.g. the Reign of Terror, the Bolsevik Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.)