An interesting read from a publication that has hardly been friendly to Democrats or more liberal positions over the years. 
First, the praise for Obama:
For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble. Given Mr Obama’s inexperience, the lack of clarity about some of his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting for him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead…
…In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.
They then turn their attention to the McCain campaign and it’s not pretty:
That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday. It has not all disappeared: his support for free trade has never wavered. Yet rather than heading towards the centre after he won the nomination, Mr McCain moved to the right.
Meanwhile his temperament, always perhaps his weak spot, has been found wanting. Sometimes the seat-of-the-pants method still works: his gut reaction over Georgia—to warn Russia off immediately—was the right one. Yet on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision. Mr McCain has never been particularly interested in economics, but, unlike Mr Obama, he has made little effort to catch up or to bring in good advisers (Doug Holtz-Eakin being the impressive exception).
The choice of Sarah Palin epitomised the sloppiness. It is not just that she is an unconvincing stand-in, nor even that she seems to have been chosen partly for her views on divisive social issues, notably abortion. Mr McCain made his most important appointment having met her just twice.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
I think it’s a disturbing commentary on the current state of the Republican party and how far it has drifted from where it once was. If a publication that believes strongly in free markets and free trade ends up endorsing the Democrat candidate, that would strongly suggest a lack of confidence that the Republican party is anywhere near its free market and free trade ideals of the past. I share that lack of confidence. I think it further comments on the illusion that we do have two distinct parties that hold polarized beliefs — that two individuals will hold greater differences of opinion if they belong to different parties. The Economist has now endorsed Clinton, Reagan, and Obama. Did the Economist change its views?
When I used to work in a Neuroscience laboratory, it was our job to tease out individual differences amongst experiment trials so that the end result is measuring differences between the two (or more) experimental groups. I think if you tease out the individual differences amongst individuals in the Republican and Democrat parties, with few exceptions (Kucinich, Paul, etc.), you begin to realize that nowadays there really is no difference between the groups that cannot be explained by individual differences of opinion., irrespective of party membership.
I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a man or woman entering the world of politics. You want to spend more than you receive in taxes. You want to increase the size and control of the federal government. You want to skirt the processes put in place by the Constitution. You want to manipulate the cost of capital. You want to intervene in foreign disputes. What party do you join?!