“…the budget that [Rep. Paul Ryan] came forward with is just like Paul  Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the  budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion. … The president came out with  his own plan and the president, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I  don’t think anybody took that budget very seriously.”

– Erskine Bowles, Democratic co-chairman of President Obama’s debt and  deficit commission, in a Sept. 8, 2011 speech at the University of North  Carolina.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have been escalating their attacks  in the days since soon-to-be Republican nominee Mitt Romney tapped Wisconsin  Rep. Paul Ryan to be his wingman. But not in the way everyone expected.

Suggesting Republicans want to enslave people and reverting to a 29-year-old  charge that Romney was unkind to his dog isn’t where the Democratic debate was  supposed to be today. The political press said this would be a new era of  substantive attacks on Republican policy, not overheated rhetoric and personal  attacks.

But here we are, with the nasty attacks still flying after more than four  months of the ugliest campaign ever run by an incumbent president.

Biden crossed a new rhetorical line on Tuesday campaigning in Virginia, telling an audience that included hundreds of black voters that Republicans are “going to put y’all back in chains.” The Obama campaign subsequently backed Biden’s comments, saying that the metaphorical chains to which Biden was referring were about Wall Street control of the nation’s economy.

More.