In the just-published Politico e-book “Obama’s Last Stand,” Glenn Thrush reports that phrases like “I admire or at least respect my opponent” and “noblesse oblige” are not really in President Obama’s vocabulary this year. Among the nuggets:

* “The one thing animating the campaign above all….is Obama’s own burning competitiveness, with his remorseless focus on beating Mitt Romney — an opponent he genuinely views with contempt and fears will be unfit to run the country.”

* “The two things Obama fears most about a Romney victory: (a) “A 7-to-2 conservative Supreme Court within a few years, and (b) “An unbearable possibility, in his mind, that Romney will get to take a victory lap on an economic rebound Obama sees as just around the corner. ‘I’m not going to let him win…so that he can take credit when the economy turns around,’ Obama said, according to an aide.”

* Obama “really doesn’t like, admire or even grudgingly respect Romney. It’s a level of contempt, say aides, he doesn’t even feel for the conservative, combative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Hill Republican he dislike[s] the most. ‘There was a baseline of respect for John McCain. The president always thought he was an honorable man and a war hero,’ a longtime Obama adviser said. ‘That doesn’t hold true for Romney. He was no goddamned war hero.'”

* Obama “vehemently opposes and views Citizens United as an existential threat to democracy.”

Daily Kos’s “therehastobeaway” has written that [“these are] key reasons why [lefties] cannot stand in the sidelines this election and must work just as hard if not harder to re-elect Obama than we did to elect him four years ago. If the GOP is allowed to take credit for our side’s financial philosophy and/or is able to appoint conservative justices, the left-leaning social and political agenda and its politicians will be dealt a crushing ideological and electoral blow for generations to come. If that doesn’t get you up out of bed for the next two months, nothing will.”