Is This Your Idea of an October Surprise? Obama's Illegally Residing Aunt

News that Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, illegally resides in the United States has emerged as perhaps the wimpiest "October Surprise" in modern election history. First of all, the news did not appear until November, which disqualifies it from having October Surprise status in the first place. Furthermore, the story seems so deeply removed from any rational criterion used to select a president that it barely warrants coverage, except to say how ridiculous of an issue it is.

Despite the story's trivial nature, Obama has apparently decided to silence the matter by compassionately offering Onyango up to immigration authorities. During a recent interview with the suddenly omnipresent Katy Couric, the following exchange takes place:

Couric: You have an aunt who's been living in this country apparently illegally, and your campaign says any and all appropriate laws should be followed. So would you support her being deported to Kenya?

Obama: If she has violated laws, then those laws have to be obeyed. We're a nation of laws. And, obviously, that doesn't lessen my concern for her. I haven't been able to get in touch with her. But, I'm a strong believer that you obey the law.

According to a Los Angeles Times article on the subject, immigration authorities have already ordered Onyango to leave the country, so her ongoing presence here presumably violates legal authority. Although Obama does not directly answer Couric's question on the issue of deportation, in the context of the interview his response could only mean that he supports the argument that his aunt must go.

Ideological Disclaimer: For those of you do not regularly follow this blog, I am a lifetime Democrat (for lack of a viable progressive alternative). Nevertheless, I believe that the media have covered many "stories" simply to malign candidates and that most of these stories have targeted Republicans, particularly Palin. The media cannot rationally justify their obsession with fashion-gate, baby-mama-drama, child-reimbursement hysteria, false allegations of book burnings, lies about creationism, and the overblown discussion of Palin's supposed lack of knowledge of the Bush Doctrine (which lacks a coherent definition). This story is just another in a series of "incredibly lame" journalistic moments.

Spookiest State Polls of the Day (Take One): Minnesota and Montana

In an earlier blog entry, I discussed the wide variation among the results of the latest national polls. Now, state polling data from Minnesota and Montana also show peculiar results.

Survey USA, a highly accurate and reputable pollster, released a poll today which shows Obama leading McCain in Minnesota by only 3 points. Because the lead fits within the margin of error, the race is statistically tied. Furthermore, because 2% of voters report being undecided, the Minnesota race is truly a tossup if this poll is accurate.

Moving to the West, the latest release from Public Policy Polling shows Obama with a one-point lead over McCain. The results of this poll also lie within the margin of error. In this poll, Obama receives a tremendous boost from early and younger voters. Among election-day voters, McCain has a sizable lead.

The Minnesota poll is consistent with an IBD-TIPP poll which, contrary to most other surveys, shows McCain closing in or leading in the Midwest, while the Montana results, if correct, would substantiate Obama's claim of success in the West. Although conventional wisdom predicts a landslide victory for Democrats, the race could actually end up as a thriller.

Last-Minute Polls All Over the Place, But Obama Leads in Virtually All of Them

The final round of presidential election polls offer nothing certain about Tuesday's results -- except that Obama leads in all of them. Despite Obama's consistent lead, the polls show a lot of variance, and the "fine print" often raises more questions.

Variation

Although the presidential election is really a series of state-to-state contests, the national popular vote polls can provide some indication of the overall sentiment of voters. The nationwide polls, however, lack uniformity: they either show that the race is very close or tied or that Obama will win in a landslide.

The most recent CBS poll, for example, has Obama up by 13 points (54-41), but Obama leads by only 2 points (47-45) in the final IBD/TIPP poll. Last week, Pew reported that Obama had a 12-point lead; today, the pollster gave Obama a comfortable, but much smaller, lead of 6 points. Overall, the Pollster.Com average of all the major polls has Obama up by 6 points nationally.

Fine Print

Reading the details in some of the polls only makes things even more confusing -- or interesting, depending upon your perspective. In the Pew poll, for example, people who have "already voted" favor Obama 52-39. The remaining 9% are in a category "undecided/other." I assume that people who have already voted are not undecided about how they voted. On the other hand, I cannot imagine what "other" candidate could garner 9% of the national vote among early voters. Furthermore, despite Obama's lead among those who have already voted, the Pew poll actually shows McCain winning among election-day voters 46-45. A significant amount of likely voters remain undecided, which I find baffling.

In an earlier post, I analyzed the CBS poll that gives Obama a 13-point lead. In that poll, Obama leads among early voters, but 50 percent of early voters in that survey are Democrats, 60% are women, and 16% are black -- which explains Obama's substantial lead.

The TIPP poll, co-sponsored by IBD (or Investor's Business Daily) does not provide the racial demographics of the individuals it polled (which is a startling omission). In that poll, a large degree of voters also remain undecided. For example, 11% of "northeastern" and 12% of "midwestern" voters have not picked a candidate yet, according to the poll. Interestingly, the pollster has a "hot topic" poll which seeks to determine whether Americans are "ready for socialism." The results will shock you (not really).

Pretty soon, the only relevant polls -- the election-day results -- will give us an actual winner, and pundits will drown us with repetitive and unlearned commentary about the returns. Until then, the poll-obsessed readers can only speculate about the accuracy of the pre-election data. For a great resource in this process, visit the presidential polling site on Pollster.Com.

Gators Brutalize Georgia: 49-10!

I truly felt sorry for Georgia fans at one point during the game. Every time the Bulldogs approached or entered the "red zone," Florida took the ball and scored. Georgia became the latest victim of the Gators, who continue to punish Ole Miss indirectly by slaughtering other SEC opponents. Next year, the Gators will probably pulverize Ole Miss on the latter team's home turf.

As a BCS chaser, I also enjoyed watching Texas Tech's thrilling upset victory over the Texas Longhorns. That was quite an amazing game that went down to the final seconds. The Gators, by contrast, outscored Georgia before halftime. Still, seeing all of those touchdowns was really fascinating.

In order to help set up the Gators' next BCS championship showdown, Penn State and Texas Tech need to lose. We will take care of Alabama in the SEC championship game (knock on wood), but maybe LSU will help us out next week. If USC, with its pitiful schedule, ranks higher than UF in the BCS standings at the end of the season, then the BCS will lose the little remaining credibility it currently has.

Do Early Voters Favor Obama? Yes, With Caveats

CBS News reports that early voters favor Obama over McCain 57-38. This survey is consistent with many other polls that also show the Democratic contender leading as election day approaches.

Sifting Through the Data
Although the poll shows a clear advantage for Obama, a closer look at the data reveals that much of the lead stems from a disprortionate share of traditional Democrats among early voters. The poll, for example, samples 50% registered Democratic voters but only 30% Republican voters. Also, women comprise 60% of the sample, while blacks comprise 16%; both figures exceed the expected share of the overall pool of likely voters for the two demographic groups (and these groups tend to vote for Democrats). Finally, not surprisingly, more of the voters in the sample chose Kerry over Bush. Although this poll confirms the safe assumption that Obama leads among early voters, the results do not mean that Tuesday's vote will mirror pre-election findings.

Doctor, Pass the Bong! States Continue to Consider Medical Pot Laws Despite Federal Ban

In 2005, the Supreme Court held that Congress had the authority to regulate the possession of "homegrown" marijuana, even when consumed for medicinal purposes. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 bans the possession, distribution and manufacture of several categories of "controlled substances," including marijuana. Congress has refused to exempt "medicinal marijuana" from coverage under the statute, despite a growing movement in states and in Congress to legalize the usage of pot to treat a variety of illnesses (wink).

The liberals on the Supreme Court, joined by Justice Scalia, disagreed with the view that homegrown and consumed marijuana fell outside of Congress' regulatory authority because it lacked a sufficient nexus to "commerce." The case, Gonzales v. Raich, required the Court to consider the extent of the "Commerce Power," contained in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the constitution.

Although the Commerce Clause receives very little attention (certainly not as much focus as abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, and other hot-button issues) in popular constitutional law debates, it is a very important dimension of the regulatory state, and it receives tremendous amounts of analysis from legal and political experts. Historically, the Court has viewed the Commerce Power in liberal and conservative terms, depending upon its ideological composition and the economic and political conditions facing the country at the time. Accordingly, when businesses were expanding during the age of industrialization and in the subsequent consolidation of industry, the Court, stacked with "laissez faire" jurists, viewed the Commerce Power in conservative terms and routinely invalidated laws regulating the economy and labor. But during the Great Depression and after FDR engineered his infamous court-packing plan, the Court shifted dramatically to a more liberal view, and, for a period of almost 60 years, declined to find any law unconstitutional on commerce clause grounds. Things changed in 1995 during the Rehnquist Court. Beginning with the case U.S. v Lopez, the Court would again closely scrutinize federal laws enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. And since the return of the conservative treatment of the Commerce Clause, the Court has struck down several popularly favored laws, such as a ban on guns in schools (in Lopez) and a provision of the Violence Against Women's Act that gave victims of gender-motivated violence a federal right to sue their offenders.

When the medicinal marijuana case came to the Court, many constitutional law experts argued that under prevailing conservative doctrine, the Court would necessarily reject the federal government's effort to regulate homegrown and consumed marijuana, which has a most tenuous connection to commerce. Nevertheless, the Court went against the current of conservative caselaw and held that Congress indeed possesses the authority to prohibit homegrown pot.

The Court justified its ruling on the fact that the federal ban on marijuana is part of a much larger and extensive federal statute that prohibits the interstate and international trafficking of drugs -- which indisputably relate to "commerce." Also, the Court held (in what I consider a stretch even for me as a liberal) that the use of homegrown pot affects the broader market for marijuana because it impacts the price structure for the substance and because Congress would face difficulty distinguishing homegrown from commercially obtained pot. Responding to the former argument in his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas probably displayed his most effective and humorous logic as a member of the Court when he asserted that the majority's view would permit Congress to regulate "quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States" because they impact the market for quilts, clothes, and dining outside of the home.

If one considers the political reasons for the ruling, however, the fears Thomas raises in his dissent might lose their force. The liberals, for example, likely sided with the federal government in order to resurrect the liberal aspects of the Court's Commerce Clause doctrine. The only explanation I can offer for Scalia's departure from his normal pattern of voting against Congress, especially in cases involving individual rights, and for tossing aside his own conservative views of the Commerce Power and federalism is the following: Justice simply hates pot! Seriously, he does a very poor job distinguishing this case from others in which he has agreed with the conservative view of the Commerce Power.

Despite the Court giving Congress the green light for punishing medicinal usage of pot, states continue to debate and pass such measures. In November, for example, voters in Michigan will consider enacting such a provision. Last year, Connecticut passed similar legislation, but Governor Jodi Rell vetoed it.

Although the Court has concluded the Congress can prohibit the use of homegrown marijuana, it has not addressed the question of whether banning its usage for medical purposes infringes an individual rights to control one's health care decisions. The Raich case presented such an issue, but the Court declined to reach it because the lower court focused on the Commerce Clause question exclusively. Later, on remand, the liberal Ninth Circuit rejected such an argument.

Also, while many states prohibit marijuana under their own laws, states cannot enforce federal drug laws and have no obligation to design their own laws to conform with the federal prohibition (a California appeals court recently accepted this view that seems fairly uncomplicated under current doctrine). Accordingly, persons in states that permit the medical use marijuana would only face prosecution if federal authorities decided to pursue a case against them (which rarely happens with small users, rather than large distributors). These facts probably explain why voters continue to demand the enactment of such laws, despite a federal prohibition.

Trail of Broken Promises: A Powerful Closing Argument By an Unknown Candidate

The election has entered its final leg, and if recent polls reliably gauge voter sentiment, then people of all political persuasions now suffer from acute election fatigue. Perhaps that stems from the fact that together, the candidates have spent over $2.4 billion buying our votes and loading the coffers of the media. Sorry, I meant to say that they have made Democracy work, by getting their critical messages to American public.

A lot of the traditional media are using these final moments of the race to present the "closing arguments" of the candidates, as if the public really needs to hear a summary of almost two years of argumentation. Nevertheless, Obama's "pick me" infomercial and McCain's final stump speeches on the perils of socialism have taken over the airwaves. Because I find that stuff way too manufactured and redundant for my tastes, I have decided to create a completely different "closing arguments" page.

Recently, I stumbled upon a very passionate essay written by Matt Gonzalez, the Vice Presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket, which features perennial presidential contender Ralph Nader. Nader provokes deep anger among Democrats who unfairly blame him for Gore's defeat in 2000. Had Gore simply carried either Tennessee (his home state), New Hampshire, or New Mexico, he would have won the election. Furthermore, even if the several thousand voters who supported Nader in Florida had instead voted for Gore, he still would have received fewer "official" votes than Bush. Nevertheless, by contesting the right of third-party candidates to participate in presidential debates, the Democrats (joining the Republicans) have helped keep Nader's ticket locked in obscurity and have guaranteed the absence (at least for the near future) of a viable third party in U.S. national politics.

My personal opinion of Nader has vacillated from thinking that he suffers from horrible narcissism -- which would hardly disqualify him for the presidency -- that he is a closet conservative, or that his heart is in the right place but that somewhere during his lifetime, he lost any concern for pragmatism or for developing an effective method for actualizing his progressive vision. I do not purport to understand what drives Nader today, and I empathize with Democrats who resent him. Nevertheless, the closing argument of Matt Gonzalez should inspire any true progressive who reads the essay, which appears in the Dissident Voice.

In the essay, Gonzalez criticizes Democratic leadership, particularly Pelosi, Reid, and Obama, for their various "failed promises." With respect to Senator Obama, Gonzalez denounces his votes in favor of the Patriot Act and FISA (Bush's anti-privacy eavesdropping law), which betray his promises to reject these measures, his support of the death penalty despite its pronounced racial and class biases, the abandonment of his promise to renegotiate NAFTA, his selection of Joe Biden as a running mate despite his lifetime of support for the banking industry even on matters of consumer fairness, and his moderate, conservative or contradictory positions on a host of other policies.

The essay falls short at times when Gonzalez fails to acknowledge that effective participation in the legislative process often requires compromise. Gonzalez also repeats the liberal mistake of blaming Gramm-Leach-Bliley (which he appropriately links to Democrats, including many of Obama's advisers) for the financial crisis. Despite these shortcomings, Gonzalez offers an accurate, fair and rarely voiced (or heard) critique of Obama from a progressive perspective.

Although the essay is too long to reprint here, I encourage you to visit Dissident Voice and read it (follow this link: The Trail of Broken Promises: What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?). It is quite powerful. My commitment to publicizing Gonzalez's essay arises, in part, from the unfortunate fact that during this election cycle Democrats have often refused to engage in and have even derided healthy, constructive and honest debate with each other and with Republicans. To me, that does not inspire confidence or hope.

Postscript: Matt Gonzalez has a very impressive history as a progressive lawyer and politician. You can read more about him on this webpage: Gonzalez biography on Nader website.