Rasmussen: McCain 50% Obama 44%

Another poll shows McCain leading Obama in the Magnolia State.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Mississippi shows John McCain leading Barack Obama 50% to 44%.

The strong racial divide is highlighted by the fact that Obama earns 44% of the vote in a sample where 36% of the voters are African-American. Obama overwhelmingly wins the African-American vote. Obama also leads among voters under 40 while McCain wins most votes from those 40 and older. Women are essentially evenly divided between the two candidates, while McCain leads by eleven percentage points among men.

George Bush won the state by twenty points four years ago and sixteen points in Election 2000. The current poll results are similar to Bob Dole's margin of victory in 1996. No Democrat has won the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. In 1968, George Wallace won 63% of the vote while running as an Independent. Mississippi is currently rated as "Safely Republican" in the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator .

Fifty-three percent (53%) say that if John McCain is elected in November, it is at least somewhat likely the U.S. will win the War. Twenty-six percent (26%) say victory is likely with an Obama victory. On the other hand, 52% believe a President Obama would get his troops home within a year while 42% say the same would happen with McCain as President.

DailyKos: McCain 54% Obama 39%

DailyKos released the results of poll conducted May 19 - May 21 of Mississippians (+/-4) that puts John McCain over Barack Obama 54% to 39%.

California Dreaming?

National pundits claim the Republican brand is damaged. Mississippi's First Congressional District seat was won by a Democrat. Voters, weary of war in a weakened economy, want some kind of change. In this kind of atmosphere, could California be in play for John McCain? Brian Perry discusses the opportunity this week in the Neshoba County Democrat: McCain California dreaming?.

When George W. Bush won Florida in 2000, he won the presidency. Four years later, the White House came down to Ohio. Ohio 2004 seemed a rerun of Florida 2000: small margins, voting machine questions, a high profile Republican secretary of state, and whoever prevailed in Ohio would be President of the United State: the Electoral College majority hung in the balance. Any challenge in the Buckeye State whimpered out as Bush had a small but clear majority with 50.8 percent of the vote.

The seeds of Bush's Ohio victory were sewn a year prior in Massachusetts.

In November 2003, four judges on the seven-person Massachusetts Supreme Court, overturned a state law to establish America's only state permitting gay marriage. In response, 11 states placed defense of marriage measures on their ballots the following year. They all passed by wide margins.

In Ohio, Bush beat Senator John Kerry by fewer than 150,000 votes in an election where 5.7 million voters went to the polls and 3.3 million voted to uphold traditional marriage.

If four judges in Massachusetts could provide the boost needed by Bush to win a second term in 2004, could four judges in California do the same for John McCain in 2008?

In 2000, 61 percent of California voters approved a traditional marriage ballot initiative: Proposition 22. Now the California Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision, with the equivalent of a judicial super veto, declared that marriage in the state must be allowed for same-sex couples.

Already, conservatives have filed a provision with more than a million signatures to amend the California Constitution to make marriage only between one man and one woman for the California November ballot. Polls show a majority of Californians support the amendment.

For McCain to win California this year, Republicans would need a conservative surge in turn out, some independent and Democratic crossover, and a strong showing among Hispanic voters.

A traditional marriage amendment could produce the conservative surge. McCain's maverick style and perceived moderation could provide the cross-party appeal that some Western voters need to support the Arizona Senator. Finally, McCain's polling shows him in reach of surpassing the record 44 percent of the Hispanic vote that Bush carried in 2004. Catholic Hispanics trend against gay marriage and may make the difference for McCain in California.

Republicans haven't carried California in a Presidential election since George H.W. Bush whipped Michael Dukakis 20 years ago. McCain's Western base and Hispanic appeal alone can't deliver California, especially facing Obama's rock-star appeal and fundraising prowess. But throw a conservative mobilizing issue like the defense of marriage into the mix, and McCain might be able to squeak out a win.

Will Obama be another Dukakis or is McCain just California dreaming? If McCain does carry California, his campaign should send thank you cards to four judges in California and four judges in Massachusetts.

Read the full column here: McCain California dreaming?

McCain and the Judiciary

When Mississippi jurists like Charles W. Pickering, Sr.; Mike Wallace; and Leslie Southwick were attacked by national Democrats and opposed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, men like John McCain stood by Trent Lott and Thad Cochran in pushing their nominations. A column in the Madison County Journal this week highlights the differences in a McCain court and an Obama court.

November's election for President of the United States also determines the future of the federal judiciary. Mississippians know the type of jurist they want on our federal courts. We also know what national Democrats think of such nominees.

President George W. Bush nominated Charles W. Pickering, Sr. to a post on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. National Democrats and special interest groups attacked, slandered, maligned, obstructed, and ultimately blocked his confirmation with a filibuster without ever giving him an up-or-down vote (on which he would have prevailed). Next President Bush nominated Mike Wallace to the Fifth Circuit and Democrats, without skipping a beat, re-launched their assault and obstruction machine. They continued against the next nominee as well, Leslie Southwick, but were unable to defeat him.

Pickering, Wallace, and Southwick believe in the Constitution; they believe we are a nation of laws and not of men; they believe role of a judge is to interpret the laws and Constitution as written, and not to legislate from the bench or impose their own beliefs and values onto others through their rulings.

Senator John McCain shares that perspective.

Last week in a speech on his judicial philosophy delivered at Wake Forest University, McCain promised if elected President: "I will look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint. I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist - jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference. My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power. They will be men and women of experience and wisdom, and the humility that comes with both. They will do their work with impartiality, honor, and humanity, with an alert conscience, immune to flattery and fashionable theory, and faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States."

Sen. Barack Obama, who appears to be inching toward the Democratic nomination, told a very different philosophy to CNN in a recent interview: "What you're looking for is somebody who is going to apply the law where it's clear. Now there's gonna be those five percent of cases or one percent of cases where the law isn't clear. And the judge has to then bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings. And in those circumstance what I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can't have access to political power and as a consequence can't protect themselves from being being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice. That's been its historic role. That was its role in Brown v. Board of Education."

Judges appealing to their own perspectives, ethics, and morals ruled in Dredd Scott v Sandford that blacks were not citizens; and judges seeking the law in themselves - as Obama advocates - ruled in Plessy v Ferguson to create separate but equal policies.

Some may say it is absurd to put Obama on the same side as these horrendous Supreme Court rulings. However, if activist judges had not ignored originalism in the former, nor disregarded the Fourteenth Amendment in the latter, America's journey to equality would have been achieved earlier.

McCain on Judges

Today at Wake Forest, John McCain spoke of his desire to appoint judges who will not legislate from the bench and will not bring judicial activism to the federal bench. He wants to see more judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito. The Associated Press reports:

"My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power," McCain said Tuesday in a speech at Wake Forest University.

McCain, the eventual GOP nominee, promised to appoint judges in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, saying they would interpret the law strictly to curb the scope of their rulings. While McCain didn't mention abortion, the far right understands that such nominees would be likely to limit or perhaps overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Obama, on the other hand, voted against Roberts and Alito. So did Obama's rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but McCain focused on Obama.

"Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done," McCain said. "But ... he went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee."

In response, Obama's campaign said McCain would pick judges who would threaten abortion rights as well as McCain's own campaign finance reform bill.

"What's truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

The Arizona senator said his role models interpret the law strictly, paying attention to what lawmakers intended, as opposed to "activist" judges who, by striking down statutes or court decisions, make laws rather than interpret them. "Activist" is a term conservatives use pejoratively to criticize liberal justices.

The Republican National Lawyers Association notes that Mississippi's Judge Charles Pickering has weighed in on McCain's leadership in the Gang of 14. The post writes:

Judge Pickering's backing of the agreement is further sign that it was good for conservatives, nominees, Republicans and everyone interested in the confirmation of "capable and conservative jurists."

And links to a letter from Pickering to McCain that says in part:

There is no way you can look at that agreement as a Democratic victory. Two days after the Deal was announced, Owen was confirmed by the Senate. Two weeks later, Brown was confirmed, and the next day the Senate confirmed Pryor. These confirmations were exactly what President Bush and the Republicans had tried to accomplish for five long years and the Democrats had blocked.

The confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Sam Alito --two exceptionally capable and conservative jurists-- were made relatively easy because of the "Gang of Fourteen Agreement."