Poll, pundits doing poor job on presidential race

 

Gordon L. Weil

In an old movie, two tribes are fighting brutally on a battlefield in what may be Afghanistan.  Suddenly, a single line of religious monks crosses the field.  The fighting abruptly halts.  All watch in silence and respect as the holy men pass, and then the battle resumes.

The same thing may be happening now in the U.S.  The monks are pollsters, revered for their objectivity and neutrality.  Media pundits are the high priests who explain the “truths” revealed by the pollsters. 

Pollsters’ truths these days are that Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in the presidential race and that, though both are old men, Biden is worryingly older than Trump.  And, while there are about eight months until the election, it’s almost over now. 

This is called conventional wisdom.  It’s not wisdom, because it could easily turn out to be wrong, but it surely is conventional.  The media promotes what’s conventional, because the pundits listen mainly to one another – a kind of herd (or “heard”) instinct.

In reality, polls may be worse than ever.  Technological change has made it more difficult for pollsters to find a truly random sample of likely voters.  That’s essential if survey responses from the 1,000 people interviewed can predict how tens of millions of people will vote.  

Many people randomly selected cannot be reached or refuse to reply, so pollsters artificially weight some participants more than others. Besides, some people don’t give honest answers. 

In the Republican Super Tuesday primaries, Trump performed less well in most states than his polling numbers had forecast.  For example, in Michigan, a swing state, 57 percent of Republicans told polls they would vote for Trump, but only 42 percent did.

Where will the lost Trump supporters go in November?  And what about those Republicans who say they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony?  Plus, what will be the effect of third parties if the race is close?  The pundits are silent.

Polls are conducted every day, and the results are instantly interpreted by the journalistic herd to suggest to lowly voters what we will do eight months from now. Campaigns and voters may make decisions based on the doubtful data stated as conventional wisdom. 

In short, statistical guesses are treated as sure things.  Excessive reliance on polling misleads and distorts the election process.

By the way, there is one area where we should consider scientific statistics – the age of the candidates.  The media constantly focuses on doubts about Biden’s age but much less on Trump’s.  It ignores so-called “actuarial tables.”

The U.S. government must calculate how long people at each age will live in order to know the future cost of Social Security benefits.  Highly trained and experienced experts, the actuaries, determine how many more years a man or woman at each age is expected to live.  They set life expectancy at the age to be reached by at least half the people born in the same year. 

They calculate with great accuracy how long men the ages of Trump and Biden will live. Trump would be 78 at the start of the next presidential term; Biden would be 82.  At that time, Trump’s life expectancy would be 88, while Biden’s would be 90.  That means either would have a good chance of serving a full presidential term. 

So, the age difference does not particularly favor Trump.  But they are both old men and both are gaffe-prone.  Either could make such a disastrous error in campaigning that it would seriously threaten their electoral chances. No pollster can take that into account, though both parties and the voters may.

Finally, given their ages, will the election focus less on the two men and more on their two running mates?  If voters believe both are dangerously old, they could focus on the vice-presidential candidates.  Their debate could be the most important ever for the number two slot, especially if one or both of the presidential candidates won’t debate.

The biggest and most public decision a presidential candidate makes during a campaign is the selection of their running mate.  Biden’s is known and Trump’s will be a person who hews loyally to his positions.  Either must be viewed as a possible president, maybe even a likely one.  That could make this election more about the running mates than about the top of the ticket.

Finally, much will depend on the media.  The mainline media seems committed to promoting the conventional wisdom, breathlessly reported every day.  It owes the voters more than daily spot reporting and hot-off-the press analyses.  It should avoid snap conclusions drawn from flawed or possibly biased polling.

Questionable polling and hasty analyses dominate the election campaign these days. We need more light and less heat.

America’s court jester has Middle East peace plan

 

Gordon L. Weil

In medieval times, kings had court jesters who could give them serious warnings or advice, candy-coated with humor.

America may now have its own court jester:  Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”  Perhaps he’s worth our attention, even when it concerns a subject as difficult as the Gaza War.

Israel exists in a hostile corner of the Middle East.  It was created in 1948 to provide a homeland for the Jewish people, in an area that was also the home of the Palestinians. Nazi Germany had shown that, without their own territory, Jews might always face the risk of mass killing.

Israel’s survival has depended on a combination of factors.  Almost its entire Jewish population is trained and armed for defense.  The government has one of the best intelligence operations in the world.  It projects its power into neighboring countries to quash remote efforts to organize attacks against it.  And it has the unwavering support of the U.S.

When Israel was created, much of the Arab population of Palestine either fled or was driven out in what Arabs would call the “Nakba.”  But Israel continued to have Palestinians within its borders, but did not rule parts of the territory that remained under Palestinian control.

Threatened by internal Palestinian dissidents, surrounding Arab countries and terrorist groups, Israel assigned its highest priority to its national security. The U.S. was its guarantor, even if not formally.

As Israel became more secure, repelling failed military attacks, it occupied parts of Palestine that were adjacent to its territory.  Gradually, Israel has moved toward ultimately absorbing the occupied territories and maintaining dominance over the Palestinians.

That policy has been expected to provide security for Israel.  It implied that the Jewish state would keep Palestinians under its control, even if they had limited self-government.

For the Palestinians, this outcome is unacceptable, and some are willing to engage in armed resistance. Desperation has led to the formation of terrorist organizations whose agendas seem focused on continual efforts to disrupt the Israeli plan.  The murderous October 7 Hamas attack on Israel reflected enormous Arab frustration and anger with what their future might be.

The bottom line is that Israel wants to be a secure state able to protect itself, and the Palestinians want the ability to govern themselves independently.  These seem to have become mutually exclusive goals.  Sensing the Hamas attack offered it an opportunity, Israel’s response both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank has been to move toward complete control.

The U.S. and other countries have always favored two equal side-by-side states.  This is not what Israel wants.  But it is doubtful that its military control of the entire territory of Palestine would bring regional peace or enable it to completely control the Palestinians.  From American post-Civil War Reconstruction to Russian oppression of Ukraine, history shows this policy does not work.

Israel rejects a two-state solution, because it lacks confidence that the Palestinians would refrain from using their homeland to launch continual attacks on the Jewish state.  In short, Israel seems to believe that a two-state solution fails to provide what is most essential – security.

Along comes Jon Stewart.  With humor and feigned modesty, he advances a way to make the two-state solution work.  He proposes stationing a buffer force all along the border between the two states. At crossing points, each state could control the passage of people and goods.

Stewart suggests a force staffed and financed by neighboring Arab countries. Israel would get security and the Palestinians would get their own country.  Yet it’s impossible to believe that Israel would find Stewart’s arrangement durable or better than complete control of Palestine.

The neighboring countries should provide financial support.  So should the U.S. and European nations who now pay to arm one or both sides, trying to patch over an impossible regional security situation.

The border force patrols could be staffed by three elements: Israelis, Palestinians and well-trained third-party soldiers from countries outside the region.

Israel seeks to impose its own unilateral solution to its security needs, so rejects international involvement with the Palestinian problem.  But the world community has great concern about Middle East peace, and Israel is somewhat dependent for its security on the U.S. and Europe, and cannot go it alone.

Stewart’s proposal may be labeled naïve and impractical.  Yet, after 76 years, nothing else has worked.  Maybe the buffer force is not the best solution, but it’s something new and that alone makes it worthy of serious consideration. Perhaps there are other ideas still to be explored. 

The U.S., as Israel’s prime military backer, should take the lead.  The bloody Hamas-Israel confrontation requires America to do more than just plead for peace and pass the hat.

Supreme Court’s new split emerges in Colorado case

 

Gordon L. Weil

The Supreme Court’s decision preventing Colorado from keeping Donald Trump off the Republican primary ballot revealed two splits among the nine justices.

While all nine agreed that were adequate grounds to determine that a decision relating to a federal office could not be made by individual states, but only by the federal government, five justices went even further. 

The five ruled that Congress is required to pass a law giving effect to a ban on insurrectionists holding public office before they can be blocked.  In other words, the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment ban cannot function without additional congressional action.  This ruling was not necessary to overrule Colorado, but, for the first time, it established rules for the future.

Three justices disagreed vehemently and protested that it was not necessary for the majority to go that far, and it should not have.  Frequent judicial practice is to avoid making decisions that are not needed to produce a result.

Another justice wrote that sending a unified message rather than displaying a heated and unnecessary split would have been in the public interest.  This justice agreed with the three that the Court should not have gone beyond what was required and did not endorse the majority’s additional ruling. The justice said the Court should not have entered into unneeded controversy during a campaign year.

This justice stated: “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”

This justice put the public interest ahead of the frequent partisanship shown even on the Supreme Court.  She is Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee.  Thus, this was not a purely partisan split, though the three other justices who opposed the extra ruling had all been appointed by Democratic presidents.

So, aside from the split on the wisdom of the extra opinion, what other split existed? 

Male-female.

Five justices, all men and all GOP appointees, couldn’t resist going too far in their enthusiasm to overrule Colorado and ease Trump’s way.  Without their unnecessary and potentially controversial expansive ruling, the women might have simply agreed with the decision to block Colorado’s decision.  The result would have offered the public a unanimous and appropriate decision.

Instead, the majority got a scolding by Barrett, and the Court did nothing to repair its declining image.