Can we stop the exodus of teachers? -- May 5, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

If you’ve ever wondered, as I have, what former presidents chat about when they’re sitting together, waiting for an event to start, President Joe Biden gave us a glimpse.

Before the funeral of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright April 27 at the National Cathedral, Biden told former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton he would be welcoming the Teacher of the Year to the White House that afternoon.

“And they all talked about how much they enjoyed the years they were here with the Teacher of the Year event,” Biden said told the teachers later.

I can almost hear some readers snickering that teachers are a big Democratic constituency, so it’s no wonder Democratic presidents welcome them. That may be true, but it’s offpoint. 

Teachers are among the professionals -- along with first responders, health care workers and military personnel -- who deserve support and respect from all of us, regardless of our politics, especially during the pandemic.

But surveys suggest educators – everyone from teachers to bus drivers to cafeteria ladies -- are fed up, and many are considering quitting.

Fifty-five percent of educators say they’re thinking of leaving the field, according to a National Education Association member survey released in February. That includes 62% of Black and 59% of Hispanic NEA members.

Heavier workloads to cover for absent employees, pay that fails to keep up with inflation and lack of respect from students and parents are among the factors.

The average teacher salary nationwide is $66,397 for the 2021-22 school year, which, when adjusted for inflation, means pay is down 3.9% over the last decade, the NEA reported.

The average budgeted classroom teacher salary in Virginia for fiscal year 2022 is $62,101, less than a 1% increase from the previous fiscal year, the Virginia Department of Education reported in January. Virginia ranked 28^th in teacher salaries in the nation in 2019-2000, according to NEA calculations.

Contributing to burnout is the fact schools and teachers have become pawns in our culture wars.

In Virginia, candidate Glenn Youngkin campaigned on restoring educational excellence but as governor launched a “Help Education” tip line so parents can report – call it what it is: snitch on – school officials who teach “divisive” lessons. That’s not supporting schools and teachers; that’s intimidation.  

Worse, he refused to release records related to the tip line under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming they are “working papers and correspondence.” So much for transparency. The Washington Post and a dozen other news organizations filed suit April 13, seeking the records.

At the Teacher of the Year celebration, Biden decried the politicization of education, saying: “Today, there are too many politicians trying to score political points, trying to ban books, even math books . . . Did you ever think, when you’d be teaching, that you’d be worried about book burnings and banning books, all because it doesn’t fit somebody’s political agenda?”

Teachers have enough to worry about, with staying healthy and helping their students who have fallen seven to nine months behind in their learning during COVID-19.

The activism of conservative-leaning parents, ginned up by closed schools and mask mandates, is probably here to stay for the foreseeable future, but other parents also need to step up to support teachers and make their voices heard. 

Biden touted the American Rescue Plan, which he signed in March 2021, that included $122 billion in emergency relief funds for elementary and secondary schools as well as an additional $8 billion to states and school districts to meet needs of students with disabilities and $800 million for students experiencing homelessness.

All 50 states submitted plans for spending the money and are implementing them. Localities added about 279,000 education jobs in 2021 and 46,000 more in the first two months of 2022. But more needs to be done to help teachers.

“American teachers have dedicated their lives to teaching our children and lifting them up. We’ve got to stop making them the target of the culture wars,” Biden said.

And he added, “It’s not enough to give teachers praise. We ought to give you a raise.”

© 2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Should Breyer retire? When the personal is political -- Oct. 14, 2021 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

For months, progressives have hounded Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire.

An online petition urges him to “put the country first” and retire now. A billboard truck has driven around the Supreme Court building, and two protesters interrupted a Smithsonian Associates’ program with Breyer Oct. 4 and unfurled a banner with the same message.

At 83, Breyer is the oldest and senior liberal justice, having served since 1994. The two other liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, are in their 60s. A younger liberal justice with a lifetime appointment could help shape the country’s direction for decades.

President Joe Biden’s window to nominate and the Senate to confirm a replacement could slam shut after the 2022 elections. If Democrats lose their razor-thin majority in the Senate, as seems likely, Mitch McConnell would become Senate majority leader again and have the power to bedevil Biden on nominations as he did President Barack Obama.

But justices often resist hanging up their robes and may regret doing so. Sandra Day O’Connor retired at 75 to care for her beloved husband with Alzheimer’s disease in 2006, but his condition deteriorated and soon he could not recognize her.

Retiring was “the biggest mistake, the dumbest thing I ever did,” O’Connor told Evan Thomas, her biographer.

Breyer deserves the respect -- and space -- to decide when he retires.

He knows his legacy is at stake. In an interview with The New York Times, he favorably recounted something the late Justice Antonin Scalia said: “He said, `I don’t want somebody appointed who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years.’”

No one ever knows what’s ahead, and Scalia died suddenly of natural causes at 79, on a hunting trip in Texas in February 2016.

About one hour after Scalia’s death was confirmed, McConnell, then majority leader, announced the Senate should not confirm a replacement in a presidential election year.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a respected moderate many Republicans had supported. McConnell refused to allow a vote and later said blocking the nomination was his proudest moment. Biden named Garland attorney general.

When liberals nipped at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s heels to retire at age 81, so Obama could nominate her successor, she dodged the issue by asking rhetorically in an interview with Reuters, “So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather see on the court than me?”

Her death at 87 ended her tenure just two months before the 2020 presidential election. Biden’s predecessor and McConnell rushed confirmation of conservative Amy Coney Barrett, 48, through the Republican-controlled Senate.

Today’s conservative court -- six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats – is teeing up cases that could undo years of settled law on abortion rights and other hot topics. Breyer, a Clinton appointee, wants to participate in these cases. He has work to do.

Justices often insist that the court’s judicial decisions are not political. Breyer makes that argument in his new book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.”

And yet the justices are well aware of the political ramifications of their personal decision to stay or go.

Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist was once asked if it is “inappropriate for a justice to take into account the party or politics of the sitting president when deciding whether to step down from the court.”

The question came from Walter Dellinger, Duke University law professor, who wrote about it later in a 2017 article for Slate.

 “No, it’s not inappropriate,” Rehnquist replied. “Deciding when to step down from the court is not a judicial act.”

Asked recently about Rehnquist’s comment, Breyer said, “That’s true.”

Meanwhile, the political clock ticks louder. It’s still possible for Breyer to retire after this term and for Biden and Senate Democrats to install a liberal successor, likely a black woman, before the midterm elections.

But Breyer’s indecision has made the task more difficult, and he has ensured the highest court will be a key political issue in next year’s Senate races.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Print book sales rise, but there's a downside -- May 6, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Vice President Kamala Harris visited an independent bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island, Wednesday and bought four books.

She’d been wanting to read them, “and I’m going to find time to do it,” she said, according to a pool report.

Many of us share the aspiration. Just that morning, I had vowed, again, to find time to buy and read books.

One of the few upsides of the pandemic has been an uptick in print book sales. Sales of print books rose 8.2% in 2020 over 2019, according to NPD BookScan.

Much of the increase came as parents adjusted to remote learning and bought juvenile nonfiction books. The category was up 23% in unit sales year to year, Publishers Weekly reported.

Adult fiction sales rose 6% over 2019, led by a 29% increase in graphic novels.

But the news about bookstores isn’t as rosy. Many had to close temporarily during shutdowns, and dozens of bookstores shuttered permanently. Bookstore sales were down 28% in 2020 from 2019, according to the Census Bureau.

We all know it’s cheap and fast to buy books online from a certain retail behemoth, and during the pandemic we often didn’t have much choice but to shop online.

Now, though, with businesses reopening, we have a choice. It’s inspiring to see prominent politicians take the time to support reading and local bookshops.

“There is nothing that I enjoy more, or I think is more nourishing, than being able to just walk into a bookstore run by people who love books and love reading,” former President Barack Obama has said.

Obama has long championed indie bookstores. When his first book was published, Politics & Prose in Washington offered him a reading, and a couple dozen customers showed up.

His latest, “A Promised Land,” was the Number One political title last year with more than 2.5 million copies sold. Several Republican candidates and elected officials also had bestsellers last year.

 As president, Obama often shopped locally with his daughters, leaving with a stack of books.

Last December, he shared his 17 favorite titles of the year. Last month, around Independent Bookstore Day, he virtually visited six bookstores around the country.

“Each night, I’d have a stack of briefing papers and speeches to review and notes about economic issues or foreign policy issues. It would take me two or three hours every night to plow through that stuff,” he said in a video conversation with the owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss.

“But the time I was done, it was pretty late. . . But I’m a night owl, and what I found was that having 45 minutes to an hour to be able to read something for me. . . helped to reset me and also helped to extend my perspective beyond the narrow set of headaches that were staring me in the face.”

Obama found fiction helped him connect with people. He advises President Joe Biden to “read whatever nourishes his soul,” adding “That’s going to be different things for different people.”

On her visit to the bookstore, Harris bought three novels and a cookbook. The novels were “Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead, “The Topeka School” by Ben Lerner, and “The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett. “Simply Julia,” by Julia Turshen has recipes for “healthy comfort food.”

I spend a lot of time reading newspapers (always a good thing), magazines and the Internet – but lately I’ve missed the longer commitment of books.

I started “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, which I’d read, sort of, in high school. Everyone says it’s much better read later in life. Perhaps too much was going on in mine to focus on a sprawling 19^th century novel – even if written by one of the greatest English authors of all time – but it remains on my bedside table.

A good thing about books is they stay around until you’re ready for them.

So, I walked to my local indie bookstore, which has reopened in a new, larger location. It was lovely to let the books call out to me again, and I brought home a first novel I knew nothing about.

I intend to find the time to read it. What about you? Have you visited an independent bookstore? What are you reading?

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What cows' legs have to do with economic stimulus -- Feb. 4, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Joe Biden wants Republican support for his economic stimulus package, but the clock’s ticking.

“We need to act. We need to act fast,” Biden said Wednesday in a private conference call with House Democrats, according to news reports.

To win Republican votes, the president is willing to negotiate on some parts of his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan package, but he doesn’t want to talk endlessly.

He wants Congress to send him a bill to sign by March 14, when extended unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans.

Biden met Monday with 10 Republican senators whose $618 billion counterproposal is one third the size of Biden’s plan. Among GOP provisions -- $1,000 checks to individuals, instead of Biden’s $1,400 checks, and no $15 minimum wage.

Biden wants to “go big,” as do House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and even West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican.

“We need to quit counting the egg-sucking legs on the cows and count the cows and just move,” Justice said in TV interviews Wednesday. In other words, pass something and not worry about the cost.

Biden’s choice: Make good on his promise of bipartisanship by watering down his plan to appease Republicans or deliver on the promise of meaningful help to millions hurt by the pandemic.

Biden believes in compromise, but compromise requires both sides act in good faith. As usual, each side is accusing the other of playing a crass political game.

But the wide gap between the packages raises the question whether Republicans seriously want bipartisanship – or just talking points for the next campaign.

We’ve been here before. When President Barack Obama took office in 2009 with Biden as his vice president, the country was sliding into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Obama wanted Republican support for his economic stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“There was a pervasive nostalgia in Washington, both before I was elected and during my presidency, for a bygone era of bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill,” Obama writes in his memoir, “A Promised Land.”

To court Republicans, he shrank the stimulus package – and, many economists believe, made it much less effective, slowing the recovery.

Obama hoped he might “catch GOP leaders by surprise and ease their suspicions, helping to build working relationships that could carry over to other issues. And if, as was more likely, the gambit didn’t work and Republicans rejected my overtures, then at least voters would know who was to blame for Washington’s dysfunction,” he writes.

None of that happened. His $787 billion recovery act passed – without a single Republican vote. Republicans then obstructed his subsequent initiatives at every turn. Congressional Democrats later pushed through the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare -- again with zero Republican votes.

But, voters didn’t blame Republicans for dysfunctional government. To the contrary, in the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans, fueled by the Tea Partiers, captured dozens of seats and control of the House and gained seats in the Senate.

Biden and congressional Democrats know what they’re up against. So, they again are pressing forward with a plan to pass the economic stimulus with only Democratic support by using a budgetary tool known as reconciliation.

If no Republicans join, Democrats could pass the bill with 51 votes in the Senate, bypassing the usual 60 vote requirement. The Senate is split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

Republicans are crying foul, of course, but they used reconciliation to pass the 2017 tax cuts without any Democratic support.

In his memoir, Obama recounts a story Biden shared about his run-in as a senator with Mitch McConnell. After the Republican leader blocked a bill Biden was sponsoring, Biden tried to explain its merits. McConnell held up his hand like a traffic cop and said: “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.”

Biden is not naïve. He knows who and what he’s up against. He believes he can round up a few Republican votes and call the package bipartisan. But Republicans may just keep counting the legs on the cows.

© 2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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A new president pledges unity -- Jan. 21, 2021

By MARSHA MERCER

As Joe Biden became president Wednesday, he pledged to work for unity and asked all Americans to join him.

“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war,” he said in his Inaugural Address on the West Front of the Capitol.

Few would disagree – in theory, anyway.

Biden’s call for Americans to treat each other with dignity and respect, to lower the temperature, stop shouting and stand for truth are a welcome change in presidential tone and approach.

But civility doesn’t mean standing still. Biden also wasted no time showing the new direction he wants to take the country.

“We’ll press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities,” he said. “Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal. Much to build, and much to gain.”

He signed a stack of executive orders to undo policies of his Republican predecessor -- on the coronavirus, immigration, the economic crisis and the environment. They were the first of many executive actions planned.

Even though conservatives championed President Donald Trump for using executive orders to reverse the course set by President Barack Obama, Biden’s use of executive power predictably prompted some conservatives to cry foul.

“Biden campaigned on `unity,’ but his first actions immediately reveal his true priority is the agenda of the far Left: to remake America,” the conservative Heritage Foundation said in a statement.

And there lies a real problem facing Biden and his new administration. When he  delivers on his campaign promises, he will make some Americans more comfortable and hopeful, feelings that have been in short supply the last four years, while others will be uncomfortable and angry.

To find the path of bipartisanship to enact his $1.9 trillion emergency relief  package and other legislation in the closely divided Congress, Biden will need the negotiating skills he honed during his career of legislative experience. He’ll also need to compromise at times, which likely will anger some in his own party.

But on Day One, the new president sounded the right symbolic notes:

n  ---The somber and lovely memorial of 400 lights at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for 400,000 lives lost to the coronavirus

n  ---The optimistic, if scaled-back and locked-down, swearing-in ceremony with former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton showing bipartisan support

n  ---Performances by the incredible Lady Gaga and J-Lo; the poem by 22-year-old Amanda Gorman

n  ---The normal and sane first Biden press briefing at the White House.

All were breaths of fresh air.

After the mayhem and drama, our democratic system held. We had a peaceful transfer of power.

In his address, Biden exuded decency, calm and competence – and emphasized he and we should value truth.

“We must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured,” he said.

Vice President Kamala Harris sends a message to “little girls and boys across the world” that “anything and everything is possible,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said.

Biden asked every American to give him a chance and join in fighting our mutual foes – “anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.”

Speaking directly to those who opposed him in the election, he said: “Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America.”

Peaceful dissent is one of America’s great strengths, he said.

Biden was right to insist on holding the inauguration outdoors, despite the threats of violence. He now needs to conquer an invisible foe, the coronavirus.

Requiring masks in all federal buildings and federal land and by federal employees and contractors is an important step. He challenged all Americans to wear masks for 100 days to slow the spread of COVID-19. It’s literally the least we can do.

He also wants to expand testing and speed vaccinations. The pitifully slow rollout of vaccines is a disgrace that undermines confidence in our government.  

When most of Americans are vaccinated, we’ll begin to go about our business, the economy will recover and people will feel good about the future. We might even unify.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What should we carry into 2021? -- Dec. 31, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Four years ago this week, I wrote about “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien’s haunting short story about the weight of things foot soldiers carried in Vietnam.

The soldiers carried necessities as practical as mosquito repellent, as powerful as anti-personnel mines and as personal as memories. The short story is a classic, beautifully written, rich in detail and as poignant now as when it was first published in 1990.

Rereading it made me start thinking about the New Year, what I wanted to carry into 2017 and what I hoped we could leave behind.

I mainly thought we should leave behind the 2016 presidential election. At the time, the wounds of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump were still fresh. Her supporters were devastated, and recriminations were flying.

Yes, the election was a shock, but we need to let it go, I said.

Commentators were prolonging the agony, and even President Barack Obama opined that he could have beaten Trump in the general election had he been able to run again. I thought that was the kind of wishful thinking Democrats should leave behind with 2016.

In retrospect, the 2016 election was a civics lesson. While Democrats were sad about Clinton’s loss in the Electoral College, after winning 3 million more popular votes than Trump, they did not deny Trump’s victory. No one harped for weeks the election was rigged or voter fraud rampant. Clinton was gracious in defeat.

No one could have imagined then how the Trump presidency would shred democratic norms and values or that it would end in a Trumpian hail of false claims of victory, spurious attacks on election and state officials and even on Republicans who dared to acknowledge reality that Joe Biden won.

But Trump has always been all about Trump. Even after dozens of defeats in the courts challenging election results without producing any verifiable evidence and numerous failed overtures to bully state legislators into overturning the will of voters, Trump continues to rage against facts and truth.

“Can you imagine if the Republicans stole a Presidential Election from the Democrats – All hell would break out,” he tweeted Tuesday from Florida. His temper tantrums are ludicrous but also dangerous.

Trump still has many dedicated followers, and I write this knowing they will see red – and not just their MAGA hats – at my opinion.

Democrats, take note: Trump was the most admired man in America in 2020, Gallup poll reported Tuesday, with 18% of respondents naming Trump compared with 15% for Obama. Trump toppled Obama from the top slot after 12 years.

Biden came in at 6% and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, 3%.

When Gallup asks people the open-ended question which man and woman they admire most, the incumbent president usually wins, the pollster reported. But 21% of respondents this time did not offer an opinion at all and 11% named a relative or friend as the man they admire most.

So what should we leave behind in 2020? I wish we could leave the disputes over the 2020 presidential election, but we know Trump will never concede. He’ll keep flailing in the mud from Mar-a-Lago or wherever he ends up after Jan. 20. But Americans will no longer need to pay attention to his sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Biden has a rocky road ahead, and it’s made more difficult by lies that he gained the office by cheating. Biden, though, already is showing a contrast with the last four years of megalomania. He has the experience at governing that should help restore confidence in our battered institutions.

He’s surrounding himself with a diverse group of competent people, starting with his choice for vice president. Kamala Harris will inspire new generations of young people to public service.

And what should we carry into 2021? You already know. We need to keep our masks and hand sanitizer close and our social distance. We need to fight coronavirus fatigue and be ready to roll up our sleeve to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it’s our turn.

That’s the only way we truly will put 2020 behind us.

Happy New Year.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

As Iowa goes, so goes Iowa -- Jan. 30, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Don’t expect Iowa’s first-in-the nation caucuses Monday to write history. More likely, they’ll will write history’s footnotes.

If Iowa’s quadrennial caucuses actually picked presidents, we might be talking about Democratic Presidents Edmund Muskie, Richard Gephardt and Tom Harkin. Or Republican Presidents Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz.

All were winners in Iowa’s caucuses, but not one of them became his party’s presidential nominee, let alone president. In 2016’s caucuses, Cruz beat Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton barely edged out Bernie Sanders.

Iowa’s gift to the nation is picking also-rans.

The Hawkeye State began holding the nation’s first presidential contests after the turbulent 1968 election, when nobody cared who went first. These days, many argue Iowa’s demographics make it a poor choice to kick off the presidential voting. It’s 91% white, 4 percent black and residents are older than the national average.

Both the state’s Democratic and Republican parties will hold presidential caucuses Monday night, but with President Trump having only nominal opposition, all eyes are on the Democrats.

Candidates have lavished personal attention on Iowa for over a year, but a week before the caucuses something like 40 percent of Iowa Democrats still hadn’t made up their minds. Sanders appears to be in the lead, but maybe not. He, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren were bunched together within 8 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s average of state polls on Tuesday.

A Sanders win would thrill many young and progressive voters -- and the Trump campaign. Trump would love to run against the Democratic socialist. Trump and Co. call all Democrats socialists, of course, but Sanders is really a Democratic socialist, and proudly so. Trump planned a big rally in Des Moines Thursday to tout his accomplishments.

Democratic moderates – read: pragmatists – prefer tried-and-true Biden as the candidate they believe actually can beat Trump.

What’s at stake in Iowa for Democrats is just 41 pledged delegates to this summer’s Democratic National Convention. That’s all. California, which votes on Super Tuesday, March 3, by itself will select 495 pledged delegates.

Under Iowa Democrats’ complex caucus rules, a presidential candidate needs 15 percent of the first vote in a precinct to remain “viable.” If a candidate doesn’t reach the threshold, the candidate’s supporters are free to join another candidate, move to undecided or try to persuade people to join their first-choice candidate.

Since 1972, the candidate who won the most votes in Iowa’s Democratic caucuses has won the party’s presidential nomination in seven of 10 contested races, but only two of them captured the White House, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008, according to a  history of the caucuses by the Des Moines Register. 

Since 1980, three winners of contested Republican caucuses won the GOP presidential nomination, but only George W. Bush in 2000 won the White House.

A record turnout is expected for the caucuses that start at 7 p.m. Central on Monday in 1,678 precincts around the state. Those who will turn 18 by Nov. 3, Election Day, can participate, as can unregistered voters who register on caucus night.

And, for the first time, Iowa Democratic voters who can’t get home for the caucuses can vote in nearly 100 satellite locations, 25 out of state. Many are in sunny places where winter-weary Iowans retire, in Arizona and Florida. But the Iowa caucus is also coming to Virginia at George Mason University and to Washington, D.C., at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Iowa Democrats overseas can caucus in Paris; Glasgow, Scotland; and Tbilisi, Georgia.

Also new this time, the state Democratic party will release the first, raw vote totals in precincts as well as the final tally. What could go wrong with transparency? Disputes over who the real winner is.

You’ll probably hear there are “three tickets out of Iowa” for presidential candidates. That stems from the historical tidbit that since 1976 only one Democrat or Republican contender has come in lower than third in Iowa and won the presidential nomination. John McCain finished fourth in 2008 and won the GOP nomination.  

That same year, Iowa Democrats gave Obama a clear victory, launching the little-known senator from Illinois into history, showing Iowa can be a key first step.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.