When tweets fly in face of culture change -- Feb. 25, 2021 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden told White House staff to treat others with respect -- or else.

“I’m not joking when I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot,” the president said. “No if, ands or buts.”

A few weeks later, a deputy White House press secretary was forced to resign after reports he spoke abusively to a reporter who was writing a story about his romantic relationship with a reporter for another news organization.

“We are committed to striving every day to meet the standard set by the President in treating others with dignity and respect, with civility and with a value for others through our words and our actions,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.  

But where to draw the line? What about mean tweets?

Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget shows how challenging it will be to change the culture and tone of Washington in the age of political warfare on social media.

A former top aide to Hillary Clinton, Tanden is president of the liberal Center for American Progress. She stood to become the first woman of color and Indian American to lead OMB, the office that develops the president’s budget and sets out his legislative agenda.

She brings a compelling personal story and perspective. After her parents divorced when she was a child, her mother relied on food stamps and public housing.

"Now, I'm being nominated to help ensure those programs are secure, and ensure families like mine can live with dignity. I am beyond honored," Tanden tweeted.

But her history of aggressive, political tweets apparently doomed her chances for the OMB job. The White House is considering her for other positions that do not require Senate confirmation.

Which job Tanden lands, if any, will test Biden’s commitment to turning the page and setting a new tone of calm and civility.

Tanden has tweeted more than 87,000 times since 2010 -- more than Biden’s predecessor. And like the former president’s, Tanden’s tweets often have been personal and scathing.

Social media encourages quick and nasty hits. Returning fire with fire seemed appropriate when the president was continually on Twitter to bash his opponents. Tanden, though, managed to antagonize those on the left as well as the right. Progressives and conservatives were her targets.

“Your attacks were not just made against Republicans. There were vicious attacks made against progressives. People who I have worked with – me, personally,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, now the Budget Committee chairman, told her at a committee hearing Feb. 10.

Sen. John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told Tanden at a budget hearing Wednesday he was “very disturbed” by the personal nature of her tweets. “I mean you called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” he said.

“That’s not true, senator,” Tanden shot back.

Some Democrats rightly argue it’s hypocritical for tweets to disqualify someone for a job after Republicans ignored the White House tweet storm of the last four years. In addition, several OMB directors have come from the political world.

Tanden said she regrets her tweets, deleted more than a thousand of them and promised a “radically different” approach.

It’s too late. With Democrats and Republicans tied 50-50 in the Senate, Biden must move forward to cultivate a new spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship. He has less than two years until the mid-term elections to get things done. Republicans already are working to regain the Senate and add to their numbers in the House.

No president should saddle himself with any appointees who have alienated half the Senate and much of the House. Democrats hold a razor-thin majority of just 10 votes in the House.

That said, there’s no guarantee ditching Tanden means Republicans will show up waving olive branches in support of Biden’s agenda.

But if the president genuinely wants a new era, he must live up to his own high standards. Keeping Tanden will make that impossible.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

A running mate matters more this year -- March 5, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Democratic voters have spoken, and they’ve said “no” to presidential candidates who are 1) youngish, 2) female, 3) black or 4) rich.

Gone are candidates Cory Booker, 50; Pete Buttiegieg, 38; Amy Klobuchar, 59; Kamala Harris, 55, and many others. Tulsi Gabbard, 38, is forgotten but not quite gone. 

Money didn’t buy presidential hopefuls love or victory. Mike Bloomberg spent an astonishing $560 million on TV, radio and digital ads as of Tuesday, according to CNN, and dropped out Wednesday after winning only America Samoa on Super Tuesday.

Tom Steyer spent $210 million on ads before he dropped out after coming in third in South Carolina, winning no delegates.  

So, we have a Democratic contest between two white male senior citizens: Biden, who will be 78 on Election Day, and Bernie Sanders, a heart attack survivor who will be 79. 

Both are said to be fit for the rigors of the job, as is President Donald Trump, who will be 74 on Election Day. Trump’s unscheduled visit to Walter Reed hospital last year remains a mystery.

Elizabeth Warren, 70, is assessing her future, as of this writing, after coming in no higher than third in any state. She is a smart, effective senator who has much to offer in the Senate.

Biden, the new frontrunner, won at least nine of the 14 Super Tuesday states, including Virginia. Sanders won Colorado, Utah, Vermont and is projected to win delegate-rich California, which is still counting votes. 

A presidential election between oldies is not necessarily a bad thing. In a country where the average life-expectancy age is 76 for men, though, running mates may become a bigger deal this year. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is 61.

First and foremost, the running mate should be qualified to be president. The Constitution requires only a natural born citizen at least age 35 and a resident of the United States for the last 14 years.

To energize women disappointed by the lack of a viable woman in the race, the nominee should pick a running mate who is not an old, white male. Sorry, Sherrod Brown, whose name often appears on short lists of potential running mates. The U.S. senator from Ohio is 67.

Another temptation to stifle is picking a running mate with more sizzle than substance. We’ve seen what happens when a presidential contender of a certain age wants to juice his campaign with a younger outsider running mate.

In 2008, Republican John McCain, 72, picked Alaska Gov. and self-described “Mama grizzly bear” Sarah Palin, 44. The disastrous choice made people wonder about McCain’s judgment.

A running mate can also be reassuring. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama, 46, wanted someone with “gray in his hair” who he thought would not aspire to the presidency. Biden, 65, was a safe choice with decades of Senate experience, which Obama lacked.

Should he win the nomination, Sanders already has said his running mate must back Medicare for All, his controversial single-payer health-care plan. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is too young to be VP. Thank goodness.

Biden, should he win, will need to show he’s stable but not ossified. He has teased several women’s names as potential running mates – among them Stacey Abrams, failed gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, and Michelle Obama. Obama has repeatedly said she’s not interested in running for office.

Abrams said she’d be “honored” to run for vice president and “absolutely” wants to be president herself. She is African American, 46, a Yale law school graduate, former Georgia state representative and Georgia House minority leader.

But, she has baggage as a tax lawyer who didn’t pay her own taxes in 2015 and 2016. She said during the 2018 campaign she needed the money to pay her family’s medical bills.

Republicans attacked her on the issue and likely would again, even though last year she reportedly paid off the $54,000 in federal taxes she owed as well as $170,000 in student loan and credit card debt.

While presidential nominees usually shy away from picking former rivals as running mates, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar are all attractive former competitors who’ve been vetted and would balance a Biden or Sanders ticket.

Nobody votes for a president based on the running mate, but the choice is a candidate’s first big decision. Whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination this year will need to make the choice seriously, carefully and boldly.

(C)2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

You say you want a revolution -- Feb. 27, 2020 column

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By MARSHA MERCER

Four years ago this week, I wrote that voters on Super Tuesday could put the brakes on Donald Trump – “but will they?”

At the time, mainstream Republicans and Democrats were both worried that insurgent presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders might actually win their parties’ presidential nominations but turn off general election voters that November.

Trump Fever seemed to be spreading, I wrote, and on Super Tuesday a few days later Trump triumphed over his GOP rivals, winning seven of the 12 states with Republican contests, including Virginia. Of the 11 Democratic contests, Hillary Clinton beat Sanders in Virginia and six other states.

And so, Trump, the candidate many were sure couldn’t win a general election last time is now the president many say can’t lose reelection if his opponent is the current frontrunner, an avowed Democratic socialist. 

Michael Bloomberg painted this bleak scenario at the Democratic debate Tuesday night:

“If you keep on going, we will elect Bernie, Bernie will lose to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump and the House and the Senate and some of the statehouses will all go red and then, between gerrymandering and appointing judges, for the next 20 or 30 years we are going to live with this catastrophe."

So far, just a trickle of votes in three states has been cast. (As of this writing, South Carolina hasn’t yet voted.) A torrent is coming.

On Super Tuesday, 15 jurisdictions, including California, Texas and Virginia, will select more than a third of the pledged delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Forty percent of the U.S. population will have a primary event that day.

Sanders, who is not a Democrat, sent chills down many Democratic spines with his appreciation on “60 Minutes” last Sunday of Fidel Castro’s literacy program. Castro is anathema to Cuban-American voters in South Florida. Florida, for those who don’t remember the 2000 election, is a crucial state.

Sanders, 78, insists he has “opposed authoritarianism all over the world,” but he hasn’t budged in decades in his admiration for aspects of those ruthless regimes.

“When dictatorships, whether it is the Chinese or the Cubans, do something good, you acknowledge that,” he said at the debate. “But you don’t have to trade love letters with them.” Trump said in 2018 he and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un “fell in love” over their “beautiful love letters.”

Pete Buttigieg warned that Democrats can’t win critical House and Senate races “if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling people to look at the bright side of the Castro regime.”

Sanders claims he will beat Trump with an infusion of young, new voters, but turnout has not surged. He has won in the early states not by bringing in new voters but by expanding his appeal among existing Democratic voters, a New York Times analysis found.  

Sanders has proposed a Medicare for All plan, free child care and free public college tuition. He hasn’t said how much all that would cost and talks about raising taxes on the wealthiest 1%. Amy Klobuchar put a pricetag of nearly $60 trillion over 10 years on Sanders’s plans. Voters would not support such a huge expenditure, she said.

But Sanders maintained on CBS after the debate, “The truth is, nothing I am saying is radical.”

Sanders argues the United States already has corporate socialism, which benefits billionaires like Trump, while Sanders’s brand of democratic socialism would use the federal government to protect the interests of working families.

Buttigieg, 38, warned of “a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the ‘50s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolution politics of the ‘60s.”

No Democrat wants a repeat of the 1972 or 1984 debacles, which many Sanders supporters probably don’t remember.

In 1972, George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s landslide left Democratic Walter Mondale with wins only in his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.  

The big question this Super Tuesday: Democratic voters can put the brakes on Sanders – but will they?

©2020 All rights reserved.

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Competence: Heat's on New Hampshire -- Feb. 6, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The Democratic caucuses in Iowa Monday night were supposed to give Iowans the first say on winners and losers for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Instead, the Democrats coughed up a political mess.

The culprit was a brand-new app that reportedly was developed in just two months and hadn’t been tested on a statewide level. What could go wrong? Just about everything. Precincts were unable to send in results to party headquarters, and the back-up emergency phone system was overwhelmed.

Caucus results were delayed for days, then disputed. Chaos ensued. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were nearly tied, and both had claims to winning. Naturally, President Donald Trump gloated.

“Unmitigated disaster,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “When will the Democrats start blaming RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, instead of their own incompetence for the voting disaster that just happened in the Great State of Iowa?” Trump has steadfastly refused to accept the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election and that it is doing so again this year.

If Democrats can’t run a caucus, Republicans scoff, how can they run the country?

In raising competence, Trump again showed his knack of finding opponents’ soft spot. For Democrats, the Iowa debacle underlined their anxiety in 2020. Who in their large field of presidential contenders can beat Trump – and is up to the job in the White House?

As candidates turned to New Hampshire, whose primary is Tuesday, polls show New Hampshire voters, like Democrats in Iowa, are late in making up their minds. No clear frontrunner has emerged. Joe Biden, once thought the strongest candidate against Trump, came in fourth in Iowa and called the caucuses a “gut punch.”

Turnout in Iowa was also worrisome for Democrats. Predicted to be high, turnout was more on a par with 2016 than the record crowds in 2008. Nor does it help Democrats that Trump’s nationwide job approval has been rising. It stands at 49%, the highest since he took office, the latest Gallup poll reported.

Trump’s team claims -- based on conspiracy theories, not fact -- Democrats “rigged” the Iowa caucus vote. If you recall, Trump also claimed repeatedly during the 2016 campaign that the election would be rigged -- until he won.

In 2016, the Democratic establishment did put its thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton. But the Democratic National Committee rewrote the rules for 2020, giving party officials known as superdelegates less power in the nominating process.

Democrats wisely have been moving away from caucuses. Only a handful of states will use the antiquated system to choose delegates to this summer’s presidential nominating conventions. Nevada Democrats, who caucus Feb. 22, quickly announced they scrapped the software that failed in Iowa.

Caucuses tend to be run by the political parties, while the New Hampshire primary, along with the primary in South Carolina Feb. 29, and primaries in Virginia and other Super Tuesday states March 3 are run by state and local governments.

“Caucuses are run by rank amateurs. Even though we have concerns about the capacity of election officials, at least this is what they do a lot of,” Charles Stewart, who runs MIT’s election data and science lab, told ProPublica. “Even in the smallest of jurisdictions you run a lot of elections – you have contingency plans. The parties, bless their hearts, they don’t do this very much and that’s the bottom line.”

Competence may not be sexy, but it’s reassuring when it comes to elections and government. It’s not too much to ask for timely, accurate election results.

That’s why New Hampshire, which has been holding the first primary since 1920, is even more important this year. Democrats need to put the chaos in Iowa behind them. New Hampshire will give a snapshot of where independents are leaning. In the Granite State’s semi-open primary, “undeclared” or independent voters -- about 42% of those registered in the state – can vote. Sanders won easily last time.  

After the 2020 election, Democrats will probably go back to the drawing board, again, to find a better process of picking their nominee. Iowa likely will lose its caucus in favor of primaries. Restoring faith in the election process is crucial.

 For now, it’s time to focus on the present. Hello, New Hampshire. Don’t mess it up.

(C)2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.