What if? Presidential hopefuls unveil plans -- Aug. 22, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Score one for the animals.

If he’s elected president, Democratic hopeful Julián Castro will end the horrible practice of euthanizing domestic cats and dogs in shelters.

Castro, former Housing and Urban Development secretary and mayor of San Antonio, released his Protecting Animals and Wildlife – or PAW -- Plan Monday.

He also would make animal abuse a federal crime, prohibit bringing big game trophies into the country and reverse President Donald Trump’s actions to weaken the Endangered Species Act that protects plants and animals from extinction.

Democrats’ No. 1 job for 2020 is sending Trump back up the escalator at Trump Tower, and Labor Day signals a new campaign phase.

Voting will begin in five months – with the Iowa caucuses Feb. 3 and New Hampshire primary Feb. 11. 

So candidates are switching from “Hello” and “No!” – that is, introducing themselves and reacting to Trump’s continual tweet machine – to “I will” -- presenting their own plans.

Just as Trump has tried to obliterate through executive actions much of what President Barack Obama accomplished, the next president could roll back much of Trump’s executive actions.

Several Democratic candidates pledge to revoke the Trump-approved permits for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, for example.

Castro, who also has plans for education, immigration, homeland security and housing, may be a long shot for the White House, but he’s among at least 10 contenders who will appear onstage in the next round of Democratic debates Sept. 12 and 13. The deadline for making the cut is Aug. 28.

Saving pets’ lives isn’t as high profile a campaign issue as gun control or Medicare for All, but it’s smart in Democratic primaries to stand up for animals and the planet.

About one in three Americans believe animals should have the same rights as humans, a 2015 Gallup poll found. About four in five Americans support the Endangered Species Act, an Ohio State University study reported last year.

Other candidates are also staking out high ground. Beto O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress, hopes to restart his campaign in the aftermath of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, by going big on gun control.

O’Rourke released his plan Aug. 16 to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. He also would force owners to sell some weapons back to the government or pay a fine, create a new gun licensing and registration system and expand background checks.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is pushing for “baby bonds,” federally funded savings accounts for each newborn that would be structured to close the wealth gap.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has offered a slew of proposals, released two new ones this week. Her plan to help native Americans has drawn praise from Indian Country.

She and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont each offered proposals to reform the criminal justice system – as have several others, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend.

The time for straight talk also apparently has arrived. When Sanders announced his plan in South Carolina, he said, “This state is a state which has an even more broken criminal justice system than the country, and the country is pretty bad.”

As some Democrats reassess Biden because of his recent gaffes, his wife stressed her husband’s top selling point.

“You may like another candidate better, but you have to look at who is going to win,” Jill Biden said this week in New Hampshire. “Your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”

Jill Biden, who teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, also added: “And if education is your main issue, Joe is that person.”

As we approach the end of the beginning of the 2020 campaign, time may be running out for candidates still struggling to connect.

Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who has not yet qualified for the next debate, promotes yoga, mindfulness and wellness practices to help war veterans heal and to bring down prescription use and health care costs generally.

Promising to be the “Zen president,” Ryan told CNN Aug. 14 that after Trump, Americans will want a president with the “quality of equanimity in rocky times.”  

He very well could be right.

But it’s through their plans and straight talk that Democrats hope to break away from the pack.   

© Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Measure presidential age in ideas, not years -- July 25, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

How old is too old to be president? Ronald Reagan settled the question 35 years ago with a zinger.

President Reagan, a Republican seeking his second term, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee, met Oct. 21, 1984, for their second debate.

Reagan, 73, had not had a good first debate, and veteran Baltimore Sun diplomatic correspondent Henry Trewhitt raised the age issue:

“You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall yet that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan smoothly replied, “and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Everybody broke out laughing, including Mondale, a mere lad of 56.

Mondale told his wife he lost the election that night. There were many reasons Reagan swept to victory, winning every state except Mondale’s Minnesota, but the much replayed “youth and inexperience” soundbite didn’t hurt.

It’s hard to imagine an elder candidate’s snappy comeback line having the same effect ever again, considering what we know now. Five years after leaving office, Reagan wrote a letter telling the world he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Critics questioned whether he had been slipping during his second term in the White House, though loyal staff said he showed no signs of dementia.  

Now, President Donald Trump, 73, is the oldest president ever. Age is again a campaign issue as several top Democratic presidential contenders are also septuagenarians. Former Vice President Joe Biden is 76, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is 77 and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is 70.

Critics question Trump’s mental health, although he insists he’s “a very stable genius.”

Attacking Biden, Trump says he himself looks younger and is more mentally sharp than Biden.

For his part, Biden said if Trump doesn’t stop making cracks about his age, he’ll challenge the president to a push-up contest. I’d watch that.

Age inevitably factors into the Democrats’ nomination process. Pete Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, likes to say he won’t reach the age Trump is now until 2054. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, 50, plays up skateboarding. 

If Democrats choose the safe and experienced Biden to go against Trump, Biden will need to project youth and vitality through his appearance and, more importantly, through his ideas.

It’s possible, as Sanders showed in 2016, for a party elder to attract a youthful following with bold, new ideas.

But first Biden must deal with his past, and when the Democrats meet for a second round of debates Tuesday and Wednesday, his record will also be on display.  

In the first debate, Biden seemed flummoxed by the attack by California Sen. Kamala Harris on his opposition to federal busing decades ago. Biden also has been criticized for pushing, as a senator in 1994, a crime bill now seen as draconian.

Setting a new course, Biden Tuesday proposed a sweeping plan to eliminate the death penalty, decriminalize marijuana and stop putting people in prison for drug use alone.

But New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 50, tweeted: “It’s not enough to tell us what you’re going to do for our communities, show us what you’ve done for the last 40 years. You created this system.”

Sanders and Warren each have plans to erase student debt, which plagues millions of Americans, and provide free higher education.

Such policies are good politics. More younger voters turned out to vote in 2018 than in previous midterms, the Census Bureau reports. In 2020, one in 10 eligible voters will be members of Generation Z – born after 1995, the Pew Research Center projects.  

Young voters tend to vote Democratic. If they turn out strongly, as they have in recent presidential elections, they could make a difference for Democrats.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Mend, if not end, Electoral College -- March 28, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER        

President Donald Trump now praises the Electoral College as genius and brilliant, but he wasn’t always a fan.

On Election Night 2012, citizen Trump tweeted the Electoral College was “a disaster for a democracy . . . a total sham and a travesty.”

He thought, mistakenly, that his choice for president, Republican Mitt Romney, would win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College.

“More votes equals a loss . . . revolution!” Trump later deleted this and several other 

tweets.

President Barack Obama won both the popular and electoral votes. Four years later, Hillary Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but she lost in the Electoral College.

When we vote for president, we’re actually voting for electors. To win the White House, a candidate needs 270 of the total 538 electoral votes. Trump won 304 to Clinton’s 227. Seven electors voted for others.

Trump says he realizes “the Electoral College is far better for the USA.” But is it?

The Electoral College has been unloved for decades. Author James A. Michener, an elector in 1968, called the college a “time bomb lodged in the heart of the nation.”

He presciently worried that one day “the man who wins the largest popular vote across the nation will not be chosen President, with all the turmoil that this might cause.” Indeed. Except the man was a woman.

Since the ‘60s, Democrats and Republicans have told pollsters they favor the popular vote over the Electoral College, but numerous attempts to amend the Constitution and abolish the college have failed.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren says she’ll scrap the college as part of a plan to expand voting rights. The current system results in small states being mostly ignored, while swing states get all the attention, she said March 19 at a CNN Town Hall in Mississippi.

“We need to get rid of the Electoral College so that presidential candidates have to ask every American in every part of the country for their vote, not just those in battleground states,” she said.

Democratic contenders Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke also support changing to the popular vote.

Trump warns letting the popular vote prevail would mean “the cities would end up running the country. Smaller states & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power & we can’t let that happen,” he tweeted.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham and other Republicans oppose a constitutional amendment -- but that’s not the only avenue to change the system.

The Constitution determines how many electors a state has: one for each House member and two for the senators. But it does not say how states must allocate their votes.

All but two states use a winner-take-all system, which means most states are not in play. A candidate doesn’t have to win a majority of votes in a state to win all its electoral votes.

“In 2016, Donald Trump won all the electoral votes, totaling 101, in six states where he received less than 50 percent of the popular vote: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Hillary Clinton won seven states this way),” Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State, wrote in an essay for Politico in January.

“In reality, the current system works to the detriment of both Republicans and Democrats,” he said. His book, “Presidential Elections and Majority Rule” will be published in December by Oxford University Press.

Nebraska and Maine use a better system, splitting their electoral votes according to  the outcomes statewide and in each of their congressional districts.  

Another approach is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. So far, 12 states and the District of Columbia with 181 electoral votes have pledged their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, ensuring the popular vote winner was also the Electoral College winner.

The compact would kick in only after the total number of Electoral College votes in member states exceeds 270. It likely would be challenged in court.

The Founding Fathers couldn’t agree whether the president should be elected by popular vote or the Congress, and their compromise led to the Electoral College.

That compromise has outlived its usefulness. It’s time to look at ways to minimize its role, whether through the compact or splitting up results by congressional district. 

Either would deliver fairer and more representative presidential elections.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What Trump in 2016 teaches us about 2020 -- March 21, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We’re coming up on a milestone, of sorts.

On March 23 four years ago, the first hopeful Republican contender entered the 2016 presidential race.

“The answer will not come from Washington,” he said. It will come “when the American people stand together, and say, `We will get back to the principles that made this country great.’”

Sound familiar? Not exactly. It was Ted Cruz, in a speech to cheering students at Liberty University.

That was in the B.D. era – Before Donald.

As more Democrats line up to run for president, it’s worth remembering what happened when 17 Republicans competed for the presidential nomination.

We know who won. How many of the others can you still name?

Time’s up. They were: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Scott Walker.

When Donald Trump jumped in nearly three months after Cruz, he vowed at Trump Tower to “make our country great again” and “have Mexico pay for the wall.”

He also gave a sour taste of things to come when he gratuitously belittled his opponents at their campaign launches.

“They didn’t know the air conditioner didn’t work. They sweated like dogs. They didn’t know the room was too big, because they didn’t have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?” Trump said.

Trump was making a fallacy of false cause argument -- trying to establish cause and effect between unrelated things. Someone’s not knowing the air conditioning was broken at a venue shows absolutely nothing about how he’d do at fighting ISIS. It’s absurd, but catchy.  

Trump laid waste to once-viable candidates one disparaging nickname at a time: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Liddle Marco” Rubio and “Low Energy” Jeb Bush.

In Cruz’s case, Trump also claimed Cruz’s father was associated with Lee Harvey Oswald before the JFK assassination. Cruz called the allegation nuts and kooky.

“You know, you have to brand people a certain way when they’re your opponents,” Trump said before the Florida primary in March 2016, explaining how to call out Cruz: It’s “Lyin’ Ted,” he said, “L-Y-I-N-apostrophe.”

“We can’t say it the right way,” he said. “We’ve got to go, Lyin’! Lyin’! Ted!”

Moving on to Rubio, he spelled out “L-I-D-D-L-E. Liddle, Liddle, Liddle Marco.”

Trump has an uncanny knack for finding a rival’s soft spot and choosing a nickname that sticks.

He famously labeled Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “crooked Hillary,” called her “such a nasty woman” in a debate, and at rallies beamed as his supporters chanted, “Lock Her Up.”

Trump’s ad hominem attacks were stupid, wrong and creepily effective.

Now, the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls are his target.

He reportedly thinks Elizabeth Warren will be the Democrats’ pick and early on dubbed her Pocahontas for her claim of Native American heritage. She has struggled ever since, finally apologizing for saying she was Native American.

Lately, Trump watched Beto O’Rourke’s video announcing his candidacy March 14 and picked up on his expansive hand gestures.

“I think he’s got a lot of hand movement. I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said, `Is he crazy, or is that just the way he acts?’” Trump told reporters.

It’s only March 2019. O’Rourke has time to tone down the splashy gestures. Not all the Democratic candidates are even in the pool.

Joe Biden is said to enter the race soon. Virginians Terry McAuliffe and Mark Warner are among those weighing a bid.

Meanwhile, Trump is warming up his attack machine. He called Biden Monday “another low I.Q. individual.”

As we saw in 2016, he shut down his rivals before they could introduce and fully define themselves through their actions, ideas and policies.

Trump will try again to set the tone of the presidential campaign with his personal-attack brand of politics, but he doesn’t set the rules.

Voters should pay attention to policies and hold all candidates accountable for glib fallacies and falsehoods.

We can tune out slurs and nicknames for what they are: petty, malicious noise.

And, most important, we can vote.    

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.