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.

Gina Haspel's secrets need sunlight -- May 10, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As Gina Haspel tells it, her life was “right out of a spy novel.”

Haspel, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, joined the agency in 1985 and worked undercover for more than 30 years.  

“From my first days in training, I had a knack for the nuts and bolts of my profession,” she told senators Wednesday at her confirmation hearing. “I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.

“I recall very well my first meeting with a foreign agent. It was on a dark, moonless night with an agent I had never met. When I picked him up, he passed me the intelligence and I passed him an extra $500 for the men he led. It was the beginning of an adventure I had only dreamed of.”

It sounds like fiction all right, and that’s the way Haspel, 61, wants it.

There’s much the public doesn’t know about her career because the records are classified, and Haspel herself, as acting CIA director, decides how much – or, in this case, how little -- to declassify.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have read the classified material about Haspel but can’t divulge what they’ve read, are frustrated.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Haspel has the knowledge and experience for the job, but “many people – and I include myself in that number – have questions about the message the Senate would be sending by confirming someone for this position who served as a supervisor in the counterterrorism center during the time of the rendition, detention and interrogation program.”

Haspel would be the first woman CIA director, and she has bipartisan support from former CIA directors. 

But  more than 90 former U.S. ambassadors and diplomats and more than 100 retired generals and admirals have signed letters, raising concerns about her nomination and the extent of her role in “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, as well as destroying evidence of the activities many call torture.

Most Senate Republicans support Haspel but Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who suffered torture for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, issued a statement Wednesday night urging the Senate to reject Haspel.

“I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country and has devoted her professional life to its service and defense,” McCain said. “However, Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.”

In 2002, Haspel ran a CIA “black site” detention facility in Thailand where at least one suspected terrorist was waterboarded repeatedly.

In 2005, as Congress was about to launch an investigation, she advocated destroying more than 90 videotapes of the suspect’s interrogations. At the request of her boss, she drafted a cable ordering the destruction. He sent the cable himself.

Haspel proved a wily witness at her confirmation hearing. Often evasive, she repeatedly said she has a strong moral compass. She dodged questions about her role at the detention center but insisted the techniques were legal and approved by President George W. Bush.

She said she would not restart the “enhanced” interrogation program, even if Trump, who said during the campaign he might bring back waterboarding, ordered her to do so.

“We’re not getting back into that business,” she said.

The committee is expected to vote next week, with a full Senate vote in a few weeks. It appears Haspel may squeak through.

Republicans hold a 51 to 49 Senate majority, but McCain is battling brain cancer in Arizona. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has said he will vote no. But Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will vote for confirmation, and a couple of other Democrats also facing tough re-election bids may do the same.

Haspel portrayed herself as “a typical middle-class American,” although one with no social media accounts.

It’s time she put more on the table than her spy novel stories. Haspel needs to declassify records of her career, so everyone can judge whether she’s fit for the job.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

The president's new clothes -- Oct. 26, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the Hans Christian Andersen fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” when the little child sees the emperor without clothes, he blurts out the truth.  

Everybody in the village instantly realizes the child is right -- except for the emperor who, shivering, carries on.

“So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all,” the story ends.

If only real life were that simple.

There was no universally shared “ah-ha” moment when two former presidents, a the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and two sitting senators – one his party’s former presidential nominee -- separately denounced President Donald Trump.

Instead, opinion in the American village split along predictable lines. The critiques won praise from the Democratic left and fell on deaf ears of the president’s Republican supporters.

In the latest poll by Fox News, Trump’s favorite news outlet, a whopping 83 percent of Republicans still approve of the job Trump is doing. Only 7 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of independents approve, Fox reported Wednesday.

Overall, because Trump can’t expand support beyond his base, only 38 percent of registered voters surveyed approve of his job performance. That was a new low for the Fox poll.

Americans in 2017 live in parallel universes with their separate news sources, heroes and very different takes on events at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Trump’s foes see nothing good in him and his fans are blind to his faults. Trump himself ricochets between calling congressional Republicans names and insisting they’re having a love fest.

Critics say Trump has accomplished nothing, while he and his press secretary cling to the dubious claim he’s already done more 10 months than President Barack Obama in eight years.

Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has struck fear in the hearts of Republicans with his well-funded plans to sweep Washington clean of incumbent GOP senators, except for hardliners like Texan Ted Cruz.

Many political observers believe Trump must deliver a substantial policy change to keep Republican voters’ support, hence the rush to enact a tax cut before year’s end.

But Trump’s constant blaming others for his failure to deliver on any of his major campaign promises – build the wall, bring back coal jobs, replace Obamacare with a better, cheaper plan – has worked for him so far.

What is different now is the growing bipartisan resistance to Trump. His two predecessors have taken the extraordinary step of warning Americans about the direction Trump is taking the country. Neither named Trump directly, but their message was clear.

Former President George W. Bush said almost nothing for the eight years Obama was in the White House.

But things have gone so off the rails that the Republican felt obliged to say Oct. 19: “People of every race, religion and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed.”

Lamenting “our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” Bush pointedly said, “And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”

Speaking the same day at a campaign rally in Richmond for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam, Obama said, “Why are we deliberately trying to misunderstand each other and be cruel to each other and put each other down?”

Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona have rebuked Trump by name, saying he is unfit for office, divisive and debasing the country.

McCain is battling brain cancer, and Corker and Flake, conceding heavy weather for mainstream Republicans in GOP primaries, have announced they will not run for re-election next year.    

Unlike other Republicans, they are free to speak their minds, but such scathing criticism from within a president’s own party is rare. A tough defense and strong fiscal conservatism have been bedrocks of Republicanism for decades.

So when we see staunch fiscal conservatives like Corker and Flake and a defense hawk like McCain call out a Republican president for his policies and his behavior, it should give everyone pause. This is no fairy tale.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

`Huddled masses' need not apply? -- Aug. 3, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the White House briefing room, a senior White House aide lectured on the Statue of Liberty.

The statue is a “symbol of American liberty lighting the world,” senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Wednesday. Welcoming immigrants was only an afterthought, he suggested.

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the base, with its line about “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” was added later, he said.

Miller was right about the timing, but why make that historical footnote now? Because President Donald Trump intends to set the United States on a new path regarding immigration. He wants to halve legal immigration over a decade.

“Very, very important, Trump said of the proposal. “Biggest change in 50 years.”

Trump sees his America First ideology in conflict with America’s traditional role as beacon to the world’s persecuted and downtrodden.

The RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act would slash the number of green cards to about 500,000 annually and change the face of immigration. Green card holders are lawful permanent residents who can live in the country permanently and serve in the military.

The current system prizes family unification; people who are kin to citizens get top priority. The new system would prioritize green cards for English speakers, people who can support themselves financially and have job skills.

Miller emphasized most voters support such changes. To be sure, Trump’s pledges to curb illegal immigration were central to his election. But this bill goes a step farther. 

Now, legal immigration is also on the chopping block, as it has been at various points in history.

But legal immigration should not be an us-versus-them issue in the 21^st century. We rightly celebrate hard-working legal immigrants who follow the rules. We need immigrants to keep our economy humming.  

Democrats on Capitol Hill declared the bill a nonstarter. Two Republican senators – Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona – drenched the proposal in cold water.

Graham said it would hurt his state’s agriculture, tourism and service industries. McCain told reporters he “wasn’t interested.” Why? “Because I’m not interested.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued the bill would hurt the economy.

“Dramatically reducing overall immigration levels won’t raise the standard of living for Americans,” said Randy Johnson, a senior vice president at the chamber.

“In fact it will likely accomplish the opposite, making it harder for businesses, communities, and our overall economy to grow, prosper and create jobs for American workers,” Johnson said.

The bill proposed by two Southern Republicans, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, has undeniable political appeal in Trump country. But it’s helpful to think about what the RAISE bill is not.

It is not comprehensive immigration reform. It does not address the 11 million people who entered the country illegally or guest workers or border security or deporting “bad hombres,” in Trump’s phrase.

This is not 1986, when Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Trump is not Reagan, who said: “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”

Reagan understood that society can’t prosper with “a class of individuals who must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society.”

The 1986 law -- called Simpson-Mazzoli for sponsors Sen. Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, and Rep. Romano Mazzoli, Democrat of Kentucky – promised a path to legalization – amnesty -- for millions of undocumented immigrants in return for 

cracking down on illegal immigration.

The law is now widely viewed as a failure. Nearly 3 million illegal immigrants did come out of the shadows, but the border remained porous. To pass the bill, Congress jettisoned key enforcement provisions, including penalizing employers who hired workers here illegally. 

Thirty-one years later, a new president wants to remake immigration. Surely we can do better this time around – without halving legal immigration. Curb illegal immigration, yes, while affirming America’s role as a beacon to the world, while helping our citizens prosper. Our future demands no less.

© 2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Write-in for president? Not so fast -- Oct. 20, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

You say you can’t stand voting for the presidential candidates on the ballot, so you’re going to write in Mickey Mouse, your own name -- or mine? Don’t. Really.  

Yes, several prominent Republicans say they will write in GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence for president because they can’t abide Donald Trump. They include Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Rob Portman of Ohio.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona said he might write in the name of his buddy Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

The urge to protest the presidential choice is strong, but a write-in could be wrong. You might as well tear your ballot into tiny pieces and swallow them as write in someone’s name, even Pence or Bernie Sanders -- unless you do your homework.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, won a write-in campaign for re-election in 2010 after losing the GOP primary, but no write-in presidential candidate has ever won a single state.

Votes for a third party or write-in candidate could tip close states to one candidate or the other, however. Hillary Clinton finally called on Al Gore to make the point.

“Your vote really, really, really counts. A lot. You can consider me as an Exhibit A of that truth,” Gore said at a Clinton rally in Miami Oct. 11.

In the 2000 presidential election, Gore came within a whisker of winning Florida’s popular vote and the White House. Many Democrats still blame Ralph Nader for Gore’s loss.

It’s worth reviewing this bit of ancient history. In the official Florida tally, George W. Bush beat Gore by 537 votes – and Nader got 97,488 votes.

Nader was on the ballot as the Green Party presidential candidate, so his votes counted. Each state sets its own election rules, though, and many states are unfriendly to write-ins.

In 34 states, including Virginia, write-in presidential candidates must file papers with the state before the election. Otherwise their votes don’t count.

A write-in presidential candidate in Virginia needs to submit to the state a list of 13 electors at least 10 days before Election Day. Alabama does not require advanced paperwork, but Tennessee does.

In Florida, write-in presidential candidates must file an oath with the state in order to have a blank space provided for their names to be written in on the general election ballot.

A write-in presidential candidate in Florida must file the form and a list of electors “at any time after the 57^th day, but before noon of the 49^th day, prior to the date of the primary election in the year in which a presidential election is held,” according to Florida law.

Got that?

Only seven states allow voters to write in whomever they please for president, and nine states don’t allow presidential write-in votes at all.

Presidential candidates also must file with the Federal Election Commission. So far, more than 1,800 individuals have filed paperwork as presidential candidates with the FEC.

Clinton, Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson are on ballots in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Green Party candidate Jill Stein is on the ballot in 44 states and D.C., and she has qualified as a write-in in three other states. 

Independent Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, insists he has a shot largely as a write-in candidate at the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

On the ballot in only two states, Kotlikoff says by Election Day he will be registered as a write-in in all but one of the states that require certification.  

Independent Evan McMullin, a conservative who made news when a poll in usually red-state Utah put him in a tight race with Trump and Clinton, told NPR Sunday he is on the ballot in 11 states and will be on the ballot or certified as a write-in in 43 to 45 states by Election Day.

It’s totally understandable that voters appalled by Clinton and Trump would want to protest by writing in someone else’s name. The smart thing to do first: Check with your local election office whether a write-in vote for president will be tallied.

Make sure “your vote really, really, really counts.”

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Beware politicians who predict `rigged' elections -- Aug. 4, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Earl Long, governor of Louisiana in the 1940s and ‘50s, quipped: “When I die, I want to be buried in Louisiana, so I can stay active in politics.”

The line is good for a groan, but election fraud is no laughing matter. Our system of government relies on citizens’ believing that our elected officials hold power legitimately.

Election fraud is almost nonexistent, studies have found, and yet nearly every presidential campaign brings dire warnings that the election is about to be stolen.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain claimed before the 2008 election that Acorn, a group that organizes low-income communities, was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Donald J. Trump is the latest to conjure election fraud. Not waiting for November, he is preemptively laying the groundwork for a “we wuz robbed” excuse for losing to Hillary Clinton.

“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest,” the Republican presidential nominee said Monday at a rally in Ohio. Republicans need to be “watching closely” or the election will be “taken away from us,” he told Sean Hannity of Fox News.

“The voter-ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development,” he told The Washington Post Tuesday in an interview. “We may have people vote 10 times.”

Trump has a habit of seeing a stacked deck when things don’t go his way – and even when they do. During the primaries, he railed against Republican Party rules he said were rigged against him, even though the rules were set before he entered the race -- and he won handily.

Bernie Sanders also complained the system was rigged -- against him and in favor of Clinton. In Sanders’ case, however, Democratic National Committee emails leaked last month backed up the claim.

Candidates preach to the converted about a rigged system. The 2000 election debacle in Florida fueled lingering cynicism. More than half the voters believe the way parties pick presidential candidates is “rigged,” a Reuters/Ipsos poll found in April.

Trump now claims Clinton and the Democratic Party rigged the presidential debates to fall on NFL game nights – even though an independent commission, not the political parties, set the schedule. The debates were scheduled in September 2015; the NFL schedule was set in March 2016, PolitiFact reported.

Election fraud is the rationale for tough new state laws requiring photo IDs to vote. Thirty-two states have voter ID laws, and 18 require photo IDs.

In the last few weeks, however, federal courts have ruled against five state voting laws, suggesting in some cases that the supposed cures for fraud actually would rig the system against minority voters.

North Carolina’s 2013 law targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision” and was “one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” an appeals court ruled.

A federal judge blocked North Dakota’s voter ID law from going into effect, saying it made it hard for Native Americans to vote. He cited “a total lack of any evidence to show voter fraud has ever been a problem in North Dakota.”

A federal appeals court in Texas ruled that state’s voter ID law discriminatory and ordered a lower court to come up with a temporary fix before November. 

A federal judge told Wisconsin to change its procedures and make it easier for voters to get IDs so they can vote. Kansas must count the votes of thousands of people who didn’t show proof of citizenship when they registered to vote.

 

In the judicial pipeline is a voter ID case from Alabama, scheduled to be heard in federal court next year. In Virginia, state legislators and the governor are fighting over voting rights for 200,000 felons.

While some may joke about dead-people voting and ballot-box stuffing, we can’t forget that in many places elections truly were rigged against minorities for more than a hundred years with poll taxes and literacy tests. In the 21^st century, we need to work together to ensure integrity and fairness at the polls.

We can’t allow any candidate to destroy the legitimacy of our election simply because he fears defeat.

  

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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