Steal: Unvaccinated rob America of `summer of joy' -- July 29, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the grocery store for two items, I apologized for forgetting my mask, even though most customers weren’t wearing them.

“That’s OK. You don’t have to wear one,” the masked checker said with a shrug.

I told her I’d just heard news the government is again recommending masks in some public places.

“Oh, I don’t pay attention to the news anymore,” she said.

Some Americans are understandably sick of hearing about the pandemic, but ignoring reality is dangerous to one’s health, as well as to one’s friends and family.

For those of us who are paying attention, the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control was a setback. So much for the “summer of joy.”

President Joe Biden optimistically predicted in June this would be “a summer of freedom. A summer of joy,” mainly because of free and readily available vaccinations against COVID-19.

Despite an array of inducements, only about 49% of the entire population and 57.6% of those 12 and older were fully vaccinated, as of July 27. Meanwhile the highly contagious delta variant is surging, especially among the unvaccinated.

Let’s call the unvaccinated what they are: the Grinches who stole the summer of joy.

Chief Grinch may be Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who tweeted about the new CDC guidance: “Hell no. This is politics, not science.” That’s absurd.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, the minority leader, claimed the masking guidance was “conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in perpetual pandemic state.”

“He’s such a moron,” reporters heard House Speaker Nancy Pelosi say as she was getting into a car.

So, now, conscientious Americans are helping protect the reckless. Fully vaccinated people need to mask up again indoors in areas with high COVID-19 transmission rates, per the CDC. These include many counties in Virginia. 

While 80% of those infected with the delta variant are unvaccinated, vaccinated people rarely become infected as well, and their viral load is similar to the unvaccinated, meaning both the unvaccinated and the vaccinated can spread the variant.

“The delta variant is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us and be an opportunist,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday in a briefing. “This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.”

It’s tempting to say the unvaccinated made their choice and deserve what they get. But children under 12 are not yet being vaccinated, and no one wants them to get sick. The CDC also recommends that all students, teachers, staff and visitors to K-12 schools wear masks this fall, regardless of vaccination status.

Fully vaccinated people in areas with low transmission may choose to mask to protect household members who are unvaccinated, immunocompromised or at increased risk of disease.

And there’s another, more important, reason to mask up. The largest concern among public health officials is potential mutations from the delta variant that could evade vaccines, which currently protect the vaccinated from severe illness and death.

Masks are a good step, but the real solution to the pandemic and the key to returning to normalcy is vaccinations.

Sadly, the very people who would benefit most from masks and vaccinations are least likely to follow the guidance. Largely Republican, white male conservatives believe masks and vaccinations are an assault on their freedom and would rather trust false conspiracy theories and misinformation on the Internet than the government.

We’d all be better off if more politicians were like Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate, who has promoted COVID-19 vaccinations all along and will spend tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on radio ads in his home state, encouraging people to get vaccinated.

Biden is taking the right step in requiring federal employees to be vaccinated or face rigorous testing and social distancing. States and cities are doing the same.  Some employers, notably Delta and United airlines and The Washington Post, are requiring proof of vaccination.

Mandate is a fighting word to many, but we are headed that way, unless more people do the right thing and roll up their sleeves. The Grinches can’t be allowed to steal our future, too.

(C) 2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved. 

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© 2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

It's too soon for partisan gloating -- May 13, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Democrats could not be happier House Republicans booted Liz Cheney from her leadership role for daring to tell the truth about the 2020 election and Donald Trump.

“Republican Party = Party of Trump,” the Democratic National Committee proclaims.

Republicans, meanwhile, celebrate “Biden’s gas shortage” and claim he is creating another “Jimmy Carter economy.”

“BIDEN UNDER SIEGE,” Fox News shouted in an online headline over another that read: “White House staggered by multiple crises from gas shortage to overseas conflict and migrant surge.”

We’re living in a time of intense partisan schadenfreude, the German word for taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. Each political party is gloating over the other’s troubles.

That may be fun now, but who will be joyful after next year’s midterm elections?

Historically, the party that occupies the White House loses congressional seats at the midterm, and Republicans need to pick up only five seats to retake the House. In the Senate, the 50-50 split means one Senate race could shift control back to Republicans.

Republicans dumped Cheney as No. 3 in the party leadership to demonstrate their allegiance to Trump. They are making a risky bet that the former president will motivate more GOP voters than he does Democrats and independents to vote against his favorite candidates.  

Cheney was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Republicans want her to go away quietly but she plans to run for re-election in Wyoming and remain a vocal critic of the Trumpy GOP.

“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” Cheney told reporters.

Unfortunately, hers is likely to be a lonely path. There simply are fewer and fewer Republicans with the guts to buck Trump. Her voice may be drowned out by the Republican chorus claiming President Joe Biden is corrupt and that he and his “radical socialists” are bent on ruining the country.

But will voters buy the purely negative GOP message? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell implicitly acknowledges Republicans have no policy agenda.

“One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” said McConnell, who casts the midterm elections as a referendum on Biden.

Democrats hope voters will credit their party and Biden with the lessening of the COVID-19 pandemic, a return to nearly normal life and a robust economy and will again reject Trump and his minions.

But those Democrats who are gloating about the GOP’s embrace of Trump should remember their joy at his come-from-nowhere success as a presidential candidate during the 2016 primary season.

At the time, many Democrats thought Hillary Clinton would more easily beat Trump than Jeb Bush or almost any of the 16 other Republican presidential hopefuls. Trump, of course, lost the popular vote but triumphed in the Electoral College.

Two years after his surprising victory, there was a backlash. Republicans lost 42 House seats in the 2018 midterm elections.

The 2022 midterms will be the first election after the census and the redrawing of congressional maps, many by Republican-controlled state legislatures, which can stack the deck in their favor.

In addition, many Republican state legislatures have passed more restrictive voting laws supposedly to fix problems in the last election. There still is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities, and the changes will make it harder for some to vote.

Republicans, though, seem to want it both ways. “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that’s all over with,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday after a meeting with Biden in the Oval Office.

Hardly. Just a day earlier, Trump again said in a statement the last election was “rigged and stolen from us.”

Meanwhile, Trump has moved to New Jersey for the summer and is expected to attend a fundraising event May 22 for the Make America Great Again Action super PAC. The reception and dinner will be at his Bedminster golf club, where Politico reported, “The minimum price for entry is $250,000.”

Democrats should realize if Republicans regain control of the House or Senate next year, Trump could be the one gloating as he launches another bid for the White House.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Ryan's choice good for him -- and Democrats -- April 12, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Normally, when a big-name public official announces he – it’s usually he -- is quitting his job to spend more time with his family, it’s a dodge.

Heads nod, knowing he’s in trouble and has no cushy job waiting on the outside. Few feel his pain.

For members of Congress, the family excuse often means the politician faces a tough re-election or must relinquish his committee chairman gavel because of House term limit rules. Or both.

Some go out complaining about the capital’s toxic atmosphere, the dysfunctional Congress and the never-ending quest for campaign cash.

A few members this year are also leaving Congress under the cloud of sexual harassment accusations.

In contrast, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s surprise announcement Wednesday he won’t seek another term in Congress was Dad of the Year material. He spoke about going home to Janesville, Wisconsin, to his wife Janna and children Liza, Sam and Charlie.

“This is my 20^th year in Congress. My kids weren’t even born when I was first elected. Our oldest was 13 when I became speaker. Now all three of our kids are teenagers. And one thing I’ve learned about teenagers is their idea of an ideal weekend is not necessarily to spend all of the time with their parents,” Ryan told reporters.

And here’s the kicker: “What I realize is, if I’m here for one more term, my kids will only have ever known me as a weekend dad. I just can’t let that happen.”

You don’t have to be in Congress to know what Ryan is talking about. Many moms and dads in demanding careers have similar nagging guilt.

Perhaps more than most 48-year-olds, Ryan feels his own mortality. Both his father and grandfather died of heart attacks before they were 60. At just 16 and a high school sophomore, Ryan found his father, an attorney, dead in his bed at 55.

Ryan has always seemed apart from most ambitious politicians. After being GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, he was widely expected to run for president in 2016, but didn’t. He was drafted as Speaker, an increasingly thankless job, in 2015, after John Boehner resigned from Congress.

As Speaker, Ryan travels the country extensively, fundraising and campaigning for GOP candidates. He often sees his kids only on Sunday, he told Fox News.

But if Ryan’s choice is good for him, it’s also good for Democrats.

By retiring, he signals the House may be lost and Democrat Nancy Pelosi will return as Speaker next year. Naturally, Ryan insists the GOP is in great shape and he’ll still campaign for Republicans. But a lame duck can’t talk convincingly about the future.

The customary route would have been to run and then retire after the election. The former altar boy considered doing that.

“But just as my conscience is what got me to take this job in the first place, my conscience could not handle going out that way,” he said.

As it is, Ryan is the most prominent in an army of incumbent Republicans beating a retreat from Washington. More than 40 House Republicans are either retiring or running for another office.

In Virginia, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte announced his retirement two days after a Democratic tide in last November’s state election swept many Republican incumbents from the legislature. Goodlatte is prohibited under House rules from staying on as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Ryan wasn’t even the only Republican to announce his retirement Wednesday.

Rep. Dennis Ross, Republican of Florida, was announcing his when he looked at Fox News and saw Ryan was leaving, he told his local paper.

The filing deadline hasn’t passed in 19 states, so more retirements are possible.

As if the November election weren’t campaign enough, a battle now kicks off for Speaker, with Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana leading contenders.

Democrats, who need a net gain of two dozen seats for control of the House, were delighted by the unexpected turn of events.

“With his retirement announcement Speaker Paul Ryan becomes the first casualty of the 2018 midterm election,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, tweeted.

The Republicans’ nightmare in April seems like a dream come true for Democrats, but they shouldn’t celebrate just yet. 

It’s a long, long way to November – and victory has previously eluded their grasp.  

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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