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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Does money talk? Bloomberg's in -- Nov. 28, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

An earthquake named Bloomberg shook up the Democratic presidential race this week.

“I think there’s a greater risk of having Donald Trump reelected than there was before,” former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday in Norfolk, a day after he announced his candidacy, adding, “And in the end, I looked in the mirror and said, `You just cannot let this happen.’”

Thus did Bloomberg acknowledge the donkey in the room. With no clear frontrunner and several Democratic candidates still bunched together in the polls, many Democrats fear none of their contenders has “it” – or enough “it” to dump President Trump.

Also sensing Democrats’ agita at this relatively late stage is former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

“I recognize running for president is a Hail Mary under any circumstances,” Patrick told reporters Nov. 14 in New Hampshire, as he launched his long-shot campaign. “This is a Hail Mary from two stadiums over.”

One enormous difference between the latecomers is that Bloomberg could buy the stadiums and pay cheering fans to fill them without blinking an eye, while Patrick is begging for money online. Nobody said politics was fair.

Bloomberg, cofounder of the financial information and media company Bloomberg LP, is personally worth a cool $55 billion, making him the ninth richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

He has tapped his fortune previously to win elections, dropping at least $261 million of his own money on his three successful campaigns for mayor, The New York Times reported. Bloomberg plans to self-fund his presidential bid and is not accepting donations.

Anyone who lived through the 2016 presidential election knows better than to dismiss any candidate out of hand, but it’s not clear what Patrick brings to the field, except more moderate positions than those of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Isn’t that what Joe Biden is for?

As for Bloomberg, his great wealth automatically makes him a formidable presence. He quickly dumped $37 million on TV ads over two weeks.

And yet a snarky question hangs over him and Trump: Is this the best presidential choice America can muster: two 70-something white guy billionaires from New York?

Bloomberg is no Trump. He has more money and has given away billions – with a B – to causes he believes in. He gave $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University last year, after giving $1.5 billion earlier to his alma mater. He founded a gun control group and supports climate-related and other environmental projects.

Bloomberg and his media company are rightly taking criticism, though, for a memo from Bloomberg’s editor in chief.

Bloomberg reporters will continue to refrain from investigating him, his family or foundation and will extend the blackout to his Democratic rivals, the memo said, but they’ll continue to dig into Trump. What? A reputable news organization, which Bloomberg is, should act like one and put journalism first.

Naturally, the Democrats who have been on the campaign trail for months, if not years, lashed out at Candidate Deep Pockets.

“Michael Bloomberg is making a bet about democracy in 2020. He doesn’t need people; he only needs bags and bags of money,” Warren said in Iowa.

Sanders also complained that Bloomberg is trying to buy the election.

“We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections,” Sanders said in New Hampshire, predicting Bloomberg is “not going to get very far in this election.”

History indicates Sanders may be right. In his 1992 presidential bid as an independent, Ross Perot spent $63.5 million of his own money -- $97 million adjusted for inflation, Real Clear Politics reports. Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote but not one electoral vote.

Steve Forbes’s 1996 and 2000 failed attempts to win the Republican presidential nomination cost him $70 million.

Bloomberg reportedly will skip the first four contests to focus on Super Tuesday, March 3, when 14 states will vote, including the delegate-rich states of California and Texas, as well as Virginia.

His big ad buys will make Bloomberg a household name, but that doesn’t guarantee Democrats will like Mike enough to support him.

To inspire Democrats, Bloomberg will need more than appealing videos and a catchy slogan – “rebuild America.” He’ll need solid ideas if he hopes to win votes – especially next November.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

As D.C. dithers, students prepare for unthinkable -- Sept. 12, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Fresh from their summer break, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday sent to the House floor three gun control bills.

The Democratic-controlled House likely will pass the bills within weeks -- but they’re probably dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans, as usual, say the bills are flawed and violate 2^nd Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, fresh from their summer break, 56.6 million American students in grades K-12 have gone back to active shooter drills.

One of the first lessons for many students this school year wasn’t about reading or writing, study habits or sportsmanship. It was about survival.

In Virginia and across the country, lockdown drills are now an essential part of the student experience.

The Virginia Code requires every public school to hold a lockdown drill at least twice during the first 20 days of each school session and two other lockdown drills during the remainder of the session.

“Unannounced drills may be more effective than announced drills since they add a component of realism,” according to state guidelines.

Drills can feel frighteningly real, as students and teachers at Short Pump Middle School in Glen Allen, Va., learned last year.

An unannounced active shooter drill -- with multiple fire alarms, loud noises and people jiggling classroom door handles from the outside – left students crying and texting farewells to parents and family. Some teachers also broke down, according to news reports.

Outraged parents complained, and Henrico County schools decided to announce all drills going forward.

Schools are in a no-win situation. Active shooter incidents in schools are extremely rare – but deadly.

Mass shootings are less than 1% of school gun violence incidents in the United States, but they account for 28% of overall deaths in schools and 14% of injuries, according to an analysis by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, research arm of the gun control group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

So schools must prepare students and teachers for the unthinkable -- while trying not to traumatize students.

The standard response to a school emergency is: “Lock Down. Evacuate. Shelter in Place” – and wait for law enforcement.

After the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, the U.S. Education Department said school training also may include “Run. Hide. Fight,” the response often taught in workplaces.

In the extreme case of a nearby active shooter, younger students may try to distract the shooter by throwing books and scissors. As a last resort, older students may try physical intervention.

Two students died as heroes last spring, fighting a shooter in their classrooms.

In April, Riley Howell, 21, tackled a gunman at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and refused to let go, despite being shot repeatedly. Another student was killed, and four were injured. Authorities credited Howell with saving many lives.

In May, Kendrick Castillo, 18, was only a few days short of high school graduation in a suburb of Denver when a classmate pulled a gun. Castillo charged the shooter and three other students joined him, giving classmates time to escape. Eight students were wounded.

His grieving father, John Castillo, said of his only child: “I wish he’d gone and hid, but that’s not his character.”

It’s a sad commentary on American life that we rely on courageous young people to sacrifice their lives for others when our elected officials lack the backbone to tighten gun laws.

But pressure on Congress is mounting. On Thursday, 145 CEOs urged the Senate to expand background checks to all firearm sales and pass a strong “red flag” law – also called extreme risk protection orders – allowing judges to remove guns temporarily from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.

It’s time for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to stop playing “Mother, May I” with President Donald Trump. McConnell refuses to bring a bill to a vote unless Trump agrees to sign it into law so as to protect Republicans running for re-election from a tough vote.

“Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable,” said the letter signed by CEOs of Twitter, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Uber, Lyft and others.

The CEOs are right, and they join a growing chorus calling on Congress to act. Congress and Trump must act before more children face the unthinkable.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.