`Limbaugh on decaf' soldiers on -- column of April 14, 2022

By MARSHA MERCER

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at the University of Virginia Tuesday night was more like a hamburger than raw meat.

His remarks were as friendly and unfussy as a fast-food burger with a smear of spicy mustard. He was respectful, approachable -- “You can call me Mike” – and traditionally conservative.

His audience was polite and attentive as Pence boldly allied himself with the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, his Christian faith, freedom, liberty, mom and apple pie. OK, he didn’t mention pie, though he did say he’s been married to a schoolteacher for 36 years, they have three kids and “the highest title I will ever hold is spelled D-A-D.”

Serving as vice president was “the greatest honor of my life,” he said, and he bragged on the last administration’s record. Never once did he mention Jan. 6, 2021, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, or the protesters that shouted, “Hang Mike Pence” as he and members of Congress hid.

Pence’s theme was “How to Save America from the Woke Left,” so, of course, he declared “Wokeness is running amok in our public schools and universities” and critical race theory is “nothing more than state-sanctioned racism.” 

He blamed the Biden-Harris administration for crime, high inflation, the worst border crisis in American history and a “tidal wave of left-wing policies that threaten to wipe out all the progress we made in four short years.”

His prescription was for young people to join the fight for liberty, but when a student asked if he would run for president in 2024, Pence said, “I will keep you posted.”

Republicans are waiting for Trump to actually say whether he’s running again. In any case, he ruled out Pence as his running mate.

Democrats are waiting too, although President Joe Biden said last year he will run with Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate.

“Rush Limbaugh on decaf,” as Pence describes himself as a talk radio show host in the 1990s, may be the least scary of the GOP politicians who may compete for the White House in the election 200-plus days away.

This not a high bar in a Republican field that includes Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Pence is on a speaking tour of universities sponsored by Young America’s Foundation, a conservative organization. His views on marriage, trans and gender issues have made him persona non grata to some and a hero to others.

In an editorial last month titled, “Dangerous Rhetoric is not Entitled to a Platform,” the editorial board of U.Va.’s student-run newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, warned Pence’s rhetoric “directly threatens the presence and lives of our community members,” including the LGBTQ community, and demanded the speech be called off.

In response, 17 professors, including political scientist Larry Sabato, wrote in a letter to the editor: “This speech-is-violence argument is not only wrong – no calls for violence will be issued April 12 – but also contradicts the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment, which generally creates space for a wide range of views to be expressed so long as the relevant speech does not incite violence.”

A handful of students protested outside Old Cabell Hall Tuesday, but in the auditorium, which was nearly full, everyone played nice. When a student asked Pence what he would do or say if one of his children came out to him as gay, he replied: “I’d look them in the eye and tell them, `I love you,’”

Then he told the student if they got to know each other, “You’d know the Pences love everybody.”

Love is an odd political strategy, to say the least. The recent Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson as an associate justice of the Supreme Court were viewed as an audition for the presidential campaign, and several likely GOP contenders bared their teeth in full, snarling mode.

Pence barks, but he wags more. He won praise for upholding the Constitution during the electoral vote count last year. He calls himself “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican,” in that order.

We’ll see if that’s enough to compete successfully against his party’s mean boys.

©2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Reform Electoral Count Act? Yes. Now. -- March 31, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President John F. Kennedy said what any smart homeowner knows: “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

Kennedy used the line in his 1962 State of the Union address to urge Congress to pass his anti-recession economic legislative agenda. Sixty years later, it’s time to repair the roof of our democracy after the manmade disaster of Jan. 6, 2021, and to prevent another assault on the electoral process.

The violent mob that stormed the Capitol – with some protesters chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” – wanted to overturn the presidential election. They were misinformed and misled by a president who could not accept defeat.

Donald Trump still falsely claims the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which sets timetables and rules for counting electoral votes, allowed Vice President Mike Pence to ditch state election results and install Trump for another four years. Pence did the right thing by refusing to bow to Trump’s power grab.

The Constitution “constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” Pence wrote that day in a letter to Congress. Under the 12^th Amendment, the vice president, as president of the Senate, opens the certificates of electoral votes from each state, which are then counted.  

More than a year late, Pence rebuked Trump publicly.

“And I heard this week President Trump said I had the right to `overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong,” Pence said in February in a speech to the conservative Federalist Society. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Our system held, but one shudders to think what would have happened IF . . . if Pence had agreed with Trump and others who wanted to run roughshod over the will of the people.

So, what now? To ensure the peaceful transfer of power in the future, we must update and clarify the antiquated Electoral Count Act, once described in a Washington Post story as a “confusing word salad of run-on sentences.”

The Democratic staff of the House Administration Committee studied the law for months and concluded in a 31-page report in January the law is “badly in need of reform” to remove ambiguity about the vote count process. Ambiguity is the leak in democracy’s roof.

Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, announced in late January a bipartisan group of 16 senators, including Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, is working on legislation to clarify the law, including the vice president’s role as purely ceremonial.

Trump showed his hand in a statement that said in part: “how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?”

Better question: Why should a vice president have the power to overturn the votes of millions of Americans and the hard work of thousands of local and state election officials?

A group of Senate Democratic leaders also is involved in “discussion drafts” of reform.

One likely change would make it harder for members of Congress to challenge a state’s electoral votes and raise the bar for sustaining challenges. Currently, if only one senator and House member object to a state’s results, they can draw out the counting process. Also, the timetable for recounts and lawsuits in the states could be lengthened.

Updating the count act would make counting the votes more fair, but there’s concern that it would do nothing to make voting itself more fair.

Republican candidates still insist the 2020 election was stolen as GOP-run state legislatures tighten election rules and ballot access. House Democrats have tried to pass major voting rights legislation only to see it stalled in the Senate.

Some liberals fear updating the count act alone could make it more difficult to stop Republican state officials from negating elections their favored presidential candidate lost, leaving Congress locked into certification.  

The White House is “open to and a part of conversations about the Electoral Count Act,” but that reform should not replace larger voting reforms, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Congress needs to address these valid concerns now -- and reform the Electoral Count Act while the sun shines.

©2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

What's your Pence-Q? -- Aug. 20, 2020 column

On Monday, the Republican National Convention opens four nights devoted to championing President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. This election, with the oldest presidential candidates in history – Trump is 74, Democrat Joe Biden 77 – makes running mates more important than ever.

Pence has been No. 2 for nearly four years and in government for decades, but how much do you know about the man a heartbeat away from the top job in the land? Take our political trivia quiz below. And, if you missed last week’s Democratic Veep quiz, take the What’s your Kamala-Q? here.

1) Michael Richard Pence is the grandson of Catholic immigrants who came through Ellis Island in 1923 from which country?
A. Germany
B. England
C. France
D. Ireland

2) Pence once voted for . . .
A. John F. Kennedy
B. Jimmy Carter
C. Bill Clinton
D. None of the above

3) Which club did Pence write he was a member of?
A. Failed Politician’s Club
B. Campaign Losers Club
C. Never-Give-Up Club
D. None of the above

4) Pence and his wife Karen have been married since 1985 and have three grown children. Which of these has Mrs. Pence NOT done?
A. Promoted art therapy as a mental health profession
B. Taught elementary school
C. Painted with watercolors
D. Sold real estate

5) Pence described himself as . . .
A. “A husband, father and small businessman – in that order”
B. “A Hoosier, an American and a fan of moose tracks ice cream – in that order”
C. “A Christian, a conservative and a Republican -- in that order”
D. “A child of God, of the heartland and, politically, of Ronald Reagan”

6) Who is or was Greg Pence?
A. Mike Pence’s son, a Marine
B. Mike Pence’s late father, who owned gas stations in Indiana
C. The online name Mike Pence used in the past
D. Mike Pence’s older brother and a U.S. House member from Indiana

7). How many times did Mike Pence run for Congress and lose?
A. One
B. Two
C. Three
D. None. He won the first time he ran.

8) In 2006, House Republicans chose John Boehner over Mike Pence to be minority leader. Of the 196 votes cast, how many did Pence get?
A. 17
B. 27
C. 37
D. 57

9) Esquire magazine in October 2008 included Pence in one of these groups. Which one?
A. Members of Congress most likely to run for president
B. 10 worst members of Congress
C. 10 best members of Congress
D. 10 most forgettable members of Congress

10) Who did Mike Pence initially back in the 2016 Republican primaries?
A. Marco Rubio
B. Ted Cruz
C. Donald Trump
D. Mike Huckabee

BONUS: How old is Pence?
A. 58
B. 61
C. 64
D. 66


ANSWERS:
1. D
2. B
3. A In his essay “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner”
4. D
5. C At a Values Voter summit in 2010
6. D
7. B
8. B
9. C Calling Pence “one of the most principled members, from either party”
10. B

BONUS: B
--Compiled by Marsha Mercer.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30

House Democrats shift focus to Trump corruption -- Sept. 19, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The drive to impeach President Donald Trump is taking a turn. It’s emoluments time.

The House Judiciary Committee plans to meet Monday to investigate “Presidential Corruption: Emoluments and Profiting off the Presidency.”

This new tack comes with risk. Despite spending five months parsing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Russian influence in the 2016 campaign, House Democrats have not made their case for Trump’s impeachment to the public.

Only 37 percent of voters want Congress to begin impeachment proceedings, a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday found. Half of voters were opposed and 12 percent undecided.

Support is highest among the Democratic base but weak among independent voters, who the Democratic presidential nominee will need in 2020.   

House Democrats who back impeachment believe exposing Trump’s self-dealing – using his office for personal gain -- will gin up enough public support so lawmakers in districts Trump won will vote for impeachment.

Air Force flight crews have stayed at Turnberry, Trump’s resort in Scotland, on stopovers from the United States to the Middle East. Vice President Mike Pence stayed at Doonbeg, Trump’s resort in Ireland, even though it was across the country from his meetings in Dublin.

Trump touted his Doral golf resort in Miami for next year’s meeting of the Group of Seven world leaders.

“The public is starting to get the point that he’s been running the White House as a money-making operation for himself and his family,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee, told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Trump’s presidency has introduced Americans to the Constitution’s three anti-corruption measures, the Emoluments Clauses.

The Framers used emolument to mean a benefit, gain, profit or advantage. At that time, foreign governments often gave lavish tokens of appreciation and friendship to diplomats, and the Framers wanted to limit foreign influence.

The Foreign Emoluments Clause in Article 1, Section 9 prohibits any person holding an “Office of Profit or Trust” from accepting “without the Consent of the Congress. . . any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind, whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The two other Emolument Clauses concern domestic issues.    

There’s significant debate among legal scholars about what constitutes an emolument and whether elected officials, including the president, are covered by the clause, the Congressional Research Service said in a report last month.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has presumed the president is covered, and courts have come to the same conclusion, the report said. But there have been no definitive court decisions.

When President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he donated the $1.4 million prize money to charity.

Trump refused to put his business holdings in a blind trust, as presidents for the last 40 years have done. He set up a trust run by his sons and a Trump organization executive and said he wouldn’t talk business with his family.

Trump also said he would not profit from foreign governments that use his hotels. He has donated about $351,000 to the U.S. Treasury to cover the profits, but as he has neither disclosed his record-keeping nor how he calculated the amount, Democrats say the figure is much too low.

Three major lawsuits claiming Trump violated the Emoluments Clauses are bouncing around federal courts, but the pace of justice is slow. Trump claims he is losing money as president, largely because of his legal bills to defend himself in the lawsuits.

“It’s probably costing me from $3 to $5 billion for the privilege of being – and I couldn’t care less – I don’t care. You know if you’re wealthy, it doesn’t matter,” he said last month.  

Again, Trump refuses to provide any documentation to back up his claims.

He also complained nobody investigated Obama’s lucrative book deal.  The former president and first lady Michelle Obama signed a joint book deal for $65 million in 2017 – after he left office.

“I got sued on a thing called ‘emoluments,’” Trump said.

Trump created his problems for himself by refusing to follow established presidential norms like blind trusts and disclosure of tax returns. Democrats smell smoke, but they must find the fire to make the case.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Fake news? Don't get mad. Get facts -- July 20, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A Facebook friend shared a quote the other day purportedly from Vice President Mike Pence on Fox News.

Americans need more “Jesus care” not health care, because if people went to church, they’d be healed and wouldn’t need doctors, according to Pence.

The post soon sparked plenty of angry comments. Almost as quickly, though, someone linked to an article by the independent fact-checking site Snopes.com. The quote was wholly fabricated.

Snopes rated the post “False” with a big red X, explaining the image macro, a picture with text, surfaced in May on Fox News the Facebook Page, which used a Fox News logo and lampooned Fox News, but was totally unrelated to Fox News. 

The Facebook page appears to have been taken down, but everything is immortal on the internet.

It was heartening to see the fabrication identified and neutralized so rapidly. Perhaps someone thought the quote squirrely – it was ungrammatical – but instead of moving to the popular video of the dog saving the fawn looked into the quote and found the facts.

That’s what we should do: Check out stories designed to make us mad, find the truth and share it. Fake news is an equal opportunity liar. So, whatever our personal political leanings, we all benefit when sunshine kills the germs.

Facebook is taking steps to combat fake news, but the perps are likely to find ways around changes. That’s why policing social media is up to us.

It’s also heartening to see news organizations persevere in debunking President Donald Trump’s brags and myths – and he has noticed.

“We’ve signed more bills – and I’m talking about through the legislature – than any president ever,” Trump said Monday at the White House.

“For a while, Harry Truman had us, and now I think we have everybody. . . I better say `think,’ otherwise they’ll give me a Pinocchio. And I don’t like those; I don’t like Pinocchios,” Trump said.

The Washington Post’s fact-checkers award up to four Pinocchios for falsehoods. 

Pinocchio-anxiety notwithstanding, Trump was still way off on his numbers. He lags behind Truman and several other presidents in bills signed to date, the Post fact-checkers reported, but they gave no Pinocchios for that flirtation with falsehood.

“He certainly appeared to pause for a moment and wonder if he was right. For Trump, that’s a step in the right direction,” the Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote.

Trump dismisses any news and news outlets he dislikes as fake news.

But fake news is intentional deceit, or as The New York Times put it, “pure fiction masquerading as truth.” Trump more often labels as fake news truth that makes him look bad.

Trump’s long-running war on the news media may yet backfire. Americans’ confidence in newspapers is actually up from last year, the Gallup organization reported last month.

To be sure, it’s nothing to brag about. Just 27 percent of people said they had confidence in newspapers -- but that was up 7 percentage points from a year earlier. Baby steps.

People actually have more confidence in news on the internet than in Congress -- 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, even though the internet is a fake news incubator.

The mainstream news media aren’t perfect by any means, but when they get it wrong, the incidents are painful. Three CNN staffers resigned last month after the network retracted a story about alleged ties between Russia and a Wall Street financier who is a Trump ally. 

On Friday, Trump named the financier, Anthony Scaramucci, a tough critic of the news media, White House communications director. (Updated 7.21.17)

But there’s a difference between mistakes and deliberate lies. Fake news can have dangerous consequences.

Last December, a gullible 28-year-old man in North Carolina drove 350 miles to investigate internet reports of a child sex ring connected to the Clinton campaign in a Washington pizza restaurant.

He fired an AR-15 in the restaurant -- only to learn he had been misled. There were no endangered children, much less a sex ring. His loaded weapons were real, though, and could have caused real tragedy.

Stopping fake news may be impossible, but we all must do what we can to expose it. The stakes are too high.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Melania to the rescue? -- June 8, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The White House is about to get more crowded.

First lady Melania Trump and son Barron reportedly will move to Washington June 14. If so, the move would be a birthday present for the president, who turns 71 that day.

No more will Trump be home alone late at night at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with just his TV, his Twitter account and the Lincoln portrait to keep him company.   

Trump’s critics and many of his fans hope the presence of the first lady will tame the president’s restless urge to unburden himself of early-morning thoughts. His family’s move “is expected to lend some degree of normalcy to a presidency defined by its abnormality in substance and style,” Politico reported.

What? No more covfefe? No one will soon forget Trump’s May 31 tweet: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” – an unfinished thought. Covfefe, a nonword, instantly became a punchline and a synonym for the president’s stream of consciousness rants. 

White House staffers and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill have tried to discourage his tweeting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ruefully admits his advice to stop tweeting so much has gone unheeded.

Trump loves his unfettered access to 32 million followers on Twitter, where he presents his own version of reality. Many of his fans never see the reports of fact-checkers.

Whether Melania will try to change her husband’s habits, or even can, is doubtful. She says her main role is taking care of Barron.

Trump’s in-laws, who live with the family in Trump Tower and often travel on weekends with Melania and Barron, also will be spending time at the White House. 

Melania’s parents, Victor and Amalija Knavs, reportedly will not relocate full time, as Michelle Obama’s mother and Hillary Clinton’s mother did, however.

After a long line of first daughters in the White House, Barron, 11, will be the first son since John F. Kennedy Jr., known then as John-John.

Barron, who invited his entire fifth grade class in New York to visit the White House last month, will attend the private St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Md., this fall. The private, coed school has 580 students and a 7-to-1 student-teacher ratio, according to its website.

Although the Trumps were married in an Episcopal Church, Trump has indicated he is a Presbyterian, and his wife, who was born in Slovenia, which is largely Catholic, said after meeting the Pope that she is a Catholic.

Barron, who decorated his room in Trump Tower, will also be able to decorate his room in the first family’s living quarters, a privilege other first kids have also enjoyed, according to the White House Historical Association.

Melania Trump said during the campaign she would focus on cyberbullying as her project in the White House, but there’s speculation she could change her mind.

She has kept former first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden. Obama started her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity the year after her husband became president.

The first lady has not had the political experience of either Obama or Karen Pence. The wife of Vice President Mike Pence is often at his side and is known to be an adviser.

Pence has installed a beehive with 15,000 to 20,000 honeybees at the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Pence also had a beehive at the Indiana governor’s mansion when her husband was governor.

The hive is intended to draw attention to what people can do to help bee colonies, which have been in decline. Bees are needed to pollinate about 90 crops, including nuts, fruits and vegetables.

Whatever Melania Trump, a former model, decides in the way of a project, her wardrobe will be scrutinized closely. She made news on her husband’s first foreign trip when she wore a floral silk coat from Dolce & Gabbana that retails for $51,500.

A first lady’s role is not mentioned in the Constitution, but her influence on the world of fashion and culture, if not policy, has been undeniable since the days of Jackie Kennedy.

We can all hope she has a positive influence on her husband and perhaps can get him to think before he tweets.

(C)2017 Marsha Mercer. All Rights reserved

No joke: Trump will be oldest first-term president -- Jan. 5, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Vice President Joe Biden quickened the pulse of some Democrats last month when he said he may run for president. In four years, he’ll be 78. Was he serious?

Die-hard Bernie Sanders fans want to believe he still has a shot at the White House. In 2020, Sanders will be 79.

In comparison, Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic presidential possibility, is a youngster. She’ll be a mere 71 in four years.

Donald J. Trump enters the Oval Office at threescore years and 10, the age Mark Twain at his own 70^th birthday party called the “Scriptural statute of limitations.”

Months older than Ronald Reagan at his first inauguration, Trump will be the oldest first-term president in history.

Most Americans don’t remember that even younger presidents have had serious health problems. Woodrow Wilson was 63 when he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919 and was gravely ill for the last year and a half of his term.

Dwight Eisenhower was 65 when he had a massive heart attack in Denver in 1955 and spent seven weeks in the hospital there. The White House kept the public in the dark about the severity of both cases. Eisenhower recovered and won a second term.

Age was hardly mentioned during the last campaign, which offered voters a choice between grandparents. Grandpa Trump is a year older than Grandma Hillary Clinton, but he gibed that she lacked the stamina to be president.

Clinton and Trump released letters from their doctors attesting to their health, with Clinton providing more details. Neither went as far as GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008. To reassure voters about his physical fitness, McCain, then 71, released more than a thousand pages of medical records.

While Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is 57, most of Trump’s Cabinet picks are white males over 60, reflecting the growing trend of working later in life. Nearly 20 percent of Americans over 65 hold full or part-time jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year.

The Oval Office, though, has traditionally been a place for the middle-aged. The average age of presidents at their first inauguration is 55. John F. Kennedy was inaugurated at 43, Bill Clinton at 46 and Barack Obama, 47. Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president at 42, after the assassination of William McKinley.

When World War II hero Bob Dole ran for president in 1996, he had to put up with late-night jokes about his age – 72.

“Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist,” David Letterman said in a monologue. “I understand this because a lot of people would look at a glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, `What a great place to put my teeth.’” Dole lost to the decades-younger Clinton.

Perhaps the all-time master at obliterating the age issue was Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Reagan, 73, was running for a second term against Democrat Walter Mondale, a lad of 56. Asked during a presidential debate if he was up for another four years, the Gipper was ready.

“I’m not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan quipped, putting away the age issue, at least through the election.

Reagan, who survived being shot and colon cancer as president, even dared to tell self-deprecating age jokes.

“One of my favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never judge a president by his age, only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I’ve stopped worrying,” Reagan told the National Alliance for Senior Citizens in 1984.

“When I go in for a physical now, they no longer ask me how old I am. They just carbon-date me,” he said at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 1987.

It was easy for Reagan to joke about getting older when he was often seen riding horses and clearing brush at his California ranch. He wasn’t diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until several years after he left office.

So far, Trump – who boasts about his vigor and has a glamorous, 46-year-old wife -- has managed to avoid age jokes. We’ll see whether his age becomes a punch line in four years when he’s 74.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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.

30

Why VP debate is worth watching -- Sept. 29, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

If you’re tempted to skip this week’s vice presidential debate because Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won’t be there, you might want to reconsider.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana are amiable fellows who rarely throw a first punch, but don’t hold that against them.

Both have had experience in the debate ring and know how to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

People vote for the top of the ticket, but whoever becomes vice president likely will do a lot more than attend the funerals of world leaders. Plus, one of the men onstage at Longwood University Tuesday night might be president someday. Fourteen veeps have become president, eight after the death of the sitting president.

Vice presidential debates are lower-key affairs than presidential matchups, but over the years the second tier has brought its share of verbal fisticuffs, gaffes and memorable moments.

The dust-up in the 1984 vice presidential debate between Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro is a classic example of “manslaining.”

“Let me help you with the difference, Ms. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon,” said Bush, then vice president and a former ambassador to China and the United Nations.

The first woman vice presidential nominee and eight-term House member riposted:

“Let me first of all say that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy.”

Perhaps the most famous VP debate moment ever was four years later, when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, a courtly and dignified senator from Texas, eviscerated callow Dan Quayle, Republican senator from Indiana.

Quayle, boyish at 41 and perceived by many as unqualified to be vice president, said he had as much congressional experience as Jack Kennedy did when he ran for president.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen shot back.

Bush and Quayle won the election, but Bentsen went home with the zinger of the year trophy.

In 1992, James Stockdale, running mate of third-party candidate Ross Perot, uttered the seven words that still live in vice presidential debate parody: “Who am I? Why am I here?”

Stockdale was a retired admiral, one of the most highly decorated Navy officers in history. He had spent seven years as a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. But he was unknown to most Americans. Sadly, his debate performance made him a figure of fun.

  

This time, there will be no third-party candidate onstage. Neither the Libertarian nor the Green party met the Commission on Presidential Debates’ criteria for participating in the first presidential and the only vice presidential debate. That’s a shame for the millions of Americans who would like more choices.

In a year in which many voters find the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees scary, debate-watchers may find Kaine and Pence reassuring. They came up through the states and know compromise is necessary.

Pence, after losing one of the nastiest congressional races in Indiana history, once wrote an essay titled, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,” in which he stated, “Negative campaigning is wrong.”

Asked how he could square that view with Trump’s campaign style, Pence told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week”: “Things are a little different here in Indiana than they are in New York City. People talk a little different than they do sometimes about things.”

 

Raddatz then asked Kaine about Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment when she said some of Trump’s supporters are “irredeemable.” Was that word appropriate? 

“That’s not a word I would use. I wouldn’t use it,” Kaine said, although he added, “I think we would be unrealistic to think that some people are going to fundamentally change their view.”

Come January, either Kaine or Pence likely will be the president’s liaison to Congress, playing a key role in setting the policy agenda.

For voters unhappy with Clinton and Trump, this undercard could make the choice more palatable.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Business suits up for culture wars -- April 2, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For decades, social conservatives have blamed liberals, “the media” and Hollywood for promoting same-sex marriage and gay rights. Now they can add big business to the list.

The culture wars are back – they never went far -- and corporations are emerging as a powerful new player on behalf of  lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“America’s business leaders recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote Tuesday in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

Cook, who came out as gay last year, was among the chiefs of national and international companies as well as celebrities who criticized Indiana and its Republican governor, Mike Pence, for enacting a religious freedom law that critics saw as encouraging discrimination against the LGBT community.

Nothing focuses the mind of a state official like the threat of boycotts or trouble for local businesses, so Pence reacted when other states banned their employees from traveling to Indiana and companies and organizations threatened to cancel conventions. Angie’s List, a nationwide business-rating service, put on hold its plans for a $40 million expansion in Indianapolis.

Pence backed off the law he had previously signed, saying it needed a clarification or fix after all.

“Was I expecting this kind of backlash?” Pence said. “Heavens, no.”

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, both Democrats, quickly put out the welcome mat to businesses turned off by Indiana’s law. Virginia has a version of the religious freedom law but McAuliffe signed an executive order in 2014 with protections that Indiana lacks. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation.

McAuliffe invited Indiana businesses “to take advantage of Virginia’s open, inclusive and thriving business environment.”

When the Arkansas legislature passed a law similar to Indiana’s, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart joined other companies in asking Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, to veto the measure.  

The bill “threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state of Arkansas and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold,” Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon tweeted.

Hutchinson refused to sign the bill he had supported, saying it too needed work. His son Seth had signed a petition asking him to veto it, Hutchinson said, noting generational differences in opinion.

About 80 percent of people 18 to 29 think gay marriage should be valid, a Gallup poll found last year. Support declines with age, and among people 65 and older, only 42 percent support gay marriage.

Three weeks before Pence signed Indiana’s religious freedom law, 379 employers filed a friend of the court brief March 5 in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting same-sex marriage.

The firms range from cupcake bakers and plumbers to Fortune 100 companies. Some are names that the youngest Americans grew up with: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Starbucks and Twitter.

Others are traditional economic stalwarts: Aetna, Alcoa, Colgate-Palmolive, Dow Chemical, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Marriott, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, United Air Lines, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Xerox. And from the world of sports, the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Rays.

The companies asked the court to affirm the rights of gay people to marry in all 50 states, but the brief did not cite social or civil rights reasons. Their legal argument was all about business and the burden the “fractured legal landscape” places on employers.

Currently, 13 states ban same-sex marriage and it is legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The legality of same-sex marriage is unclear in Alabama, where state and federal courts have issued conflicting orders.

Having such a patchwork of state laws “creates legal uncertainty and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative complexities on employers,” the brief said. Employers are forced to treat workers in similar circumstances differently simply because they live in different states. 

The court has scheduled oral arguments April 28 in Obergefell v. Hodges, which consolidates four same-sex marriage cases. A ruling is expected this summer.

“Allowing same-sex couples to marry improves employee morale and productivity, reduces uncertainty, and removes the wasteful administrative burdens,” the brief argues.

Everyone has a right to his or her religious beliefs, but business clearly believes the economic case for equal rights has been made. In today’s culture wars, social conservatives ignore that fact at their political peril.

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.