A call + a `favor' = impeachment -- Sept. 26, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For Democrats, the smoking gun arrived gift-wrapped from the White House. 

President Trump ordered notes of his phone call with the president of Ukraine released Wednesday because, he said, they showed the call was “innocent,” “wonderful” and “perfect.” Hogwash.

Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky he needed “a favor” and directed him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who Trump believes his likely Democratic opponent in 2020, and his son, Hunter Biden.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump told Zelensky, referring to Attorney General William Barr.

He also urged Zelensky to work more closely with his personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani.

The United States has been “very, very good to Ukraine,” Trump said, adding Ukraine hadn’t reciprocated.

At the time – July 25 -- Trump was holding up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, although Zelensky did not know it.

There’s no explicit quid pro quo in the call, and Trump insists he’s innocent and wanted only to investigate corruption. Most Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing him up.

“Nothing (no-quid pro quo) burger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, tweeted, although Sen. Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said the matter is “deeply troubling in the extreme.”

The five-page memo reconstructing the call provided a picture of Trump’s misuse of his office for political gain.

The call came to light through news reports about a secret whistleblower complaint in August by an intelligence officer. While Trump had promised an “unredacted transcript” of the call, the notes contain ellipses indicating words left out. 

The call persuaded House Democrats who had been on the fence it was time to begin the impeachment inquiry.

The complaint, unclassified and released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee, reports an “urgent concern” that Trump “is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election.”

The complaint also reports the White House tried to cover up the call.

“The actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday, announcing the official impeachment inquiry, even before the notes and the complaint were released.

Trump’s defiant defense appears to be “I did it. So what?”

As we know, Trump’s MO is to tar his rivals. Joe Biden is the new Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential rival Trump labeled “crooked Hillary.”

In a news conference Wednesday, Trump lobbed unsubstantiated charges against the Bidens, as he has previously, claiming they took $1.5 billion out of China. He also claimed several congressional Democrats threatened to withhold funds from Ukraine.

Hunter Biden served on the board of a natural gas company in Ukraine that was investigated by Ukrainian authorities, but he was not accused of any wrongdoing.

As for impeachment: “It’s all a hoax, folks. It’s all a big hoax,” Trump said. “Impeachment for that?”

Impeachment is serious business, a last resort used only three times in American history.

The House draws up an indictment, called Articles of Impeachment. A simple majority vote of the House would send the indictment to the Senate for a trial presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict and remove the president from office.

The constitutional standard for impeachment is “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

These do not have to be violations of criminal laws, but, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers: “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Democrats have little time to make their case before the end of the year. The danger for them is winning the battle but losing the war. If the Republican-controlled Senate leaves Trump in office, he and his supporters will celebrate his victory and vindication all the way to the polls in November.

Impeachment now seems inevitable. It will be an ugly spectacle, a mud bath from which no one will emerge clean. Even if he wins, Trump will carry an indelible stain into history.

©2019 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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A blue tide in Alabama? Senate election a big `if' -- Dec. 7, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The voters of Alabama have a chance to show Virginia wasn’t a fluke.

Last month, a Democratic wave carried Ralph Northam to victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race, washing out Republican Ed Gillespie, who had run a throw-back campaign.  

More significantly, Old Dominion voters showed the door to a passel of veteran Republican state legislators, threatening GOP control of the House of Delegates. Several delegate seats are still in doubt, pending recounts.

After the drubbing, President Donald Trump tweeted that Gillespie lost because he “did not embrace me or what I stand for,” even though Gillespie espoused Trump’s positions on immigration, Confederate monuments and other hot-button issues.

If Alabama voters reject Republican Roy Moore as their U.S. senator Tuesday, they’ll also be turning thumbs down on Trump, Moore’s protector in chief, and on the toxic politics of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist.

That’s a big “if.”

No Democrat has won a statewide race in Alabama since 2008, and Trump won 63 percent of the vote last year. Much depends on whether Democrats can turn out black and independent voters for Democrat Doug Jones.

If the tide runs blue in Alabama, Trump won’t be able to blame Moore for keeping him at arm’s length. Trump has gone all-in for Moore and vice versa.

“Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need . . . Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2^nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!” Trump tweeted Monday.

A grateful Moore tweeted he “can’t wait to help” Trump drain the swamp.

If Moore loses, Trump won’t be able to erase his own failure by deleting his favorable tweets about Moore the way he did after he backed Luther Strange, Moore’s opponent in the GOP primary, and Strange lost.

A Moore loss would confirm Time’s choice of “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year. The Silence Breakers is the magazine’s name for the many women who finally came forward this year to tell their stories of sexual harassment.

Among them was Leigh Corfman, who told The Washington Post that Moore touched her sexually when she was 14 and Moore was 32 and an assistant district attorney.

“Nine women have come forward to describe inappropriate encounters with Roy Moore, including several who say he pursued them when they were teenagers. Moore has called the allegations `false’ and `malicious.’ `Specifically, I do not know any of these women nor have I ever engaged in sexual misconduct with any woman,’ he said in late November,” Time reported.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said if Moore is elected, he would “immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee,” which could lead eventually to expulsion.

Sen. Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, said “the Senate should vote to expel him, because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate.”

Political expediency being what it is, though, such high-minded resolve could evaporate.

Consider what happened to Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, who had the guts to say Moore’s election would be “a stain on the GOP and the nation.”

“No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity,” Romney tweeted.

Romney’s moral stance should have earned him praise. Instead, Bannon, at a rally for Moore in Alabama, blasted Romney for failing to serve in the military and for his draft deferment for missionary work. Moore is a West Point graduate.

What Bannon failed to mention, of course, was Trump’s five draft deferments – four for education and a medical one for bone spurs in both his heels.

Voters in Alabama can tell the rest of the country they’re not buying cynical claptrap from the likes of Bannon and Trump.  

It may not happen. Late polls show Moore with a slight lead, and the race is rated a toss-up by Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.   

Still, a Democratic win in Alabama would show Virginia was not an outlier. It also would be a good omen for Democrats in next fall’s congressional elections.

Did I mention that’s a big “if”?

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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A gracious loser? We can hope -- Nov 3, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A ritual of American politics will unfold Tuesday night.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will hold victory parties but, before the night is over, one will concede defeat. If we’re lucky.

We can take nothing for granted. To the end, Trump remains a question mark. In his last debate with Clinton, he refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election.

“I will keep you in suspense,” he said. It was outrageous, provocative and pure Trump. He still appears likely to come up short in the Electoral College, although polls have tightened in the last week.

One thing is certain, though. The American people have suffered enough disappointment during this dispiriting campaign. Barring an election disaster, the loser needs to accept the will of the voters with grace and urge his or her followers to do the same.

The winner also must move immediately to begin repairing the breach that has riven the country.

This presidential contest has always been more about the candidates’ deficiencies than their policies. When the votes are finally counted, it’s time for all of us to put the country first.

Our admirable American tradition holds that defeated presidential candidates rise to the occasion for the sake of the greater good. It’s reassuring to see failed candidates muster grace – and even humor -- at a time of personal misery.

In 1908, after his third failed campaign for the White House, Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan said: “I am reminded of the drunk who, when he had been thrown down the stairs of the club for the third time, gathered himself up, and said, `I am on to those people. They don’t want me in there,’” William Safire wrote in “Safire’s New Political Dictionary.”

Going into the 1948 election, Thomas Dewey was confident he’d beat Harry Truman – as were some newspaper editors. We’ve all seen the screaming banner headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

All night the votes came in. When Dewey awoke the next morning to learn he’d lost, he sent a gracious telegram to Truman.

“My heartiest congratulations to you on your election and every good wish for a successful administration. I urge all Americans to unite behind you in support of every effort to keep our nation strong and free and establish peace in the world,” he wrote.

Asked by reporters what had happened, Dewey replied, “I was just as surprised as you are . . . It has been grand fun, boys and girls. I enjoyed it immensely.”

Four years later, when he lost to Dwight Eisenhower, Democrat Adlai Stevenson said he was reminded of the story about Abraham Lincoln after an election defeat. Lincoln said he felt like the boy who stubbed his foot in the dark -- “too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”

After the bitter 1960 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon offered a quasi-concession statement to John F. Kennedy.

“If the present trend continues, Mister Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, will be the next president of the United States,” Nixon told his supporters in California about midnight Pacific time. 

“I want Senator Kennedy to know . . . that certainly if this trend does continue, and he does become our next president, that he will have my wholehearted support and yours too,” Nixon said.

Nixon was convinced voter fraud cost him the election but he did not demand a recount despite JFK’s razor-thin margin of victory -- just over 100,000 votes out of 68 million votes cast. 

Kennedy won 303 electoral votes and Nixon 219. Fifteen unpledged electors in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma voted for segregationist Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia.

To preserve his viability for future elections, Nixon would not look like a sore loser.

Nobody ever warms to defeat. Mitt Romney was so sure he was going to win four years ago that he’d written only a victory speech.

“It’s about 1,118 words long,” he told reporters traveling with him on Election Day. His staff hadn’t written a concession speech either.

A few hours later, Romney called President Barack Obama to congratulate him. Then Romney went to what was supposed to be his victory party.

After wishing the president and his family well, Romney told supporters, “This is a time of great challenges for America and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

We can dream that whoever loses on Tuesday is as classy.

(c) 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Obama not debating but in the debate -- Sept. 22, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

He won’t be onstage Monday night, but President Barack Obama likely will dominate the first presidential debate.

Republicans have hung “third Obama term” around Hillary Clinton’s neck as if it were an albatross, but Democrats believe the prospect of a third Obama term could be just the thing to motivate unenthusiastic, undecided voters to go to the polls for Clinton.

Obama’s overall job approval rating, in the low 40s a couple of years ago, is a healthy 50 percent. Among Democrats, a whopping 89 percent approve of the way he’s handling his job, according to Gallup.

“More Americans are working. More have health insurance. Incomes are rising. Poverty is falling,” Obama said last week at a rally for Clinton in Philadelphia. Someone in the crowd shouted that gas is $2.

“And gas is $2 a gallon,” he said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

So when Donald Trump promises to wipe out everything Obama has done, starting with the Affordable Care Act, he not only threatens Obama’s legacy but he gives Clinton an opening with uncommitted voters who like the improved economy and social progress of the last eight years.

Only 2 or 3 percentage points now separate Clinton and Trump, so both campaigns want to woo the 13 percent of voters who are undecided.

Some are “better-educated people who lean Republican, who don’t like Trump and have zero use for Hillary Clinton, and they’re sort of paralyzed and frozen right now,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff told The Wall Street Journal.

Others are millennials who lean Democratic, supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries and haven’t fallen in love with Clinton. Democrats also worry that black voters, who provided the margin of victory for Obama in several swing states in 2012, could stay home.

Obama has made Clinton’s election his mission, telling the Congressional Black Caucus gala Saturday that he would take it as a “personal insult” to his legacy if blacks don’t turn out for Clinton.

First lady Michelle Obama, one of the most popular people in America, also is campaigning for Clinton – and Obama’s place in history.

 

“Elections aren’t just about who votes, but who doesn’t vote, and that’s especially true for young people like all of you,” Michelle Obama said last week at a campaign rally at George Mason University.

On the stump, the president charges that Trump is “unfit to serve” and “woefully unprepared to do this job.” Trump in turn calls Obama a “disaster” and “the worst president.”

If you can’t remember a president and first lady being so involved in a potential successor’s contest, it’s because it hasn’t happened in our lifetimes. Most presidents end their time on the stage on a sour note with the public or with little love for the person itching to replace them.   

In 1960, when a reporter asked President Dwight Eisenhower to name a major contribution his vice president, Richard Nixon, then running for president, had made, Ike replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.”

John F. Kennedy used Ike’s words in a TV ad -- and won that November.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore – remember him? – kept his distance from disgraced President Bill Clinton, and it cost him.

But when the time came for President George W. Bush to endorse Sen. John McCain for president in 2008, Bush’s job approval rating had dropped to the basement -- about 30 percent. Even though Bush was still popular among conservatives, McCain chose not to ask Bush to campaign.

At this point in 2012, polls showed the race between Obama and Mitt Romney very tight with about 6 percent of voters undecided. On Election Day, though, the contest wasn’t as close. Obama won with 51 percent of the popular vote to Romney’s 47 percent.

Democrats hope a similar scenario plays out this year for Clinton.

As much as she might like to win purely on her own merits, Clinton knows “It Takes a Village.” Her uninspiring campaign style and the reluctance of key demographic groups to back her means she will need the whole Democratic village at her side to win.

Fortunately for her, Democrats still believe in Obama, and he said last week, “I really, really, really want to elect Hillary Clinton.”

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Rollercoaster polls take voters for a ride -- July 14, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A headline in Politico this week read: “Swing-state stunner: Trump has edge in key states.” The only thing missing was an exclamation point.

Commentators online and on TV chewed over the news that three Quinnipiac University polls found Donald J. Trump slightly leading Hillary Clinton in the battleground states of Florida and Pennsylvania. The two candidates were tied in Ohio.  

The next day, a headline across a full page of The Wall Street Journal read: “Polls: Clinton, Trump Close in Key States.” Clinton and Trump were in a statistical tie in Ohio; she had a 3-point lead in Iowa and was ahead by 9 points in Pennsylvania, the latest Journal/NBC News/Marist polls found. 

And The New York Times reported the same day that Clinton and Trump were tied nationally, each with 40 percent of registered voters, in the latest Times-CBS News poll. 

  

But a different national poll a few days earlier had showed Clinton with a double-digit lead over Trump. Yet another put Trump ahead by single digits.

A reader could get a headache trying to parse the polls. But do polls matter? Not really. Not in July.

Everyone needs to remember that polls are a snapshot in time. If there’s anything we know about this presidential campaign, it’s unpredictable. 

Yes, Democrats would rather see Clinton on a positive trajectory, leaving Trump in the dust. And Republicans would like to see Trump steadily gaining ground on Clinton, although so far, while she seems to be sliding, he’s not rising.

But neither camp should get too exercised about polls this far out. They rarely predict Election Day.

Better to sit back, take a deep breath and ponder how Britain can change prime ministers in days while our presidential elections drag on for years. Here’s a poll tidbit that rings true: Six in 10 Americans are worn out by the presidential campaign.

Part of what’s driving the poll frenzy is news organizations’ trying not to miss the Trump story – again. Many political reporters -- I include myself -- thought Trump was a flash in the pan. Obviously, we were wrong.

But whether Trump or Clinton wins in November, some pollsters will be able to say they saw the incipient victory during the summer.

That’s fine, but voters need to know that analysts can’t even agree on polling methods.

Some analysts fault Quinnipiac, contending its sample size favors Trump by including larger percentages of white people and fewer minorities than voted in various states in 2012. Since minority voting is rising and white participation falling, Quinnipiac’s polls are biased, these critics say. We won’t know who’s right for nearly four months.

Naturally, Trump brags about his positive poll numbers and discounts those he doesn’t like. The Clinton campaign tweets that it always expected battleground states to be tight, and supporters just have to work harder.

When it comes to polls, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

After the Republican National Convention concludes July 21 and the Democratic convention wraps July 28, we’ll be bombarded by polls. The conventions traditionally bring the largest swings in polls during the campaign, say political scientists Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien. They studied polls from 1952 to 2008 for their 2012 book “The Timeline of Presidential Elections.” Traditionally, first, one party’s candidate gets a bounce and then the other.

In simpler times, most voters were just learning about presidential candidates by watching convention coverage on TV, and the conventions were spaced weeks apart. 

The exposure traditionally gave the nominees an average 5-point increase in the polls, Gallup reports, but the convention bounce has declined since 1996.

In 2012, a year like this one with back-to-back conventions, Republican Mitt Romney saw a 1-point dip after the GOP convention, and President Barack Obama got a 3-point bounce after the Democratic convention. Polls tightened by Election Day, as they usually do.

As always, the people who cast ballots Nov. 8 are the only poll that matters. And there’s something else to consider: One in 10 voters for both Clinton and Trump say they could still change their minds before Election Day.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Here come the conventions -- again -- July 7, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In a year of voter anger and disgust, we’re about to see the coronations of two presidential candidates most Americans don’t like in a spectacle of speeches paid for by fat cats and lobbyists.

National political conventions we will have – Republicans July 18 to 21 in Cleveland and Democrats July 25 to 28 in Philadelphia – but why?

Because that’s the way we’ve always done it, since the 1830s anyway. Conventions are a relic of the 19^th century, like getting ice from a horse-drawn wagon.

Not even shiny new convention apps or 360-degree cameras can save the conventions from their retro feel. Their original purpose was to select each party’s presidential nominee and platform, but they’ve evolved into four days of infomercials.

A few months ago, there was talk of a brokered or contested convention, which would make the occasion both newsworthy and significant. Then Donald Trump shocked the world by nailing the GOP nomination before Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic one. Anti-Trump forces still hope to derail his train by changing convention rules, but don’t count on it.

And most people – especially the nominees -- don’t care about party platforms. Sorry, Bernie.

The vice presidential candidates likely will be announced before the conventions, so there goes another shred of news. You could go on vacation off the grid for a couple of weeks and miss nothing, politically.

To be fair, some political scientists argue that having national political conventions every four years is good for our democracy. Conventions give the parties the opportunity, unfiltered by the news media, to reintroduce themselves and their values to voters, they say.

But convention viewership on television has been sliding since 1960. An exception came in 2008 when nearly two-thirds of all U.S. households – a record -- watched at least one convention, an analysis by the Nielsen TV ratings firm found. The numbers dropped in 2012. 

Drawing the most convention viewers does not translate into more votes for the party in November, however. Studies show most voters watch only the convention of the party they already favor.

“It’s safe to say that ratings have little to no electoral meaning,” University of Virginia professor Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball blog said in an analysis of the numbers.

This summer’s conventions may draw the curious. What will Trump’s family say? What will Bernie Sanders’ supporters do? And if, heaven forbid, the protests outside turn violent, people will watch.

Trump’s wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and sons Eric and Donald Junior will speak in prime time, along with famous sports and entertainment figures. No one ever knows what Trump himself will say.

President Obama previewed his role at the Democratic convention Tuesday in his first joint appearance with Clinton. He still has the power to energize the Democratic faithful in ways Hillary Clinton can only dream of.

Speaking at a national convention can be a career boost, as Obama demonstrated in 2004, so expect a parade of Democrats hoping to make a connection.

Many Republicans, though, are avoiding Trump’s party. Among those staying home: both Presidents Bush, 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and 2008 nominee John McCain. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will not attend, nor will boxer Mike Tyson. Trump tweeted that Tyson wasn’t asked to speak.

Beginning in 1976, taxpayers paid for the national political conventions. The post-Watergate idea was to avoid corruption by using public funds from the tax return checkoff for presidential campaigns. In 2012, the Democratic and Republican parties each received about $18.2 million for their conventions. Not this year.

Congress turned off the spigot in 2014 – except for $100 million in security grants to law enforcement agencies in the two host cities. The security money has been allocated separately since 9/11.

So, this year, lobbyists, labor unions and corporations that have supported conventions in the past are bearing more costs and having even more influence. This is progress?

Anachronistic though they are, conventions live on. So, enjoy the spectacle of balloons and funny hats, but don’t take the speeches too seriously.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What's luck got to do with it? -- June 2, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Barack Obama’s pet peeve: “People who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them. It wasn’t nothing you did, so don’t have an attitude.”

When he urged Howard University graduates last month to be grateful, Obama reopened an old argument. Four years ago, he ran into a buzz saw of criticism when he strongly suggested that successful people don’t get ahead by hard work alone.

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” the president said in a campaign speech in Roanoke, Va., in July 2012.

Republican rival Mitt Romney jumped on the two sentences, using the scathing sound bite in ads against Obama, who claimed his words were taken out of context. They were. Obama was trying to make a point about community, government and even luck playing roles in an individual’s success, but he phrased it horribly.

Eleven days later, Obama spoke directly to voters in his own TV ad: “Of course Americans build their own businesses. Every day hard-working people sacrifice to meet a payroll, create jobs and make our economy run. And what I said was that we need to stand behind them, as America always has, by investing in education and training, roads and bridges, research and technology.”

How people see luck is a dividing line between conservatives and liberals, Robert H. Frank writes in his new book, “Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.”

Surveys show wealthier people overwhelmingly think their success is a result of their own hard work rather than other factors, such as luck or being in the right place at the right time, says Frank, a professor of management and economics at Cornell University.

People who believe luck plays a role in their success are more empathetic toward the less fortunate and that has tax and social policy implications, studies show.

When successful people believe there are others who also are smart and work hard but don’t strike it rich, they’re more generous and public-minded and inclined to approve of more spending on things like education and infrastructure, polls show.

Americans have always had a rocky relationship with luck. In the second half of the 19^th century, Horatio Alger Jr. built his writing career with a series of novels about poor but plucky young fellows who were honest, worked hard -- and got rich through strokes of luck.

But in the 1940s, E.B. White observed, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”

Donald J. Trump, who got his start in business with a million-dollar loan from his father, concedes a little of his success to luck.

“There’s a certain amount of luck,” Trump told students in Wisconsin earlier this year. “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”

That’s a paraphrase of the line golfer Gary Player made famous: “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”

In his campaign book, “Crippled America,” published last year, Trump writes: “I know how lucky I am. The day I was born I had already won the greatest lottery on Earth. I was born in the United States of America.”

Trump, though, may be more optimistic than most. Less than half of Americans agree that “anyone who works hard still has a fair chance to succeed and live a comfortable life in today’s America,” according to the latest Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor poll, released in January.

It’s odd that Obama’s talk about luck angers people when his overall message is uplifting. He told the Howard graduates:

“We must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling – the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and, yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change, and feels powerless to stop it.

“You got to get in his head too,” he said. And that could bring us all better luck.  

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Trump not yet the inevitable man -- March 3, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

With Super Tuesday behind us, it’s hard to argue that Donald J. Trump won’t be the Republican presidential nominee -- but let’s give it a try.

Yes, Trump swept seven of 11 states on Super Tuesday and won 10 of the first 15 presidential contests. Yes, he’s ahead in the delegate count and, yes, his news conference Super Tuesday night struck some observers as presidential. That was because he wasn’t as crude and bombastic as he is in rallies.

Some prominent Republicans, like Chris Christie, have joined his campaign.

But Trump is not the inevitable GOP nominee.

In a bizarre, perhaps unprecedented, display of angst, a movement is building among Republican lawmakers, party leaders and donors to derail a Trump nomination.

Desperation is in the air. After endorsements of other candidates by Republican members of Congress and party leaders failed to sway angry voters, the GOP establishment is repudiating the party frontrunner. 

Even Mitt Romney, the party’s defeated 2012 presidential nominee, got into the act, calling Trump a phony and a fraud.

If Trump is the nominee, some Republicans say they won’t vote for him in November. 

One of the first to come forward was Rep. Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican.

“I reject Trump as our nominee based on his judgment, temperament and character, all of which point to a reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous presidency,” Rigell wrote in an open letter Tuesday.

Rigell, who is not running for reelection after three terms in the House, is supporting Marco Rubio. If Rubio doesn’t make it, Rigell said he’ll write in someone else’s name.

I get it that the Republican Party is in a tizzy over Trump. He’s a boor and a bigot who plays to our worst instincts. But Trump waltzed through the door Republicans opened for him with years of carping about the dreadful direction of the country, Washington and the federal government.

With millions of new voters rising up to change the status quo, the party establishment now says no, that’s not what we meant at all.  Really.

On the other hand, for all his success, Trump is not a majority candidate. In the contests through Super Tuesday, he won just 34 percent of Republican votes cast. In other words, nearly two-thirds of Republicans wanted another GOP candidate.

In Virginia, Trump won with 35 percent of the Republican primary vote. In Alabama, he scored 43 percent and in Tennessee 39 percent. His strongest showing was in Massachusetts with 49 percent. It was a five-man race, so the votes naturally were split.

We haven’t even reached the halfway point of the primary process. After Super Tuesday, 71 percent of delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention remained to be chosen.

Super Tuesday kept alive the hopes of other Republican candidates (except for Ben Carson) at least until the next major contests on March 15 -- winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio and other states. Florida and Ohio are must-wins for Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who hope, along with Ted Cruz, to be the Trump alternative.

Dozens of Republican donors who backed GOP candidates no longer in the race now are trying to dump Trump. Our Principles PAC, a Super PAC, is running ads against him in key states.

Trump’s divisive presence has enlivened the primary system even more than Barack Obama did in 2008. All the Super Tuesday states reported record turnout this year, except Vermont.

In Virginia, a record 1 million people voted in the Republican primary on Tuesday – more than the Democrats in the hot 2008 primary race between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

More people have voted in Republican than in Democratic contests this year, and that should worry Democrats, who are indulging in more than a little schadenfreude over the Republican meltdown.

Most voters in this country consider themselves neither Democrat nor Republican but independent. The party that cobbles together an alliance with the most independents likely will win in November.

Trump claims he’s a “unifier.” We’ll see March 15 whether he unifies voters for – or against – him. Republican primary voters will decide that question.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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