This precinct's color is blue, tinged with confusion -- June 14, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

“That’s ridiculous!” the angry voter roared at me. “Who do I complain to?”

It was Primary Day, and I was working as a city Election Officer or poll worker at the City Hall precinct in Alexandria, Va. My job was to greet voters and tell them something I assumed they’d already know.

“We’re having a Democratic primary and a Republican primary today,” I said hundreds of times, smiling. “You can vote in one or the other, but not both.”  

For some voters like this woman, though, that was infuriating news. She wanted to vote in both primaries and wasn’t giving up without a fight.  

The precinct election chief, overhearing her protests – who didn’t? – showed her a sample ballot with the pertinent section of Virginia Code about primaries: “No person shall vote for the candidates of more than one party.”

She redirected her ire toward Richmond and asked for a Democratic ballot.   

It would be easy to dismiss her as dumb, but the story is more nuanced. For one thing, she had plenty of company in her confusion.

By my estimate, about one in 10 voters at my precinct Tuesday either thought there was only a Democratic primary or knew there were two primaries and thought they could vote in both.

Virginia voters don’t register to vote by party and some infrequent voters had forgotten how the open primary system works.

In Alexandria, called “one of Virginia’s most lopsidedly Democratic bastions” by The Washington Post, the Democratic primary is typically the decisive election for local offices. At the City Hall precinct, of 904 ballots cast, 851 were Democratic.

The city of 150,000 residents had hotly contested mayoral and city council races. Democratic candidates flooded voters by mail and phone, knocked on their doors and stopped them at farmer’s markets. Local weeklies carried pages of letters to the editor by neighbors asking neighbors to vote for their favorite candidates.

The perpetual issue is development – how much and where.

Residents of Old Town worry more new hotels and condos along the riverfront will ruin the ambiance of the brick-walked city George Washington frequented. Some voters are also fed up with ever-rising real estate taxes.

But Alexandria faces mounting financial pressure for education and social services in an increasingly diverse city where public school children speak 120 languages and nearly two in three receive free or reduced price meals.

On a day when other women candidates across the state did well, incumbent Mayor Allison Silberberg, a soft-spoken and lonely opponent of development on council, lost to pro-development Vice Mayor Justin Wilson, who said when he announced his candidacy for mayor, “Preservation of the status quo is not a vision.”

Wilson, 39, had strong support among parents in the Del Ray neighborhood, while Silberberg, 55, was popular with well-to-do retirees in Old Town, the Post reported.

There was a strong “throw the rascals out” mood toward city council. A dozen candidates ran for the six seats, and two of four incumbents seeking re-election lost. 

Among the winning newcomers are a 32-year old woman, a Sudanese refugee and a first-generation Mexican American.   

Since the only Republican contest was for the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in November, several self-proclaimed lifelong Republicans reluctantly asked for the Democratic ballot. They wanted a voice in city government, even though it meant not having one in choosing the Senate candidate.   

At least a few asking for both ballots were Democrats who wanted to help Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in his re-election bid by voting for the weakest Republican. They needn’t have worried.

Virginia Republicans obliged by choosing Corey Stewart, a Trump extremist who supports keeping Confederate monuments in place. 

Turnout in the off-year primary was light around the state. But in Alexandria, about 23 percent of registered voters turned out – up from 16 percent three years ago – even though it was a lovely spring day with a huge parade and celebration just across the Potomac in Washington at midday for the Washington Capitals.

There was no confusion about who won the Stanley Cup.

House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. famously said all politics is local. Sometimes, as in Alexandria on Tuesday, local politics is all.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Can't we get along and pass paid family leave? -- July 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump, the father of five who boasts he has never changed a diaper, wants to give new moms and dads paid parental leave.

His 2018 budget proposes six months’ paid leave for parents after the birth or adoption of a child “so all families can afford to take time to recover from childbirth and bond with a new child without worrying about paying their bills.”

During last year’s campaign, though, Trump proposed paid maternity leave for biological mothers only. 

“Maternity leave has a 1990s feel to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said last September. “It’s not 2016. Because in 2016 not only do women take off to take care of kids when they’re born, but men do too.”

Those who take time off mostly do so without pay.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, workers in companies with 50 or more employees are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a baby, sick family member or themselves. Many parents can’t afford to take leave.  

Only 13 percent of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave through their employers in March 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most likely to benefit: highly paid, full-time, managerial employees who work for large companies.  

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton promised 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and those taking care of seriously ill family members.

At a time when politicians of all stripes talk about how family friendly they are, first daughter Ivanka Trump has made paid family leave her issue.

Here’s the problem: Almost everybody favors helping moms and dads spend more time with their children in the abstract -- and if someone else is footing the bill.  

Trump wants to run paid family leave through state Unemployment Insurance programs, which means payments are unlikely to cover anything close to full salary. His budget asks for about $25 billion for 10 years and says states will have flexibility on how to provide and finance payments.

The plan has drawn deafening silence on Capitol Hill, where it is competing with Democratic and Republican paid family leave plans.

The leading Democratic plan calls for a nationwide insurance program funded by employers and employees through the Social Security Administration.  Republicans favor tax credits, which could be part of tax reform.

After meeting with congressional Republicans last month, Ivanka Trump seemed to acknowledge a bumpy road ahead.

“Just left a productive meeting on the Hill to discuss issues affecting American working families, including childcare & paid family leave!” she tweeted.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said: “And we’ll see what the next step is, but it’s certainly something we’re going to continue to work on.”

Critics on the left say Trump’s plan is stingy and should cover those caring for sick family members. The business community says requiring employers to pay for paid leave will cost jobs and hurt the economy.

Critics on the right, wary of Ivanka Trump’s bona fides as a Republican, worry about another big government program. A Wall Street Journal editorial May 26 knocked her plan as “The Ivanka Entitlement.”

“As usual the policy sounds unobjectionable but the details are messy. If the benefit is available regardless of income, the government will subsidize affluent families who don’t need assistance. But inevitably the benefit will phase out as income rises like dozens of other federal subsidies. That could create another disincentive for work and advancement that traps families in poverty,” the Journal’s editors wrote.

She responded Wednesday in a letter to the editor: “Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program – with a reasonable time limit and a benefit cap – isn’t an entitlement. It’s an investment in America’s working families.”

In a sign of our toxic political discourse, that last, innocuous sentence rankled some Republicans because Democrats often cast their spending priorities as investments.

But spending to give workers a helping hand as they start and care for their families is a worthy investment. Democrats and Republicans should put aside their bickering and work together to make paid family leave a reality.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Hillary Clinton's quest ends as it began, with Bill -- Nov. 10, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Hillary Clinton will never be just an asterisk of history.

She’s no Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale, failed Democratic presidential nominees who fell to obscurity.  

And yet, one of the many ironies of the 2016 election is that Clinton’s marital status and gender may define her place in history – as former first lady and first woman presidential nominee of a major political party.

She won the popular vote, but because she did not win the White House, she will always be seen as the wife of a president. Because of the Electoral College, she will never have the chance to prove herself as president.

For all her subsequent accomplishments, marrying Bill Clinton was Hillary’s best career move, her ticket to the national stage.

As his wife, she became first lady of Arkansas and the first lady of the United States.

She, an ambitious Yale law graduate surely would have succeeded in life on her own, but we’ll never know if she would have become a U.S. senator, secretary of state and a presidential contender – twice – had she not first risen to prominence in the role of Mrs. In this way, the Hillary Clinton story is more 20^th century than 21^st.

The Clintons’ marriage, like most relationships, is unfathomable to those on the outside. When her husband was accused of womanizing during his bid for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton proved her loyalty by dutifully standing by her man -- even as she denied she was doing so.

She later showed her strength by enduring the public humiliation of his philandering in the White House.

So it seems a particularly cruel twist of fate that, after she built her own president-ready resume with Senate and State Department posts, her husband may be to blame for Donald Trump’s decision to enter the 2016 presidential race.

Strange as it now seems, both Clintons formerly were friends with Trump, who donated to the Clinton Foundation and played golf with Bill.

Bill Clinton called his pal Trump in May 2015 and encouraged him to play a larger role in Republican politics, The Washington Post reported.

What exactly was said in the private phone conversation isn’t known. A few weeks later, Trump glided down the escalator at Trump Tower and began knocking off GOP presidential contenders, one by one.

And so, Hillary Clinton who in 2008 lost to a Democratic outsider promising change, lost Tuesday to a Republican outsider promising change.  

As the 2016 campaign tightened at the end, Clinton relied more and more on President Obama and his popular wife, Michelle, to make the case for her. Days before the election, the president conversationally asked men about their resistance to a woman president.

“I just want to say to the guys out there . . . there’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president before . . . I want every man out there who’s voting to kind of look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to it?” Obama said at a Clinton rally in Columbus, Ohio.

“So that, like, when a guy is ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well, that’s OK. But when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you’re all like, well, why is she doing that?” he said.

Obama was onto something. Trump won white males’ votes 63 percent to Clinton’s 31 percent, exit polls found.

But Trump also won the votes of white women 53 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent.

When Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, introduced her at her concession speech Wednesday, he said: “She has made history. In a nation that is good at so many things, but that has made it uniquely difficult for women to be elected to federal office, she became the first major party nominee as a woman to be president and last night won the popular vote of Americans for the president.”

Minutes later, Clinton, with her husband standing behind her, said:  

“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”

Yes, but that woman will not be Hillary Clinton.  

(c) 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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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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Against odds, the stem-winder survives -- July 28, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

One thing hasn’t changed since Democrats first nominated a Clinton for president in 1992.

A national political convention is still “the ideal forum -- perhaps the only forum left – for what has proved to be a remarkably enduring form of American folk art: the political oration.” So wrote The New Yorker nearly a quarter century ago.

“In an age of sound-bites and manufactured images, it turns out, we still appreciate the real thing, the stem-winder. We’re a people that likes to orate, and to be orated at,” an unsigned “Talk of the Town” column in the magazine’s July 27, 1992 issue said.

Some of the best political speakers of the era had just spoken at Madison Square Garden, where presidential nominee Bill Clinton shared his very personal story of growing up fatherless with his hard-working mother and devoted grandparents.

“I still believe in a place called Hope,” Clinton said, extolling the simple values of his hometown.

Surprisingly, in the age of Instagram and 140-character tweets, nearly 26 million people tuned into the 2016 Democratic convention’s first night, when first lady Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders spoke, according to the Nielsen TV ratings.

That was about 3 million more viewers than watched the Republican convention’s first night, with Melania Trump. When the final numbers are in, this year’s conventions likely will have drawn more viewers than in 2012 or 2008.

Why do people still care about this ancient form of political communication?

My guess is that everybody loves a good story, and, this year especially voters are hungry for emotional connection.

Since Ronald Reagan painted rhetorical pictures of morning in America, most politicians have used political convention speeches to inspire. There’s an art to giving a speech that tugs at heartstrings and shows personal values without being cloying. There’s also an art to turning complex issues into understandable take-aways. 

People don’t want the pros and cons of the Trans-Pacific Partnership; they want When Bill Met Hillary.

Bill Clinton did not disappoint in his speech Tuesday night. Clinton made his wife’s career in politics and government sound like a love story in a movie. Fighting the knock that Hillary Clinton is a status-quo candidate, the former president said: “She’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my life.”

One of the main stories out of the Republican convention in Cleveland was Melania Trump’s speech. Unfortunately, the news was about echoes of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Trump had lifted several phrases of seemingly personal stories about family and parental values.

While most leading Republicans stayed away from Donald Trump’s convention, the presidential candidate used his acceptance speech to paint a dark picture of the state of America – and to bash Clinton.

In Philadelphia, Democrats offered a brighter view of America, waving “Love trumps hate” signs and often talking about love -- when they weren’t blasting Trump.

“We are all neighbors and we must love neighbors as ourselves,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s new running mate, said, before mocking Trump.

Vice President Joe Biden unified the raucous crowd by emphasizing the importance of the middle class, a group Biden said Trump neither understands nor empathizes with. Trump has “no clue” how to make America great, Biden said.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a rising Democratic star, said: “Patriotism is love of country, but you can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen . . . We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love.”

Michelle Obama stirred emotions with personal reflections about her family: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent, black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

“I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday night. “There has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president,” he said.

Will all the oratory matter? We’ll know in November.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Running mate's new role: attack and cuddle -- April 28, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Carly Fiorina may be the best thing to happen to Ted Cruz since Dr. Seuss.

In 2013, Cruz, an obscure senator with dreams of the White House, staged a talkathon on the Senate floor against funding the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. During the 21-hour theatrical performance, he read the good doctor’s “Green Eggs and Ham” to his little girls as a bedtime story.

The stunt gained Cruz the national attention he craved among conservatives – and the enmity of fellow senators.

Now, hoping to revive his flagging campaign, Cruz has named Fiorina – his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard -- as his running mate. After losing a string of contests to Donald J. Trump, Cruz hopes this unorthodox move will help him win Tuesday’s primary in Indiana.

Cruz in essence is asking voters to give him a second look in this Year of the Woman’s Card. Even if you don’t like me, he seemed to say Wednesday in Indianapolis, you’ll like her and then maybe you’ll like us enough.  

Fiorina, an adept public speaker, previewed her role in the campaign. She blasted Trump and Hillary Clinton as “two sides of the same coin” and “part of the system,” and she shared a snippet of a made-up song she sings with Cruz’s daughters, ages 8 and 5, on the campaign bus.

“I know two girls that I just adore. I’m so happy I can see them more,” Fiorina sang.

In the past, humanizing a candidate was a job for a candidate’s wife. Attacking the opposition was the VP’s role. Fiorina showed she can punch – and cuddle. That’s a first.

She also could be helpful in California, where she has ties and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2010. But her home is in Virginia. In 2011, she and her husband Frank bought a $6.1 million mansion on five acres with sweeping views of the Potomac in a gated community in Lorton.

Choosing a running mate used to be almost an after-thought, but that’s changed in recent years. Cruz’s early pick suggests the choice may be especially important this year.

The election is shaping up as a contest between two of the most unloved and distrusted people in America, Trump and Clinton. An appealing running mate could conceivably sway some none-of-the-above people to go to the polls.

So, besides geography, gender, age, ethnicity, ferocity, the wow factor and, yes, even qualifications to step in as president, a running mate’s favorability or comfort level with voters is a factor.

For example, if Trump were to pick John Kasich, someone who actually has experience in Washington, the choice might make Trump less scary to moderate Republicans and dubious independents who lean toward the GOP. Might.

Kasich has said, as he must at this point, that he’s not interested in being anyone’s VP and is developing his own list of running mates. 

Trump has said he won’t announce his choice until he actually wraps up the nomination. But he is dropping tantalizing hints. When a supporter, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, mentioned on CNN Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin as a possibility, Trump tweeted: “Great job and advice.”

If the election came down to Trump and Clinton in Virginia, some Bernie Sanders supporters and independents leaning Democratic might hold their noses and vote for Clinton if one of their senators, Tim Kaine or Mark Warner, was at her side.

“Kaine is Able, and Warner is Too,” read a headline in National Review a year ago.

Another hot Democratic prospect, with an eye to the Hispanic vote, is Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas. But a Clinton ally once told Politico that Tim Kaine speaks better Spanish than Castro.

While Sanders is laying off staff, Clinton has set her campaign on vetting VP candidates.

“She has told her team she cares less about ideology and personal compatibility than about picking a winner, someone who can dominate the vice-presidential debate and convince Americans that Mrs. Clinton is their best choice,” Patrick Healy of The New York Times reports.

That’s the bottom line: It’s all about winning, and who can help the most.

© 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Give second chances a chance -- March 31, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Before the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Gov. Bill Clinton denied clemency to a mentally incapacitated death-row inmate and flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution.

Back then, presidential candidates needed to show they were tough on crime.

Today, they’re tough on the criminal justice system.

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both favor criminal justice reform. Republican Ted Cruz originally supported reform but has backed off. Reform is one thing about which Donald Trump hasn’t said much.

Interestingly, though, none of the GOP presidential hopefuls in this snarling campaign called Clinton as soft on crime when she proposed ending mass incarceration, reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders and reforming mandatory sentencing laws.

A rare consensus has developed among Democrats and Republicans that the criminal justice system is, as former Attorney General Eric Holder said, broken. In the 1990s’ War on Drugs, voters wanted to lock up criminals and throw away the key. 

President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act that created longer mandatory sentences and made felonies of lesser crimes.

Now, with nearly half the inmates in federal prisons incarcerated for drug offenses at a per-inmate cost of nearly $30,000 a year, attitudes have changed. Most people think the law is unduly harsh, locks up too many people -- especially minorities -- costs too much and does not make us safer.

President Barack Obama, who has made criminal justice reform a priority, Wednesday commuted the sentences of 61 nonviolent drug offenders. This brought his total commutations to 248 -- more than the last six presidents combined, the White House said.

 Two Alabama prisoners had their sentences commuted: Ian Kavanaugh Gavin of Eight Mile and Jerome Harris Jr. of Mobile. Both were convicted of intending to distribute crack cocaine and having a firearm in their possession.

Since he has been president, Obama has commuted 92 life sentences. Among them: Dwayne Twane Walker of Charlottesville, Va., who received life for a conviction of conspiracy to distribute cocaine base.

 “The power to grant pardons and commutations…embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws,” Obama said in a letter to the prisoners who will be freed.

While he has issued only a fraction of the 10,000 clemency grants for nonviolent offenders Holder predicted last year, Obama vows to do more. The Justice Department’s pardon attorney quit earlier this year because she was frustrated with the slow pace and the backlog of clemency requests.

No one, though, expects clemency to solve our prison problems.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote on the White House blog: “Clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on the whole more fair and just.”

Reform requires legislation, and some states have taken the lead. In Congress, there’s bipartisan interest, and House Speaker Paul Ryan promises the House will take up reform sometime this year.

Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia are among cosponsors of the bipartisan sentencing reform bill in the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, favors easing mandatory sentencing laws.

Not all are convinced, however. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican from Alabama, is among those who worry that violent criminals might be freed and commit more crimes.

In the 1990s, fear of recidivism motivated the sledgehammer approach to judicial discretion, replacing it with mandatory minimum sentences.

Eight years ago, although he opposed easing sentencing laws, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which provides grants to faith-based and other groups to help prisoners train for jobs, fight substance abuse and learn other skills to reenter society.

Since 2009, more than $400 million in Second Chance grants has been distributed, and other federal programs also help offenders get on their feet. Even so, our recidivism record is appalling.

Almost half of federal offenders released in 2005 were rearrested for a new crime or for a violation of supervision conditions within eight years – most within two years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission said in a study released March 9. Of these, almost one-third were reconvicted.

The current epidemic of opioid and heroin addiction is worse than the cocaine epidemic of the 1990s. We need to stop warehousing nonviolent drug offenders and invest instead in prevention, treatment, rehab, education and recovery. We can’t afford to do anything else.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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The state of our union is . . . political -- Jan. 7, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The state of our union is strong -- unless it’s getting stronger or is the strongest ever.

Presidents from Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama have used “strong” in their State of the Union addresses to summarize the country’s current state.

It wasn’t always so simple.

On Jan. 14, 1963, President John F. Kennedy packed 66words into one sentence to assess the state of America: “And today, having witnessed in recent months a heightened respect for our national purpose and power – having seen the courageous calm of a united people in a perilous hour and having observed a steady improvement in the opportunities and well-being of our citizens – I can report to you that the state of this old but youthful Union, in the 175th year of its life, is good.”

Ah, the pre-Twitter, pre-Trump, pre-sound bite era, when reasons and context mattered and we had respect for “our national purpose.”

On Tuesday night, President Obama will give his final State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. I wish he’d take a look at Democrats and Republicans, as well as at himself, and state the obvious, “My fellow Americans, in 2016 the state of our union is . . . political.”

An election year is always political, but we’ve become resigned to deferring substantive policy moves until the next president for most of a president’s second term. The State of the Union address should be a time for the president, even one on his way out, to seek common ground and work for the public good.

Instead, political calculations rule.

Obama’s address is earlier than usual because of the primary calendar. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee four years ago, will be seated with Vice President Joe Biden on the dais behind the president. Ryan has already announced his goals for 2016.

“We have to have a conservative in the White House,” Ryan told Fox’s Sean Hannity Tuesday night. “We want a mandate election.”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will give the Republican response. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rebranded the response as the “Republican Address,” an attempt to put it on a par with the president’s remarks.

And perhaps to launch Haley into her next political phase. Haley, 43, the daughter of Indian immigrants and the nation’s youngest governor, is on the short list of potential GOP running mates.

The opposition party always picks a rising star for the response, although it’s no guarantee of greatness. In 2010, then-Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell gave the GOP response. He was later convicted on corruption charges involving gifts from a political supporter, and is appealing.

When then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine gave the 2006 response to George W. Bush, Kaine was thought a likely Democratic VP pick. That hasn’t happened, although Kaine did make it to the U.S. Senate.

In 2007, then-Sen. James Webb, Democrat of Virginia, responded to Bush. Webb quit the Senate after one term. His 2016 bid for the White House fizzled last year.

Speaker Ryan started the year by sending Obama a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature achievement, reverse the expansion of Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood.

The bill wasn’t about changing health policy; a veto was assumed. It was about how quickly a future Republican president could scrap Obamacare.

“The best way to win the election is to give people a choice,” Ryan said.

Obama also wants to show voters their political choice. He will deliver a nontraditional address with no long list of legislative priorities for the coming year, although there will be some, the White House says. Instead, he will talk about his and Democrats’ vision for the country.

Defying lame duck status, Obama rolled out modest efforts to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.

Obama expects little except opposition from the GOP-controlled Congress, but his year ahead looks like a cakewalk compared with what Bill Clinton faced in 1999.

In the midst of impeachment proceedings in the Senate, Clinton delivered a State of the Union address that lasted 77 minutes and never mentioned impeachment.

“The state of our union is strong,” Clinton said.

A year later, having weathered scandal and impeachment, Clinton declared in his final State of the Union, “My fellow Americans, the state of our union is the strongest it has ever been.”

May we survive politics in 2016 and be so lucky next year.

(C)2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

What's ahead in 2016? Your guess is as good as the experts' -- Dec. 24, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We’re on the cusp of a new year, so it must be prediction season, that magical time when we’re all authorities on the future.  

As predictions for 2016 begin to flow, the urge seems irresistible to bloviate about the presidential election even though no one – and I mean no one – knows for sure what will happen.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will be the Republican presidential nominee, and he will tap South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as his running mate, proclaims Fortune, which also predicts Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will pick Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her veep.

Really? It’s not that those are bad guesses. Rubio is the hope of many Republicans who want to dump Trump, and Haley said she’ll consider joining the GOP ticket if asked. Clinton is, well, Clinton, and Kaine represents a swing state that could be crucial.

But such scenarios assume a logical electorate – and when did the 2016 campaign become logical?

Only a year ago, as 2015 dawned and predictions proliferated, no one saw Hurricane Donald coming. Trump didn’t even jump into the race until June, although it seems he’s been in forever.

We don’t know what we don’t know about 2016.

But here’s why predictions are both beauty and beast: They exist in a judgment-free zone. In our talky age, anyone who speaks with confidence can predict with impunity.

A year ago, the writer of a predictions piece in the British newspaper the Telegraph ticked through the list of Democratic and Republican contenders and confided to his readers that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is “my personal favourite to win the nomination and the White House – although I’m probably in a minority of two in that opinion (me and Mr. Huckabee).”

OK, but why?

In its “The World in 2016” issue, The Economist confidently declares, “Hillary Clinton will be the candidate to beat in the race for the White House,” and “someone like” Rubio will win the GOP’s nod. But Clinton will probably eke out a victory in November, unless other factors intervene, the reporter opines. With that much wiggle room, it’s hard to be wrong. 

The art of looking ahead apparently approves of alliteration. The Economist says 2016 “can be summed up in three words: woes, women and wins.” The primary season will be “short and sharp.” The campaign: “cruel, costly and close.”

Most predictions are like those lists of what’s In and Out – clever opinion. Or the vague horoscopes in the morning paper -- fun but hardly definitive. 

Fortunately, some thoughtful people are weighing in. As  2015 ends, political scientist Larry Sabato and his colleagues at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics still rate the general election “a coin flip,” based on statistics and research. That’s good enough for me. I don’t need to declare an election before the voting even starts.

In two decades of studying predictions, professor Philip E. Tetlock found that a dart-throwing chimp has nearly as much accuracy in forecasting the future as so-called experts in politics, economics and journalism.  

Tetlock’s 2005 book -- “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” – deflated a lot of hot air balloons. He evaluated the accuracy of 82,361 forecasts and found that about 15 percent of the things the experts dismissed as having little or no chance of occurring actually did happen. Of the things the experts claimed surely would happen, about 27 percent did not.

Tetlock, who teaches psychology and management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, now says there are ways to improve our forecasting abilities so we can beat the chimp.

His new book, “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” written with journalist Dan Gardner, includes such techniques as keeping an open mind and gathering facts.  

We may always wish for experts, super or not. In 1980, Wharton professor J. Scott Armstrong invented the “seersucker theory.” After reviewing a dozen studies about experts and their advice, Armstrong proposed: “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers.”

When you see predictions about 2016, think of the dart-throwing chimp -- and don’t be a seer-sucker.

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Act II for voting rights -- June 27, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

“Voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declared in his Supreme Court opinion that nevertheless shredded part of the federal voting rights safety net.

By a 5-4 vote, Roberts and the four other justices nominated by Republican presidents effectively ended nearly 50 years of federal oversight on voting practices in mostly Southern states that had a history of discrimination.

The court said that times have changed and racial progress has made outdated the decades-old formula Congress used to decide which states had to submit their election law changes in advance.  Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined Roberts in the majority opinion.

You won’t be surprised that the four justices appointed by Democratic presidents saw the case, Shelby County v. Holder, much differently.

“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a stinging dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Now what? Until Tuesday, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required the states of Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Alaska to submit changes in their election laws to the federal government. Parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota were also required to do so.

Today, those states and localities no longer have to “beseech” – Roberts’ word -- the government for approval. Several states said they’d move quickly to put in place strict new voter ID laws.

Attorney General Eric Holder says the Justice Department will continue to monitor all states and to file lawsuits when questionable steps are taken. Lawsuits take years. Preclearance is a fairly quick process that puts the burden on jurisdictions to prove at the outset that their new election laws do not discriminate.  

The court challenged Congress to rewrite the law’s Section 4, which contains the formula identifying states needing preclearance. The smart money is on Congress to fail, once again, to do anything.  

If members of Congress can’t pass a farm bill or immigration legislation, and might well fight over whether the evening meal is called dinner or supper, how can they possibly agree on politically explosive standards for which states must get federal scrutiny of their election decisions?  

Yes, but…how can Congress NOT act – if the people demand it? It has happened before.

In August 1963, the March on Washington drew more than 200,000 in peaceful demonstration to the Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

After the march, King and other leaders went to the White House and talked with President John Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson about the need for bipartisan civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 eventually resulted.  

On the 50^th anniversary of the march and Dream speech, the civil rights community is planning five days of events in August in Washington Leaders say this won’t be a nostalgia trip but a call to restart the civil rights movement and to urge Congress to act on voting rights for the 21^st century.   

For the record, not everyone who has dealt with the preclearance rules has found them burdensome.

“I have generally found the process straightforward, and given the importance of voting, not onerous,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who served as Richmond’s mayor as well as lieutenant governor and governor in a state that had its share of civil rights issues.

Kaine suggested that until Congress acts, jurisdictions previously covered should continue to submit their election changes for preclearance to the Justice Department “as a sign to their own constituents that they are committed to ensuring equal voting rights.” Nice try.

But then Kaine was once a missionary.

The country is becoming more diverse, but members of Congress actually risk little politically if they fail to respond to racial diversity. The average House Republican district is 75 percent white while the average Democratic district is 51 percent white, according to the Cook Political Report. 

So here we are: Everybody agrees voting discrimination is still with us. Democrats and Republicans always say voting isn't a partisan issue. Prove it. Work together on new rules for preclearance and ensure that everybody eligible to vote can do so.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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