More than millions marching will be needed

A skeptic though I am, I was impressed by the numbers of marchers and the number of marches by (mostly) young people Saturday to protest school shootings and advocate for stricter gun laws. Washington, D.C., was the primary focus of the marchers, but demonstrations were held all around the country and in foreign countries as well. Collectively, it was quite impressive.

I hope the protesters were not naive enough to think that their demonstrations will bring about immediate change in the form of federal restrictions on gun purchases, types of combat-style weapons that can be sold to the general public, and various efforts to make schools safe from deranged killers.

Although the numbers on the streets Saturday were impressive, soles on the pavement rarely sway those who hold the reins of power in Washington, or in state capitals. To succeed in their goals, these youthful protesters — some of them survivors of school shootings — will have to take actions that will directly influence votes on the Senate and House floors. That means putting political careers on the block by voting out those who oppose "sensible gun laws." Or it will mean buying their own members of Congress, as the National Rifle Association has done for years. The second alternative will be more difficult because of the deep pockets of the gun lobby.

To their credit, some demonstrators carried signs reading "Vote Them Out." That slogan epitomizes the real key to effecting change in Washington. Changing the minds or removing from office a majority of 535 members of the House and the Senate is no easy task. It will require organizing in all 50 states and in all 435 House districts. It will also require finding and supporting qualified and appealing alternative candidates to run against incumbents who can't be swayed.

The road to success will be treacherous. I heard a Fox News commentator claim that the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are "pawns" of a powerful, secret, unnamed organization that is financing and using the naive student protesters. Some Americans will believe that.

The path the change in Washington runs through the ballot box in thousands of precincts across the country. It will take millions of dollars and years of effort to shift Congress' perspective on gun regulations.

To gun loyalists who claim that cars kill more Americans than guns every year "so why not ban cars?" I remind them of some essential flaws in their analogy:
     ° Motor vehicle deaths are almost never deliberate acts. People are killed by cars in accidents, not preplanned, malicious acts.
     ° In order to operate a motor vehicle, you must have an operator's license issued by the state, certifying that you are competent to operate the vehicle and are responsible for any damage caused by your driving of the vehicle.
      ° All vehicles must be registered with the state and must meet federal regulations to ensure the vehicles are safe and cannot be easily stolen. Visible tags must be displayed so the vehicle can be easily identifiable and traced back to the owner. Unsafe vehicles can be removed from road.
      ° States require that vehicle owners have liability insurance on the vehicle that will cover the costs of any personal injury or property damage caused by the vehicle.

I suspect that Saturday's marchers would be happy if the state and federal governments would use automobile registration and regulation as a template for improving gun safety and eliminating school shootings. As for the gun lobby's canard opposing gun registration because it will lead to "confiscation," there is no proposal to "confiscate all guns." Gun ownership is not in danger. The Second Amendment as well as the Fourth would prohibit any confiscation proposal.

A prediction about Alabama's voters

I usually don't make predictions of any kind — sports, weather or politics — but I'm going to make an exception in the case of Roy Moore of Alabama.

Please note that this is not an expression of preference. I would prefer that Moore crawl back into the hole whence he came. This is what I expect to happen, like it or not, folks.

I expect Roy Moore to be elected to the U.S. Senate by the voters of Alabama. These are the people, after all, who elected him repeatedly to be a judge and even to be the chief justice of the State Supreme Court. All of those elections took place before five women came forward to accuse him of misconduct with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. But Moore's constituency is not focused on 40-year-old molesting/harassment/pedophilia accusations.

Moore has only one thing going for him. He swears that he is a Christian and puts the Word of God before all else. That commitment is what prompted him to install a mammoth stone engraving of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court building. Federal courts ordered its removal. Moore defied the courts and was removed from office. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal, Moore defied the highest court in the land and was removed from office. All these removals and embarrassments just made him more adorable to his supporters. Critics might say that Moore is more interested in using religion for publicity and that many of his actions are not Christ-like.

And so it will go with this year's U.S. Senate election. Alabama voters will send Moore to the Senate, and the Senate will have to decide whether he should be seated. Section 5 of Article I of the Constitution provides that each legislative chamber "shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." Therefore, the Senate can refuse to seat Moore. This authority has not been exercised by the Senate in the past 150 years, but it can be used to deny Moore a seat if Alabama voters elect him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said he believes Moore's accusers, and several Senate Republican leaders have indicated they agree. Many Republicans would like to see this embarrassment go away.

If the Senate refuses to seat Moore, the Republican governor of Alabama may appoint another candidate to the Senate in his stead. This course of action will not be completed until some inevitable court challenges are settled.

Senate filibuster dead and buried

The filibuster is dead. Long live majority rule.

Senate Republican leaders tripped the switch Thursday after Democrats vowed to filibuster the confirmation of Neill Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and executed the rule that a super-majority will be required to end debate on the Senate floor.

The filibuster had been rarely used in Supreme Court nominations, but these are rare times, and Democrats had enough votes to stop the nomination with more than 40 votes pledged to force the traditional, 60-vote super-majority to end debate over the nomination. Frustrated by this barricade, Republicans vowed to destroy one of the most hallowed traditions of the Senate, the liberty to continue debate indefinitely so long as a substantial minority of senators allowed such a delay.

Republicans had a nominee in Gorsuch who was as moderate as any Republican nominee could be expected to be. He was well qualified and well respected. In an ideal world, judges like Gorsuch would be confirmed with minimal debate. But this is not an ideal world, and Democrats were united to fight the nomination. Republicans vowed to do anything to get Gorsuch seated on the Supreme Court, even if it meant tearing apart the Senate.

Democrats had some righteous indignation on their side. President Obama nominated a well-respected jurist, Merrick Garland, to replace Antonin Scalia a year ago. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the nomination, contending that the voters in the 2016 election should decide — a unique piece of illogical reasoning in the annals of American politics. Democrats argued that Republicans' refusal to even discuss Garland's nomination was even worse than a filibuster.

Democrats' record in defense of the filibuster has not been pristine. When Obama's federal court nominees languished for months because Republicans filibustered their nominations, Democratic leader Harry Reid pushed through a rule change that eliminated the filibuster in federal judgeships not including the Supreme Court.

Now the filibuster is gone, and no one knows what its demise might mean in the Senate. The hyper-partisanship in Congress can hardly get any worse, and the 60-vote cloture requirement seems quaint in an era of non-stop debate and non-stop campaigning outside the halls of Congress. The death of the filibuster might mean little in the long run. Filibusters have not been what they originally were for years now. Rarely has a senator talked non-stop for days to block legislation as was done in the first 150 years of the Senate. For years now, only the threat of a filibuster was enough to stop legislation. We had filibuster-lite, a watered down, painless blocking movement.

What is being lost, and has been lost for years, is the sense of camaraderie, of principle above party, of public interest over partisan interest. The dead filibuster is just one more symptom of the disease.

The morning after an election

The morning after has headaches aplenty to go around.

For Democrats, it's hard to find any positives in the election results. Going into Tuesday's voting, they knew the cards were stacked against them in Senate elections — an unpopular president, more seats to defend to keep control of the Senate, and an anti-incumbent mood from coast to coast. Even so, Tuesday's shellacking was worse than most analysts expected. Republicans even managed wide victory margins in races that were supposed to be close in Kentucky and Georgia.

Few people expected Democrats to retain control of the Senate. Republicans needed to win only six seats to achieve majority status. But the GOP's seven gains were more than most expected, with a few races yet to be decided.

North Carolina's Senate race was perhaps the most surprising of the lot. Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan had maintained a narrow lead in nearly every poll leading up to Tuesday's vote. Early returns had her in the lead by single-digit percentages. But Republican Thom Tillis ended up with the most votes at the end of the night. Hagan had been seen as vulnerable almost since she won the seat in 2008. Her Senate record was undistinguished, and she was closely allied with an unpopular president.

And then there was the outside money. More than $100 million was spent on this election, most of it by outside interests on both the Republican and Democratic sides. Nearly all of the advertising was negative — ads attacking Hagan for being too much like Obama or attacking Tillis for controversial laws passed by the state House that he led.

Having Republicans in charge of both chambers of Congress will bring changes, but only the naive will think partisanship will wane. President Obama can be combative, and he is likely to veto Republican legislation that comes to his desk, setting off more controversy. The GOP Congress might feel empowered to place limits on the president's ability to establish policy through executive orders and other administrative actions, creating more conflicts.

Clashes are inevitable, and the 2016 presidential elections will hang over every day of the next 104 weeks.

The election is two weeks from today, and at my house, you don't really need a calendar to know that. The imminence of the election is obvious on the television, in the mailbox and even on our home answering machine.

Yesterday, my wife retrieved a message from the answering machine from some unnamed caller who addressed her as "Virginia" — her legal name but one that no one ever calls her. He used the name twice in his message, each time with a brief, awkward pause before enunciating her name. He wanted to tell her about "cap-and-trade," a failed proposal to reduce carbon emissions by creating a global market in emissions permits. The proposal would have cost thousands of jobs, the caller said, and Sen. Kay Hagan voted for it, as if she hated jobs and wanted thousands of North Carolina residents to be unemployed. Never once did he tell "Virginia" to vote against Hagan two weeks from today. Instead, he urged her to call the senator and complain about her vote for cap-and-trade.

The caller's script was eerily similar to fliers we had received in the mail. The slick, brightly colored, over-sized fliers accused Hagan of the cap-and-trade sin and urged us to call her office and complain. Two of these fliers — similar in design and printing but different — arrived in one day.

Yesterday's caller identified himself as calling from "Crossroads GPS," a group founded by Karl Rove, George W. Bush's campaign guru. I believe the fliers also came from Rove's group, but I've thrown them away and can't remember for sure.

These intrusions into our home privacy are evidence of the tens of billions of dollars that are being spent on the North Carolina U.S. Senate campaign this year by both Democratic and Republican supporters. Some of the money is being spent in the traditional way by the candidates' campaigns and some by their respective parties, but even more is being spent by "independent" groups, which have been legalized by legislation and court decisions.

All this makes me wonder about the "opportunity cost" — a term from my two semesters of economics. Opportunity cost is simply what one forgoes in spending money. For example, if you buy a couple of $100 tickets to a rock concert, you forgo the opportunity to spend that money on other things, such as groceries or a car repair or a chair for the living room.

What is the opportunity cost of the billions of dollars being spent on this year's election campaigns? Imagine what a few hundred billion dollars could do to control Ebola in West Africa or to invest in child care for the poor or to improve America's passenger rail system or to reform public education.

One simple lesson I learned from economics (and from life) is that everything has its cost. Are we spending wisely?

Projection sees Republican-controlled Senate with N.C. Democrat winning

This is an interesting projection. It shows the Republicans regaining control of the U.S. Senate, with all the ramifications that will bring. But it also gives North Carolina's Kay Hagan a 73 percent chance of winning re-election in what has been termed a very vulnerable seat for the first-term Democrat. Even though the Republican leadership got the candidate they wanted from the party primary — Speaker of the House Thom Tillis — the Post's analysis has Hagan hanging onto her seat.

The Washington Post graphic also give readers an opportunity to look at House races around the country. These projections should be flavored with the recognition that it is still nearly six months until the election, and a lot can happen in six months.

Senate should stop stalling on treaty

Could there be any reason, other than wanting the Obama administration to fail, in Republican opposition to the new nuclear weapons treaty that President Obama is urging the Senate to ratify? Work on this treaty spans at least two presidential administrations, and one can contend that it really dates back to the Kennedy administration, which negotiated the earliest of the nuclear weapons treaties with the Soviet Union. President Reagan, although never a "dove," also was a believer in nuclear arms treaties. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, put a great deal of effort into nuclear arms treaties.

So what is the Republicans' objection? The treaty would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States and would provide for verification procedures for both sides. Neither of the former Cold War superpowers now sees the other as an imminent threat, but a negotiated reduction in weaponry is beneficial to both sides.

The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate to ratify any treaty, which means Obama needs several Republicans to achieve the 67-senator approval margin. Some Republican leaders apparently believe that failing to gain ratification will make Obama look bad, but the opposite may be true: Opposing a treaty that is in the national interest will make Republican senators look like partisan snipers who are willing to sacrifice the national interest for their own partisan gain.

Marshall wins but faces Burr next

Hand it to Elaine Marshall. She won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate by hard work and a solid record in elective office. In a few months we'll find out whether hard work and political experience are enough to unseat an incumbent Republican, Richard Burr.

Marshall got no respect from the Democratic establishment. The national party strategists didn't think she had what it takes to take on Burr. They tried to talk Bob Etheridge into the race (this was before he manhandled some rude questioners with a video camera on a Washington street), but he wasn't interested. Other "name" Democrats were reportedly asked to jump into the ring, too, but declined. Cal Cunningham, a former state senator with youthful good looks and a compelling history as an Iraq War veteran, got the national backing but finished second in the first primary. In Tuesday's primary, he was not able to turn the tables on Marshall, who used traditional political tactics to motivate and turn out voters in the low-turnout election.

Marshall has an impressive record. She cleaned up the Secretary of State's office when she took it over from Rufus Edmisten. She earned a reputation as a good administrator who ran a clean office and clean campaigns. And she even managed to toil onward in her campaign after the death of her husband, Bill Holdford of Wilson. But no one ever accused her of being dynamic, charismatic or a stem-winding speaker. She's an old-style politician who tends to win votes one at a time.

Interestingly enough, so is Burr. He's a low-key campaigner who is unassuming and not in the least "full of himself" as many politicians are. In the 30-plus years I covered political campaigns, I don't think I ever met a politician who traveled solo the way Burr did. Every candidate from gubernatorial and senatorial down to state House candidates all had a press secretary, a chief of staff, a driver, a strategist, or somebody traveling with them as they dropped in on key leaders, donors and news media. But Burr drove himself and was ready to answer questions without any whispers from any strategists or media handlers. Burr has not set the public opinion polls on fire, perhaps for that very reason. Democratic strategists see his mediocre approval ratings and think he's vulnerable, but he might just be too low key to register in polls taken a year before an election.

If Marshall loses to Burr, the national party strategists might tell N.C. Democratic primary voters, "We told you so (you shoulda voted for Cunningham)," but the problem might not be Marshall. It might be that Burr is a more formidable candidate than he appears from the Democratic side. He's a cautious, conservative candidate who is neither the darling of nor the enemy of the Tea Party wing. And he's a better campaigner than most people give him credit for — just like Marshall. Burr's secret weapon is that in this anti-incumbent year, it's better to be a Republican, the party that is not in charge of both the executive and the legislative branches of government. Working against him is the jinx attached to the seat he holds. No one has held the seat for more than one term since Sam Ervin retired. It's been an endless loop of six years for a Democrat, then six years for a Republican, then six years for a Democrats ... Burr has perhaps the best opportunity yet to end this rerun.

Secretary of state tries for Senate

Elaine Marshall, the North Carolina secretary of state, not the English professor at Barton College, is running for U.S. Senate, hoping to unseat Republican Richard Burr in the 2010 election. Since winning the secretary of state office in 1996, Marshall, a former state senator, has proven herself to be an able and innovative manager. She has had no trouble getting re-elected to her job after initially embarrassing Republican Richard Petty, who thought he could cruise through the 1996 election on the strength of his celebrity. Although her post is not widely known, Marshall has been widely acknowledged as an exemplary public servant. She upgraded services and computer technology in the secretary of state's office, dragging the entrenched, out-of-date office (thank you, Rufus Edmisten) into the computer age.

But is that good enough to beat Burr? Democrats have been salivating over the prospects of defeating Burr, who is seen as weak and vulnerable. This time, in 2010, he won't be riding the coattails of a Republican president, and his name recognition and approval ratings have been low. But Burr is an unusual and deceptive politician. He may be the most unassuming major office holder in North Carolina. During the 2004 campaign, he traveled alone, driving his own car and keeping his own schedule. There was no press secretary, no chief of staff, no chauffeur, no scheduler, no jacket-holder, no security guard and no hangers-on in his campaign swings. He was refreshingly unpolitical and straightforward. Although political advisers say this style of "retail politics" no longer works in an age of mass media and "wholesale politics," Burr seems comfortable with this simple, one-on-one style, and he is remarkably effective at it.

As good an administrator as Elaine Marshall is, she has not impressed me as an inspiring, highly motivating stump speaker. Marshall would probably make a good senator. She's smart, and she has the skills needed for persuasion and compromise. But it's hard to imagine her firing up the Democratic base for what will inevitably be a tough fight against an incumbent.

Marshall is also an at least part-time resident of Wilson. She is married to Wilson attorney Bill Holdford. Both Marshall and Holdford had been widowed.

Burr is not as easy a target as Democrats think

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper will not run against Sen. Richard Burr next year, leaving Democrats without a high-profile candidate to complete the sweep of prime state elective offices. Cooper made the announcement last week, disappointing Democrats, including (apparently) President Obama. Former Gov. Mike Easley, who is under investigation by state and federal authorities, is not likely to recover in time to challenge Burr, if he wanted to.

The assumption among Democrats is that Burr is highly vulnerable. Knocking off Burr could ensure Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Burr's approval ratings are lower than Elizabeth Dole's were at this stage of the campaign. But Burr is a deceptive and easily underestimated politician. Few people gave him much chance in 2004 against the better-known Erskine Bowles, but he won handily.

Burr is unusual among politicians in that he is incredibly unassuming. Most politicians travel with an entourage of handlers and hangers-on. I met Burr in 2004 when he was traveling alone from town to town, driving his own aging personal car and chatting with reporters and editors in an unassuming and modest way. He was well-versed on issues without being confrontational or doctrinaire. Since his election to the Senate, Burr has followed the same strategy. He spends congressional recesses traveling the state (unlike Elizabeth Dole, who seldom worked the state during her six years in office) and meeting with the small groups that he is so comfortable with and that invariably find him so appealing and impressive.

Given that methodology, it is surprising that Burr's name recognition and approval ratings are so low. Some would claim that Burr's retail politicking is an anachronism in an age of wholesale political strategies -- television commercials, direct mail and digital networking. If the Democrats can come up with a viable candidate, 2010 could be a showdown between Burr's old-style, personal and county courthouse campaigning and the wholesale campaigning used by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which early on tarred Dole as an aging, disconnected, out-of-touch and aristocratic politician.

But Democrats would be mistaken to underestimate Burr. He will not go down as easily as Dole.

Burris will take his seat after all

When it came right down to it, the Senate Democratic leadership could not say no to a duly appointed African-American.

Reports yesterday indicated that Illinois Sen.-designate Roland Burris would be seated by the U.S. Senate after all. This represents a complete reversal from previously state positions by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others. Burris, initially denied admission to The World's Greatest Deliberative Body, said Wednesday that he expects to be seated to fill out the remainder of President-elect Barack Obama's term.

Reid and others had declared that Burris would not be seated because he was appointed by disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Anyone appointed by Blago would be tainted by his alleged attempts to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder. Guilt by association is legal in politics.

I had commented on another blog about the conundrum the Burris appointment presented for both Democrats and Republicans. Politically, opposing Burris would be difficult for both political parties. But the larger issue is simply this: Burris has been legally appointed to fill the remainder of Obama's term. Blagojevich is still the governor (like it or not). He has not been impeached. He has not been convicted of any felony. He still has the authority to appoint persons to fill vacant congressional seats. Until he is impeached or convicted, you can't take that away from him.

The other element is that the Constitution gives both chambers of Congress the authority to judge the qualifications of their members. The Senate can choose to accept or reject anyone elected (or appointed) to that body, and there is even precedent for kicking members out. However, no one wants to delve into arbitrary judgments about members' qualifications.

For all these reasons, Burris will be seated. Then we'll find out whether he can win an election in 2010.

How do you turn down Caroline Kennedy?

The news today that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is interested in New York's Senate seat being vacated by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton strikes people of my generation with nostalgia and surprise. We remember Caroline as the White House pixie, the cute little blonde who rode her pony, Macaroni, on the South Lawn. After her father's assassination, Caroline disappeared behind her protective mother's curtain of privacy. She remained secluded even as she matured, married and had children. Although she is a lawyer, author, philanthropist, fund-raiser and New York socialite, her private life has remained largely hidden from the public.

But now she says she is willing to jeopardize her privacy, become a fully public figure and expose her personal life as a politician campaigning for a seat in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. Kennedy (who seems to have dropped her husband's name, which has no political resonance) is not running for a Senate seat, but she is actively seeking the appointment from the governor. If appointed, she would have to actually campaign in 2010 for the remaining two years of the term. And if she were so inclined, she would have to campaign again in 2012 for a full, six-year term.

Kennedy seems too much like her mother and too little like her father to enjoy the rough-and-tumble exposure and grueling hours of the campaign trail. I was reminded of this when I happened across a rebroadcast recently of Jackie Kennedy's 1962 tour of the White House. Jackie, who was fabulously popular and influential as first lady, comes across in the black-and-white film as painfully soft-spoken as well as smart, sophisticated and superbly graceful. But it's hard to imagine her going through what Hillary Clinton did over the past two years. It's also difficult to imagine her daughter doing it.

But the Kennedy name still has magic, even as Teddy, the last of the four Kennedy brothers, battles brain cancer as he clings to his own Senate seat. The New York seat Caroline Kennedy covets was once held by her martyred uncle, Bobby. It will be difficult to tell Caroline Kennedy, America's dream girl, that she can't have what she wants. Caroline wants the seat; she may be as qualified by education and experiences as any other candidate (though many candidates exceed her actual legislative or governing experience, which amount to zero).

It's an interesting dilemma for New York, assuming Clinton is confirmed. How can anyone turn down Caroline Kennedy for a job she might be suited to hold but might not be suited to fight for and retain?

Dole's ineffective campaign continues

The latest kerfuffle in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole and Democrat Kay Hagan revolves around Dole's commercial attacking Hagan for attending a fund-raiser at the Boston home of a man who leads something called the Godless Americans PAC. The commercial implies that Hagan is part of an atheistic conspiracy, and Hagan is suing Dole for defamation.

The commercial has been widely criticized, even by Republican strategists, as going too far. Hagan probably has little chance of winning a libel lawsuit against Dole, but her quick reaction puts voters on notice that she's pretty ticked off. Dole's commercial does have the look of a desperate maneuver. Hagan is leading in most polls, and Dole's campaign has been pitifully ineffective in countering Hagan's smoothly running campaign.

Although a number of high-profile Democrats (including Gov. Mike Easley) declined to take on Dole, who, despite partisan ties to an abysmally unpopular president, seemed headed toward a comfortable re-election, Dole has run one of the most ineffective campaigns in recent memory. First of all, she nearly disappeared from the state over the past five years, apparently feeling comfy with her Washington apartment and her decades of social connections in the capital. Unlike Sen. Richard Burr, who has spent every congressional recess making the rounds in North Carolina's cities and small towns, Dole was rarely seen in North Carolina. Some news media have questioned how many times she actually spent the night in this state since being elected.

Making matters worse, Dole didn't seem to take Hagan seriously and did not gear up her campaign until she belatedly discovered how vulnerable she is. Dole's campaign ads have not been effective in changing the impression that she has been aloof and absent, that she has followed the lead of an unpopular president and that she was more concerned with Washington, D.C., than with Washington, N.C.

Hagan has been less than an ideal candidate. She has said and done things that should cost her support among generally conservative Tar Heel voters. But the Dole campaign, such as it is, has failed to exploit those openings. Hagan has come out in support of ending secret-ballot union elections (a curtsy to the labor unions who have contributed to her campaign) and of the right of N.C. teachers and other state employees to go on strike. She also was unwilling to take a stand on Congress' recent financial bailout package until Dole had already cast her vote against it. Against a more aggressive candidate — or a more effective campaign manager — gaffes like those would be blared to the masses.

So why is Dole ignoring these legitimate differences and harping on the Godless Americans PAC? Hagan was less than astute in attending this fundraiser, which was ripe for exploitation, but it is less of an issue and less of a distinction than Hagan's indecisiveness about big issues and her kowtowing to union directives.

If Dole loses this election, which it looks like she will, she has no one to blame but herself.