Seniors Voted Overwhelmingly for Anti-Social Security Candidates...What went wrong?

[jtown1123]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44802.html

Did Republican lies about death panels and slashing Medicare benefits (untrue, untrue, untrue) have an impact on the senior vote? How else can we explain anti-Social Security and Medicare candidates receiving support from seniors?

[MindandSoul]

1. They bought the idea that "socialism" and "communism" were the same thing!

[elocs]

2. Perception is everything and they believed the emotional lies over the reasoned facts.

Democrats need to gain control of the message and the marketing and not allow the Republicans to define them, define the terms of the debate which always places the Democrats on the defensive.

[jtown1123]

16. Couldn't agree with you more! We always enter the debate on the defensive

[matt819]

3. Repeat after me

The people are stupid.

I know that doesn't contribute much to the dialog, but this has been demonstrated time and again. People - and an increasing number, it seems - are perfectly happy to vote against their own best interests.

[Ikonoklast]

4. They are the "Pull up the ladder!" contingent.

They feel that anyone coming up behind them will take away from their Social Security and Medicare benefits, knowing that as current recipients they most likely would be grandfathered in.


It's the "Fuck you, I've got mine, Jack." school of thought.

[NC_Nurse]

7. Exactly.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Oldness?

:shrug:

[DURHAM D]

6. What went wrong? One word - MESSAGING

[ladjf]

8. It makes to sense to me. We must be living in a negative Universe. nt

[Paper Roses]

9. Geeze, I'm a Senior and lots of my friends are. None of us did

anything this stupid. Are you sure this has been correctly interpreted? Maybe some of the candidates running were just off the wall. I doubt there is an old timer anywhere that wants to be rid of S.S. and Medicare. There has to be something else here.

[glinda]

11. NEVER got the message. Lots of seniors do not have internet, watch cable news, etc....

For pete's sake! I only know 1 senior in and around our family of about 50 who uses a computer or watches reliable news programs that even mention where a certain candidate stands!

[dmosh42]

10. Having lived in Florida 'senior' communities for twelve years...

it's a combination of what's been said here already. I found most other seniors to be very inflexible in their logic, many are just dumb, and many subscribe to that good old American hate and racism thing, due to their religious beliefs, if you can fathom that. The worst were the ones who attended the religious services, because most were ready to bomb the shit out of the rest of the world, and were quite ready to send everyone's grandkids off to endless wars. I could never figure them out, and naturally, they are overwhelmingly Republicans. Needless to say, I moved out of that state, and feel better for it.

[enough]

12. Pure and simple, they were subjected to an all-out blanket campaign of lies.

I think a lot of older people just cannot believe that something that is printed in large letters with nice looking color photos, or something that comes across the TV or airwaves is actually a blatant LIE.

Seniors were told over and over that Obamacare had ruined medicare, or as the lady said in the pharmacy the other day "He stole my medicare."

I have never seen anything like the blatant outrageous absolutely shameless fear-mongering LYING that went on in our area during this election -- at all levels, state, federal, local. And all of it was targeted at Seniors.

It was pure fear, not generational hatred, racism, selfishness, etc. It was fear.

[RZM]

13. There's plenty of reasons

Some good ones have already been mentioned on this thread, but I think there's more. One is that some people get more conservative as they get older. Plenty of people don't, but some do. I've seen it happen before my eyes in my own family. To be fair, it can also work the other way, as I also saw my late grandfather become a firebrand liberal at the very end of his life, despite being a Republican voter until around the beginning of the W era.

Another related factor is of course race. While nobody's yet said it on this thread, we're talking about older white people here, because as far as I know, seniors of color (especially African-Americans) still vote Dem overwhelmingly. Obviously, some seniors who grew up in a bygone era carry with them prejudices of that era and associate today's Dems with favoring minorities. Another related concept is of course PC, which has made most of its gains when many of today's seniors were already adults and thus many were never on board to begin with and have never quite understood what it's there for and why it's grown.

Also, witness the title of this recently locked thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9512502

IMO, this kind of thinking and language hurts the left among whites . . . and not just older whites either (Tim Wise's recent 'open letter' and the Village Voice's 'lost their minds' piece are two more recent examples). Yes I know, few seniors probably read the Village Voice or even know who Tim Wise is, but they do have a sense that some on the left are hostile to them as whites and to make broad-brush negative racial statements is a sure way to hamper inroads into any community. Part of the problem is of course the right is more than happy to trumpet this kind of stuff from the rooftops, even though it doesn't necessarily reflect the views of most on the left (let alone most Dems), because they know how valuable it can be for them. But we can't blame the right entirely, because some general anti-white stuff definitely does originate within the left

LOL, I know I'm being long-winded here, but the simplest answer as to why people vote against their economic interests is the logical one -- they also cast their vote with non-economic issues and concerns in mind as well.

[dragonlady]

14. They don't understand that social security could ever end

It has been there since they were born and they feel it is as immutable as the Constitution or the air they breathe or something. With a little more information one knows that it's just a creation of statute and could certainly be changed or ended outright.

[David__77]

15. Well, it's not because they want to cut Social Security.

The minute the Republicans start talking - and they WILL start talking - about "entitlement reform," you will see this segment's Republican support start to dissipate.

Unfortunately, the mixture of austerity measures the Democrats have pushed (alongside some positive measures) made it impossible for Democrats to run on an explicitly "pro-health care" platform. Stating unequivocally that the Democratic Party is opposed to messing with retirement benefits or denying full COLAs would be a good starting point! Too late for the midterm though.

[postatomic]

17. Nothing

Obama’s 2008 campaign didn’t much improve Democratic fortunes with the group. Obama has never been strong with older voters — and he didn’t need them to win. He lost the over-65 vote by 8 points. But rank-and-file congressional Democrats do need seniors to win — especially in nonpresidential years when younger and minority voters don’t turn out as reliably. In close races i which Democrats prevailed, it was often with the support of the senior vote. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), narrowly reelected, won seniors decisively by an 11-point margin.

It's become a larger voting block. People living longer and such. And two years of no increase in SS benefits was probably all most seniors needed to hear the man behind the curtain tell them what to do. It really sucks that the dems took such a hard hit but I can only hope that the lesson has been learned and two years from now we can shift things back a bit.

[Cal33]

18. What went wrong? The Republicans own 90% of the news media

and have been brain-washing the public for decades. The less bright
ones, of course, have swallowed the B.S. hook, line and sinker.

I think Democrats should pay more attention to going into the news
media business and compete with the Republicans. Dems. should try
to even things up a bit. It's high time.

[newfie11]

19. how do they know seniors voted this way

My husband,myself, and all our friends voted Democrat. No one ever polled any of us. We have only cell phones and were never called.

[Peregrine Took]

20. Many seniors I know listen all day to AM radio. They are definitely low info

voters, as a result.

I guess the whole Obama thing was just too much for them to swallow but they won't admit it. National elections are their last chance to have a "say" in the way things are run and they want to return to the old days they remember.