That is a key line from an op ed in today's New York Times by Charles Blow. The piece, titled Endangered Ryan-os, begins like this:
It’s hard to overstate just how profoundly Republicans underestimated the public’s distaste for their draconian Medicare proposal.
The title is a play on RINOs - Republicans in Name Only. Ryan-os are blind followers of what Blow considers the Wisconsin Representative's 'electoral flip-flops." The clearest example he offers is this:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to say, “I worship the ground that Paul Ryan walks on.” When the Sultan of Sadism gushes over someone, you know there’s a problem.
The column is very much worth reading. You will read the words of Steve Israel about more than 90 Republican-held Congressional districts with higher Democratic performance than that of NY 26.
But the real key is the total misunderstanding by the Republicans, led by Ryan in this case, of those of us over 50, as illustrated in a poll released this week by AARP.
Below the fold I want to focus on those results. And remember, whatever the problems with Medicare may be, Ryan's plan makes a huge mistake in attempting to split the generations, and his divide is aimed at age included as respondents in the poll, with the dividing point being those turning 65 in 2022, or still in their early 50s now.
There is a lot of polling data showing that the more people learn about the Ryan plan, the less they like it.
One is eligible for AARP at age 50. I remember the membership card arriving in the mail unsolicited some 15 years ago. Here please allow me a brief excursion from the thrust of this posting. At the 1997 reunion of the Haverford Class of 1967 (with which I started although I graduated 6 years later than most of my classmates), my classmate Chuck Hardy put us all in stitches when he announced that he thought we should again act as we did when in college and do as we did then we we received unrequested papers from large, impersonal organizations - he pulled out his AARP card and set it on fire! I am not a member of AARP, and was quite unhappy to see them support the Republican plan for Medicare Part D, which is the single biggest threat to the financial stability of Medicare.
Let's look at the results of the AARP poll, which showed
nearly half had experienced extraordinary and unexpected expenses in the previous three years; half had delayed getting medical or dental care or delayed or ceased taking medication; a quarter said that they used up all their savings; and 12 percent said that they had dropped health insurance coverage altogether.
15% of the people in NY 26 are over the age of 65. Even though the Ryan plan does not directly affect their benefits, begin to mess with benefits and you create uncertainty. If one is not sure how to pay for one's medical care, if one fears being unable to pay for medicine or to care for one's remaining teeth properly, one's quality of life is very much threatened. Medicare was intended to assuage such fears, which is why it has been such an important policy for so many - not just those elderly or approach eligibility for the program, but also their children, who often find themselves having to partially support aging parents. For many of my cohort, who delayed having children of their own, they have already experienced the double crunch of increasing support for their parents at the same time they were socked with the expenses for post-secondary education for their own offspring, expenses that have continued to expand faster than inflation, when government programs to help have been decreased at both state and federal levels. I see that also affecting some of the students I teach now, whose parents are often of an age that they could be my children, and who focus more on public institutions of higher education because of the increasing education costs at a time when they may not only have to help their own parents, but worry about having sufficient resources for their own medical and other needs in just a few decades.
Let's return to the AARP poll results:
Only a quarter expected their financial situation to improve next year, and most said that they were not too confident or not at all confident that they would have enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement years. Only 8 percent were very confident that they’d have enough money.
I am 65. I am eligible for full social security at 66. Were I to retire at the end of next school year, between pension and social security I would have the buying power of about 5/8 of my income, because those income streams would not be subject to the 7.65% of payroll taxes. I cannot afford that. Fortunately I could work without penalty and actually increase my income. But I am lucky. I have a defined benefit retirement as a public employee, and the kind of work I do - teach - is (a) transferable from my current employer, and (b) something I can still do despite my increasing years. But what if the nature of one's employment does not allow continued working? Some jobs still have mandatory retirement ages, or have demands - physical or mental - that are simply not sustainable as one approaches 70? What about those people? How many are already worried about their financial situation? How many more approaching retirement are feeling betrayed that politicians of a younger age - Ryan is only 41 - seem willing to wage what appears to be generational warfare against them?
Republicans demagogued this issue during the election. The Tea Party attacked the Democrats on Medicare - remember expressions like "keep your government hands off my Medicare"???? When the Affordable Health Care Act save $500 billion of unnecessary expenditures in Medicare, the Republicans went after it as an attack on Medicare benefits, and did very well among seniors.
You might want to look at the data at this site (and you will have to click to enlarge sufficiently to see). Republicans won those over the age of 50 by 58% to 42%, and those voters made up 34% of the total electorate. Bring those numbers merely level is a 16% switch among what was 1/3 of the electorate, or a 5+% switch in the direction of the Democrats. The overall Republican advantage for the House was +8% Republican, meaning just that switch among seniors wipes out a good portion of the Republican margin, even before the overall shape of the electorate is taken into account - remember, with Obama at the top of the ticket seniors will make up a lesser portion the overall turnout, with increases most skewed towards groups that favor Democrats - Blacks, Hispanics, young people.
Right now Republicans are desperately attempting to change the messaging. But they still don't get it. Sen. Mitch McConnell has said that Republicans in the Senate will not allow the debt ceiling to be increased without cuts to Medicare. If the Democrats hold the line on no cuts to benefits, I suspect McConnell's position can not be defended by messaging, even with the help of Fox News and too many among the conventional wisdom of inside the Beltway.
I am increasingly a fan of the ability of Charles Blow to put a finger on the pulse of the nation.
I began this piece with a title, a key line from his penultimate paragraph.
Let me finish with the rest of his words, his final paragraph. But only after I note this: send this column to every Democratic member of the House and Senate, and to all Democratic challengers to incumbent Republicans or contending for open seats. This issue potentially can wipe out many of those who are so obstructionist on so many issues.
And now, the final words from Blow:
Ryan is known as a numbers guy, but numbers can be cold comfort. People don’t quantify the quality of their lives by the money they save or the money the government saved on them, but by the moments they savor. When dread creeps into the spaces where those moments should be, politicians pay a price at the polls.