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Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly takes note of The Gray Revolt, the move away from Donald Trump by voters over age 65, whose previous support for him declined in the latest nationwide poll showing citizens overall favor Biden by 14 percentage points.
What is even more significant than the topline number, however, is that Trump’s biggest decline came from seniors, where Biden leads by 27 points (62-35). While that is dramatic, other national and state polls have shown Biden with a sizable lead among seniors. That is a huge reversal from 2016 when Trump won with voters who were over 65 by seven points.
According to conventional wisdom, the reason for Trump’s declining support among seniors is his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. The president ignored the issue initially, while some of his Republican colleagues suggested that older Americans, who are more likely to die if they contract COVID-19, can be sacrificed in order to jump-start the economy. In July and August 2020, 11 nursing home residents died every hour nationally, according to a recent congressional report co-authored by Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa). [...]
But Biden has actually held an advantage among seniors since last summer, indicating that the coronavirus isn’t the only factor. To understand why, it is helpful to remember that the group we refer to as “seniors” can actually be broken down into subsets, as Pew Research did back in 2012.
Those who turned 18 during the Nixon administration – a segment of older Baby Boomers – have tended to be slightly more Democratic than average in their voting. Those who came of age during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson years – mostly members of the Silent generation and the very oldest of the Baby Boomers –have tended to be more Republican than the average.
As the number of seniors who came of age during the Eisenhower years fades, the slightly more Democratic Boomers are filling the ranks, adding 10,000 people to the 65+ age group per day. In other words, the senior cohort that voted for Trump in 2016 has changed dramatically. That alone could explain why Biden held a lead of about five points initially.
But Biden’s lead has continued to grow. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2018—Sen. Susan Collins, Liar:
Sen. Susan Collins is lying.
Let's just make that clear, because Susan Collins should not be under the impression that anyone, anywhere is buying onto her third man theory, the insulting, cowardly and toxic theory that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was definitely assaulted when she was fifteen years old and that Sen. Susan Collins "believes" her, but Collins also believes that Dr. Ford is completely mistaken about the face she saw inches from hers, as a hand covered her mouth to keep her from screaming and a drunken friend turned up the radio so that other party-goers would not hear her attempts to escape. Susan Collins says she "believes" all parts of Dr. Ford's testimony except for her absolute "100%" certainty that her assailant was a young Brett Kavanaugh. Instead, Collins "believes" Kavanaugh when he said, in evasive and rage-fueled testimony, that he didn't do it–so it must have been someone else.
Collins is lying, and everybody knows it. What Susan Collins means is that she believes Brett Kavanaugh is currently too Important to have done it. Too central to the conservative cause; too much a celebrity. He has grown from a drunken lout of a boy to a man with powerful friends. He has appeared on television, and in the papers, and is the latest golden child of a movement devoted to unthreading the laws and restitching them into a hammock for the ruling class. Collins has no problem believing that Dr. Ford correctly described Brett Kavanaugh's social circle–his drinking friends. She would have no hesitating in believing Dr. Ford if Dr. Ford had named any of those other names as her assaulter. But Brett Kavanaugh is simply too important to the moment to have done it–he denied it on the grandest of possible stages, after all–and therefore he did not.