Trump Gambled With the Lives of Senior Citizens and Now Wants to Gamble With the Lives of School Children

Part of the reason for Donald Trump's decline in the polls has been due to white senior citizens waking to the reality that Trump puts reopening the economy - and his reelection chances - ahead of the very lives of older voters. Trump truly doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but himself and being reelected so as not to be remembered by history as a "loser." Now Trump and his anti-public school maven Betsy DeVos - perhaps the worse Secretary of Education ever - want to gamble with the lives of school children and teachers through a push to reopen schools no matter the risk involved.  It is ONLY about Trump and his reelection hopes.  The irony is that the push to reopen schools comes even as Texas' governor - a Trump bootlicker of the highest magnitude - suggests that Texas may need to consider locking down again after is premature reopening to appease Trump's demands.   Sadly, Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who represents a clear and present danger to the lives of A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's efforts to endanger school children and school faculty members alike.  Here are column highlights:

Two weeks ago, I asked Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, what a functioning Department of Education would be doing to prepare the country to reopen schools in the fall.

“A functioning Department of Education would have been getting groups of superintendents and principals and unions and others together from the middle of March,” she told me. It would have created a clearinghouse of best practices for maintaining grab-and-go lunch programs and online education. By mid-April it would have convened experts to figure out how to reopen schools safely, and offered grants to schools trying different models.

“None of that has happened,” said Weingarten. “Zero.”

Instead, Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda.

While doing nothing to curb the wildfire spread of the coronavirus, he has demanded that schools reopen and threatened to cut off funding for those that don’t. On Wednesday, he tweeted that the guidelines for reopening schools from his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “very tough & expensive,” adding, “I will be meeting with them!!!” Mike Pence then suggested that the guidelines would be revised. On Thursday the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield, said they wouldn’t be, but later, seeming to give into pressure, said the guidelines should be seen as recommendations, not requirements.

Also on Thursday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gestured toward a plan of coronavirus-inspired school choice that would punish public schools that don’t fully reopen. Without offering details, she said families could take the federal money spent at these schools and use it elsewhere. She’s long wanted to give public money to private schools; perhaps she thinks this coronavirus has given her the chance.

When I spoke to Weingarten again on Thursday, she wasn’t worried that Trump and DeVos would be able to follow through on their threats; they can’t redirect the funds without Congress. But with their crude attempts at coercion, they’ve politicized school reopening just as Trump politicized mask-wearing and hydroxychloroquine.

At the end of June, the American Federation of Teachers surveyed its members and found a broad willingness to return to the classroom. Two-thirds of respondents said school buildings should reopen in some capacity, and 76 percent said they’d be comfortable being in school with the proper safeguards. But after Trump began ranting about schools, Weingarten started hearing from teachers who were scared that reopening would be done rashly.

So as Trump tries to turn school reopenings into part of his culture war, Weingarten fears “a huge brain drain of people not willing to be in schools anymore.”

[H]ybrid schedules are being adopted all over the country — and grim as they are, they might turn out to be too optimistic, because they depend on the virus being somewhat contained. Palm Beach, Fla., just announced that schools there won’t open at all. Other districts in hard-hit areas will likely follow suit.

So far, the results of so-called “remote learning” — a term I dislike, since it presumes that learning is happening — have been terrible for students, especially disadvantaged ones. The fallout for many parents’ financial prospects and mental health is catastrophic. And part-time schooling is likely to significantly amplify educational inequalities that are already enormous.

This is almost certainly not why Trump is eager to have school resume. Rather, school closures and staggered schedules are a crushing weight on the economy. To millions of parents, they’re an intimate daily reminder that the president’s incompetence has ruined our lives. But to open schools in a reasonable way, the government needs to do two things: control the pandemic, as most other developed countries have done, and give schools money to adapt. This administration has so far failed to do either.

And now the president’s interference with the C.D.C. has made things worse.

The hybrid model that many large school districts are adopting is meant to limit the number of people whom teachers and students are exposed to. But Elliot Haspel, author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It,” points out that if kids disperse to various kinds of child care when they aren’t in school, they could end up being exposed to more people than they would be in a regular classroom.

“It’s a nightmare,” he told me. “I think we’re going to have significantly more harm to children and to families pursuing a staggered schedule approach, particularly to elementary school students.”

But Trump’s interference means that now no departure from the current C.D.C. guidelines will be seen as credible outside of MAGAland. “The recklessness has made people distrust anything that they say because they have downplayed the virus from the beginning,” said Weingarten.

This [Trump] is a president with negative credibility. The more Trump demands that schools open, the more people who’ve paid close attention to him will fear they all must remain closed. 

Sadly, the current occupant of the White House cares nothing about anyone but himself.  Whites - especially evangelicals - who support him are equally selfish yet fail to grasps that Trump's appeals to their racism and/or religious based hate and extremism masks the reality that Trump doesn't care if they - or their children - live or die. 

Trump Faces Mounting Defections From Older White Voters

With the Covid-19 pandemic worsening in the USA - hence why Americans are banned from traveling to European nations - one wants to find something positive in the news.  The above headline caught my eye since Donald Trump and America's horrifically botched response to the pandemic are irreversibly linked to one another.  Between lies and denials and the total failure of any coordinated federal response Trump made a terrible situation far, far worse as did his boot-licking supporters in the Republican Party such as the governors of Florida and Texas who rushed to reopen their states' businesses over the advice of medical experts in the hope of reviving the economy and Trump's chances of reelection.  Both states now face a crisis thanks to such failed leadership. The irony is that the GOP's most staunch suppers - older white voters - are among those most at risk from the pandemic.  Thankfully, many of this demographic have been paying attention and belatedly realized that neither Trump nor the GOP are their friends. Indeed, fear of death from the virus has - no pun intended - trumped the groups' all too prevalent racism and religious extremism.  The welcome result is that Trump is seeing his support hemorrhaging within this demographic.  A piece in the New York Times looks ate the situation.  What I find remarkable is that none of these voters should have been surprised by Trump's failure of leadership or moral bankruptcy when they pulled the lever for him in 2016.  As for those still supporting Trump, I suspect that if they were honest with themselves and others, it's racism and/or Christofascist leanings that are keeping them loyal to Trump.  This election is truly a choice between morality and immorality. Here are excerpts:

Clifford Wagner, an 80-year-old Republican in Tucson, Ariz., never cared for President Trump.

He supported Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential primary race and cast a protest vote in the general election for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee. An Air Force veteran, Mr. Wagner described the Trump presidency as a mortifying experience: His friends in Europe and Japan tell him the United States has become “the laughingstock of the world.”

This year, Mr. Wagner said he would register his opposition to Mr. Trump more emphatically than he did in 2016. He plans to vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, and hopes the election is a ruinous one for the Republican Party.

“I’m a Christian, and I do not believe in the hateful, racist, bigoted speech that the president uses,” Mr. Wagner said, adding, “As much as I never thought I’d say this, I hope we get a Democratic president, a Democratic-controlled Senate and maintain a Democratic-controlled House.”

Mr. Wagner is part of one of the most important maverick voting groups in the 2020 general election: conservative-leaning seniors who have soured on the Republican Party over the past four years.

Republican presidential candidates typically carry older voters by solid margins . . . . Today, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are tied among seniors, according to a poll of registered voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. And in the six most important battleground states, Mr. Biden has established a clear upper hand, leading Mr. Trump by six percentage points among the oldest voters and nearly matching the president’s support among whites in that age group.

Mr. Trump’s presidency has been a trying experience for many of these voters, some of whom are now so frustrated and disillusioned that they are preparing to take the drastic step of supporting a Democrat.

The grievances of these defecting seniors are familiar, most or all of them shared by their younger peers. But these voters often express themselves with a particularly sharp kind of dismay and disappointment. They see Mr. Trump as coarse and disrespectful, divisive to his core and failing persistently to comport himself with the dignity of the other presidents that they have observed for more than half a century. The Times poll also found that most seniors disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of race relations and of the protests after the death of George Floyd.

And as the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep the country, putting older Americans at particular risk, these voters feel a special kind of frustration and betrayal with Mr. Trump’s ineffective leadership and often-blasé public comments about the crisis.

In The Times poll, seniors in the battleground states disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic by seven points, 52 percent to 45 percent. By a 26-point margin, this group said the federal government should prioritize containing the pandemic over reopening the economy.

Former Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida, a 40-year-old Republican deeply versed in the politics of the retiree-rich swing state, said many seniors were disturbed by important aspects of Mr. Trump’s record and found Mr. Biden a mild and respectable alternative who did not inspire the same antipathy on the right that Mrs. Clinton did in 2016.

Mr. Trump’s ineffective response to the coronavirus weighed on the thinking of many older voters surveyed in the poll, including Patrick Mallon, 73, a retired information technology specialist in Battle Creek, Mich.

The pandemic set Mr. Mallon firmly against Mr. Trump’s re-election. “The main reason is Donald Trump saying, ‘Don’t wear a mask, this thing is going to go away, we can have large gatherings,’” he said. “Everything he says is incorrect and dangerous to the country.”

Nonwhite seniors in the battleground states currently support Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a huge margin, 65 percent to 25 percent. Even among some seniors supportive of Mr. Trump, however, there is an undercurrent of unease about the way he approaches the presidency.

At the moment, Mr. Trump’s unpopularity with older voters appears to be hindering other Republicans in states including Arizona and Michigan.

Gayle Craven, 80, of High Point, N.C., said that while she was a registered Republican, she had not voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and would reject him again this year. She said she saw Mr. Biden as an “honest man.”

Again, no one should be surprised by Trump's failures in leadership or his grotesque immorality. It was all on open display prior to the 2016 election.  The Access Hollywood tape made Trump's immorality all to visible to anyone who wasn't a racist first and foremost.

Trump's Incompetence is Alienating Older Voters

I have long been baffled by the support older voters tend to give to the GOP - a party that consistently wants to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  The only explanation is that GOP appeals to racism and religion have for years duped many seniors into voting against their own best interests.  Now, Donald Trump's incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic may be changing this blind loyalty to the GOP and could cause Republicans a difficult time in November.  If this happens, it will be long overdue in my view.  A column in the Washington Post looks at what may be a critical defection from the GOP base that, with luck, will impact not only Trump but also his enablers and sycophants within the Republican Party.  Here are column highlights: 

One of the most durable political assets that Republicans have enjoyed throughout the 21st century is their edge among Americans 65 and older, who tend to turn out at the polls more reliably any other group.

But with President Trump’s inept and erratic handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he is rapidly losing support among the age group most vulnerable to its ravages — which is a big warning sign to Republicans as they look to the fall. Trump has also been showing slippage in support among the next-oldest cohort, those 55 and older.

The shift has been showing up in a string of recent polls, reportedly including those that have been conducted by Trump’s own campaign. One of the most striking is a survey of 44 battleground House districts done by Democratic pollster Geoff Garin during the second week of May.

In those districts, voters over 65 said they had supported Trump in 2016 by a 22-point margin — 58 percent to 36 percent.

But this year, those same respondents are practically evenly divided, with 47 percent saying they are planning to vote for the president and 43 percent expressing an intention to cast their ballots for former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. That is an enormous net swing of 18 percentage points.

“They’re in real trouble if they can’t count on a strong showing with seniors,” said Garin, who did the survey for a client he declined to name. “Trump is blowing what had become an important Republican advantage.”

Not since Al Gore in 2000 has a Democratic presidential candidate won the 65-and-over vote.

Practically from the outset of the pandemic, Republicans have been sending a message to older Americans, with varying degrees of subtlety, that their health is not as important as that of the economy. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick actually said it out loud: “Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”

Insensitive comments aside, a bigger problem for Trump and the Republicans may be that older Americans have been paying close attention to the president’s handling of the crisis.

They are the group most attuned to television news, which means they are more likely than younger voters to have seen with their own eyes some of the more bizarre things Trump has done, such as entertaining the possibility that ingesting bleach could cure covid-19. They know, though Trump denies it now, that he was initially dismissive of the dangers posed by the coronavirus. On a daily basis, they have seen his petulance and his blame-shifting, and heard his flat-out lies.

Older voters also have outsize political clout in some of the states that will be most critical this fall. Florida, where Biden is leading Trump in recent polls, is the most obvious example. But Arizona, where Trump suddenly finds himself struggling, is also home to a lot of retirees. Nearly 20 percent of the population of Pennsylvania, a key swing state, is 65 or older, which is the eighth-highest percentage in the country.

It would still be a stretch for Biden to carry a majority of older voters overall. But if he could make a significant dent in Trump’s margin with them, it might give the former vice president a cushion against the very real possibility that younger voters will not show up in the numbers that Democrats hope.

Much is riding, of course, on what happens as Trump and the Republicans push to reopen the country. If they move too quickly and trigger a second wave of infections, it could arrive just in time for the election. But at least one thing is certain: The age group most likely to suffer is also the one most likely to vote.

The Self-Inflicted Implosion of the GOP Brand

The post mortem of the aftermath of the Tea Party/Christofascist fueled Republican Party government shutdown continues and none of the disclosures should be deemed good news by sane Republicans, admittedly a dying breed.  And what does the Republican Party and the GOP base have to show for such reckless insanity?    Nothing.  Or at least nothing positive.  So what caused this nihilism?  Andrew Sullivan sums it up well:

The fusion of politics and religion – most prominently the fusion of the evangelical movement and the Republican party – has been one of the most damaging developments in recent American history. It has made Republicanism not the creed of realists, pragmatists and compromise but of fundamentalists – on social and foreign policy, and even fiscal matters. And once maintaining inerrant doctrine becomes more important than, you know, governing a complicated, divided society, you end up with the extremism we saw in the debt ceiling crisis. When doctrine matters more than actually doing anything practical you end up with Cruz cray-cray.  

Thankfully, most Americans seem to have been paying attention and the GOP now enjoys record breaking unfavorable ratings with many diverse demographic segments of American Society.   A Piece in the Washington Post reviews the extent of the damage.  Here are highlights (check out the piece for an amazing graphic):

Polling released this week by the Washington Post and ABC News found the GOP’s unfavorability ratings among Americans at an all-time high of 63 percent.

But a closer look at the numbers reveals that this has been accompanied by a massive collapse in 2013 of the GOP brand among core constituencies important in midterm elections: Independents, women, and seniors. The crack Post polling team has produced a new chart demonstrating that in the last year — since just before the 2012 election – there’s been a truly astonishing spike in the GOP’s unfavorable ratings among these core groups.

[T]he GOP’s unfavorable ratings have jumped 19 points among seniors, to 65 percent; 17 points among independents, to 67 percent; and 10 points among women, to 63 percent. Those are all key constituencies in midterm elections.

Observers believe that over the long term, the GOP will have to do a better job winning over college educated whites, who are an increasingly important constituency, along with young voters and minorities, in the Democratic coalition of the future. (Ron Brownstein has dubbed these groups the “coalition of the ascendant,” arguing they are increasingly important in statewide races, not just national ones.)

Among white collar whites, the GOP’s unfavorability rating has shot up by a startling 21 points, to 70 percent. Among college educated women – who may be more critical to the Dem coalition than college educated men – the spike in GOP unfavorability has been somewhat more dramatic than among women overall, jumping 15 points, to 74 percent. If this trend continues, it could fuel future Dem gains among women.

There is still plenty of time for the current political atmosphere to change, of course. But the possibility of more GOP crises and chaos governing in 2014 – which could reinforce current public impressions of the GOP – remains very real. “The Republican brand is already so damaged,” Duffy says. ”What should be a pretty successful cycle for them is deteriorating by the week.”

The sweet irony of all of this is that all of the GOP's decline in favorability has been self-inflicted thanks to the Tea Party/Christofascist elements of the GOP.

How Republican Obstructionism Could Hand Congress To Democrats

In general there is little if anything positive I can say about today's Republican Party.  And I say this as a former Republican who held a city committee seat and was a precinct chair for 8 years.  The party's embrace of ignorance and insanity is near complete and those few sane Republicans who remain (they should be on the endangered species list)  appear unable to stop the run away freight train comprised of the Christofascists and their close cousins in the Tea Party.  With luck, the extremism of the GOP will help the Democrats to not only hold control of the Senate, but also allow them to recapture the House of Representatives.  A piece in Think Progress looks at this premise.  Here are excerpts:

Why are Republicans so freaked out?  . . . .  Politico suggests the reason for the glumness is fear about the political fallout from the GOP’s unyielding, nihilistic approach to governance on issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. That problem may be far worse than they imagine. A close scrutiny of the data reveals several demographic weak points that the current wave of Republican crazy could activate, leading to the outcome they dread the most: Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Start with minorities. It’s not well-known, but Republicans in 2010 benefited not only from relatively low minority turnout (standard for an off-year election) but also from relatively low minority support for Democratic candidates.
If minorities snap back to 77-22 Democratic support as a consequence of Republican misbehavior, and the expected 2 percentage point increase in the share of minority voters from population trends emerges, then the Republican 6.8 percentage point margin in 2010 will be immediately sliced in half. And if the minority vote goes even stronger for the Democrats, reaching 2012 levels, that would eliminate about three-quarters of the Republicans’ 2010 advantage all on its own.

Another demographic problem for the GOP comes from a more surprising quarter: seniors. As Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps noted in a recent memo:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare.

We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It is therefore quite plausible that the GOP will benefit far less from senior support in 2014 than in 2010. If the senior share of voters returns to normal levels (19 percent) and the Republican margin among this group drops to its post-2000 average (6 points, about where it is right now in the Democracy Corps polls) that would take care of the rest of the GOP margin from 2010, getting the Democrats slightly past the break-even point in the popular vote. 

[T]here are certainly potential avenues to shift the 2014 House vote even farther in Democrats’ direction. There is the youth vote, for example  . . . If relative minority turnout is better in 2014 than 2010, then there will be an even larger increase in minority vote share over 2010, pushing the Democrats’ margin farther toward what they need to take the House.

The conjecture may be off base but one thing is certain: striving to disenfranchise minorities and leave senior citizens to live on dry dog food as they face staggering medical bills is not the way to win votes.  And with younger voters strongly pro-gay, the GOP's blind allegiance to the Christofascist anti-gay jihad isn't helpful either.

More Seniors Are Living in Poverty; Situation Likely to Worsen

As the Republican Party continues its push nationally and at the state level to restore the income disparities of the Gilded Age, the plight of many Americans is worsening, including senior citizens who will see their plight worsen under various budget cutting proposals.   Adding to the problem is the reality that many children of seniors have likewise been buffeted financially and may be less able to care for aging parents.  It's an ugly reality but one that most Republican elected officials could care less about - hence the refusal of many Republican governors to accept Medicaid expansion.  A piece in Politico looks at the problem.  Here are highlights:

An alternative census estimate shows that more of America’s seniors than originally thought are living in poverty — and that means the poverty rate could spike under certain Medicare reforms, a new analysis finds.

The estimate, which takes into account health spending and regional cost of living, finds 1 in 7 seniors lives in poverty. It was previously thought that just 1 in 10 did.

And a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Monday breaks this poverty data down for seniors state by state — and notes that under some proposals to reform Medicare, these poverty levels would keep climbing.

Kaiser finds the supplemental measure’s poverty rates for those 65 and older are higher in every state than the rates in the official estimate.

And in 12 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, Wisconsin and Wyoming — the supplemental poverty measure for seniors is twice as high as the official estimate. In New Hampshire, the percentage of seniors in poverty is three times as high under the supplemental measure.

Kaiser’s analysis showed the supplemental measure also finds poverty hits seniors hardest in certain areas. In Washington, D.C., it shows 1 in 4 seniors lives in poverty. In California, 1 in 5 lives in poverty.

The Kaiser brief says it’s meant to provide context for the many spending proposals being tossed around — particularly those that focus on shifting costs in Medicare and paring down Social Security benefits.

America sadly continues to see far too many of its citizens as disposable trash.   It's especially ironic that the GOP which claims to support Christian values is in the forefront of throwing individuals on the trash heap.

Hate Group Attacks AARP’s Support For the "Homosexual Agenda"

There apparently are few groups that the far right elements of the GOP will not attack, including AARP.  Of course, AARP opposes the GOP push to dismantle the social safety net and to restrict Medicare funding and to dismantle Social Security.  But AARP's real sin seems to be that it doesn't treat LGBT individuals as diseased vermin and supports policies that would make the senior years of LGBT Americans more secure.  That is simply heresy to the knuckle dragging, spittle flecked "godly Christian" crowd at American Family Association, a SPLC designated hate group.  An article in Think Progress looks at the far rights war against AARP.  Here are highlights:

AARP strives to serve the interests of all people over the age of 50, and that includes members of the LGBT community. The organization has a webpage dedicated to AARP Pride, with resources related to issues like marriage equality’s legal benefits, nondiscrimination protections in nursing homes, and unique health concerns like HIV. Because of AARP’s inclusiveness, the American Family Association is specifically targeting the retirement group for contributing money to the “homosexual agenda.” AFA Executive Vice President Buddy Smith offered this warning:

SMITH: When you reach the age of a person like myself and you begin to get information from the AARP saying that they will represent you and your values and standards, you’d better be careful. This group is a very, very powerful Washington lobby, and you just may be very surprised and disappointed to see those things that they are promoting and those things they are opposing.

Be very careful that you know what your fees are going for because the AARP is not on your side. If you are a Christian and believe in Biblical values, you can pretty much count on the fact that everything that you are in favor of, the AARP is opposing.

LGBT older adults face many unique challenges, especially in regards to their very economic well-being. Because of discrimination and alienation throughout their lifetime, as well as their inability to claim partner benefits like Social Security, LGBT older adults are much more likely to be living in isolation and poverty. It makes perfect sense that AARP would recognize that a segment of its constituency experiences particularly troubling circumstances and could use additional support. Conservatives, like AFA’s own Bryan Fischer, have long claimed that gay men die early because of HIV and other supposed consequences of “homosexual behavior,” so perhaps Smith thinks AARP should be a straights-only organization because he believes it already is.  If AARP is supporting the “homosexual agenda,” then that agenda is merely survival.

Is Paul Ryan Dragging Romney Downward?

The GOP base was in near orgasm frenzy when Mitt Romney tapped Paul Ryan to be his VP running mate.  They believed that Ryan would fire up the party base and allow for a solid conservative agenda to be presented to the nation.  Well, it seems that outside of those gathered around the GOP Kool-Aid dispenser, Ryan is having a far different impact than envisioned.  In fact, there is some indication that in key swing states, Ryan and his proposals for Medicare are driving voters into the waiting arms of Barack Obama.  Personally, I'm thrilled because I see Ryan as the antithesis of what a caring Christian ought to be in terms of supporting a safety net for those less fortunate.  It may be Mitt Romney who made the infamous statement about the 47%, but Ryan seems to really, really believe exactly what Romney was dumb enough to say out loud.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post piece that looks at Ryan's likely toxicity:

Voters in three critical swing states broadly oppose the far-reaching changes to Medicare ­associated with the Republican presidential ticket and, by big margins, prefer President Obama to handle the issue, according to new state polls by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

For seniors in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Medicare rivals the economy as a top voting issue. And by majorities topping 70 percent, seniors say they prefer to keep Medicare as a program with guaranteed benefits, rather than moving to a system in which the government gives recipients fixed payments to buy coverage from private insurers or traditional Medicare, as Romney advocates.  Generally, the more voters focus on Medicare, the more likely they are to support Obama’s bid for reelection.

The future of Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled, has become a flash point in the campaign since Romney’s selection last month of Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, as his running mate. The choice of Ryan — who wrote a proposal that would move Medicare toward vouchers as part of an overall attempt to curb the deficit — is considered a bold and politically risky move, given Medicare’s popularity.   Now, the challenges for Romney in the aftermath of the Ryan selection are becoming clear.

[V]oter distaste for a Ryan-like plan may insulate Obama from the political fallout. It appears that Medicare may have become a winning issue — for Obama.  In Virginia, Cheryl Schaffer, 64, said she will vote for Obama in part because of his differences with Romney on Medicare.  “I’m hoping to have Medicare in six months,” said Schaffer, a Richmond retiree. “I don’t like what Romney is going to do to it.”

Although seniors nationwide dislike the idea of moving away from the current system, their opposition is even more pronounced in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, where both candidates have spent weeks saturating the airwaves with Medicare attack ads.

Obama hammers the Ryan plan continually, telling supporters at a campaign event in Milwaukee last Saturday that Romney and Ryan would “turn Medicare into a voucher program in order to pay for tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

This spells trouble for Romney, said Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard University who monitors public views on health-care issues.

Asked whom they trust to deal with the Medicare program, Ohio voters favor Obama over Romney by a margin of 19 percentage points. The president has a 15-point advantage on the issue in Florida and a 13-point lead on it in Virginia. In a separate national poll from the Kaiser Family ­Foundation, released Thursday, Obama’s 17-point lead over Romney on Medicare is larger than it has been across public polls all year. 

Perhaps the GOP leadership believed that the party's continued gay bashing and appeals to racism and anti-immigrant fervor would keep seniors in their column.  It would seem that the gamble isn't working as expected.

Romney Health Plan Would Cost Seniors Much More

Like just about everything else coming out of the Romney/Ryan campaign, promises to America's senior citizens that Mitt Romney's plans for health care - unlike Barack Obama's - would protect senior citizens from increased health care costs is a lie.    A study reported by the Washington Post indicates that under Romney's plan (to the extent details are known) Medicare premiums would increase as would wellness visits and prescription drug costs.  Once again, the self-styled standard bearers of religious values prove to be the biggest liars.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post story:

It has been a central campaign promise from Mitt Romney: His Medicare overhaul plan would not touch benefits for anyone older than 55.

That may not, however, be the case with the Republican presidential nominee’s other health-care proposals. A growing body of research suggests that his plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid funding would have a direct impact on the health care that seniors receive.

Repealing the health law would mean higher Medicare premiums, the Kaiser Family Foundation found in a recent analysis. Wellness visits and prescription drugs also would cost more. 

The impact could be greatest for the lowest-income seniors, who qualify for both the Medicare and Medicaid programs, and there could be a significant slowdown in federal funds available for their care.
The health-care law cuts $716 billion in Medicare spending, largely by reducing how much insurers and health-care providers get paid to manage seniors’ care. Since Medicare beneficiaries pay a percentage of the program’s overall budget, lower spending means lower premiums.

“If the Medicare savings are repealed, and the benefit enhancements are repealed, there’s a direct effect on seniors today,” said Tricia Neuman, director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Medicare Policy Project.

Repealing the health law also would have an impact on Medicare’s “doughnut hole,” the gap between Medicare’s regular and catastrophic drug coverage, in which seniors are responsible for footing the bill. The average senior who falls into this space spends $604 on prescription drugs.

The biggest change, however, may not be in Medicare at all. It could result from Romney’s planned spending reductions for approximately 6 million low-income seniors eligible for both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.  . . . . . The Romney budget would reduce Medicaid spending on current beneficiaries by more than $600 billion over the next decade, according to a recent Bloomberg Government analysis. 

Thus, it is likely that socially conservative seniors who may support Romney/Ryan for religious and racist reasons will ultimately be cutting their own throats.  Obviously, it would be ironic if their own bigotry helps to destroy them financially.  A bit of Divine justice if you will.