Scott: Take the supposed news article below as an opinion panic on the newspage from NYT. There is an out and out revenge threat against Democrats who break ranks on this issue. That is how big this one is. If AARP gets away with this the Democrats could be crippled in a major way. The 'greatest generation' FDR worshippers are dieing day by day. AARP until this past week was a device to mobilize newly minted seniors as a Democratic interest group. If the old start voting class and culture instead of their age, the Democrats may be looking at a generation in the wilderness.
Look at the 90's again. Two things happened. Without the Cold War and race as issues a fair number of Reagan Democrats were prepared to become metroplex Democrats - call them soccer moms, suburban lifestyle libertarians,gypsy moths,whatever - the burbs of the bicoastal and Chicago metroplex broke Democratic. In reverse the cultural Democrats of Dixie and the rural areas who had been voting Republican with increasing regularity for President since Nixon broke into straight ticket GOP for Congress and lower offices. So the White House goes Democratic and the House goes Republican. Barrone's 50--50 nation.
Thus in turn elections that are decided on turnout. However 50-50 turnout elections presume that the coalitions are locked in stone. It also presumes that voters cannot overcome their hierarchy of values. Thus one may be a staunch union member [Democrat] while being a hunter,gun owner, pro-life [Republican]. Which issue is foremost in peoples minds has major voting significance. For the non-black portion of the bottom half economically [blacks being as close to 100% Democratic as the exit polls allow you to track] when they vote their wallets they are Democrats and when they vote their values they are republican. Reverse this for the upper half. Makes campaigning skitz on both sides.
The elderly have tended to be a hot button group. They tend to vote their birth date rather than economics or values. Part of this is an age cohort who grew up with FDR as God. Part of this is the Social Security/Medicare 3rd rail. The age cohort issue cures itself via time and funerals. The dinosaurs do die. If AARP serves as a good housekeeping seal of approval the elderly could now split on other issues. Plus to the GOP but minus to the more absolute economic conservatives.
The price of AARP in the tent is abandoning any radical revision of Social Security and Medicare. The GOP will now be the party of purely incremental change on such issues,not root and branch revisions. This will piss our Forbes and libertarian friends off fiercely. However the best change for change in the US is always salami tactics. US public takes change better in small doses.
An 800-Pound Gorilla Changes Partners Over Medicare
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 23, 2003
WASHINGTON — With 35 million members — more than one-tenth the population of the United States — AARP, the organization representing retirees, has long been the 800-pound gorilla in the Medicare prescription drug debate. So when the group endorsed a Republican-backed Medicare bill last week, Democrats reacted with anger and alarm.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader in the House, complained that AARP was "in the pocket" of Republicans, and suggested that the group, which also sells insurance to its members, had a financial conflict of interest. Eighty-five House Democrats announced they would either resign from AARP, or refuse to join.
But behind all the Democratic barbs at the organization itself is a seismic political shift that represents a broader threat to the party's appeal to older Americans.
For decades, older Americans were reliable, and crucial, Democratic voters. As recently as last year, Senator Trent Lott, the former Senate Republican leader from Mississippi, derided AARP as a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the Democratic Party.
Yet today's older Americans are increasingly voting Republican, a trend that experts say will likely continue as the baby boomers age and the generation of Eisenhower replaces the generation of F.D.R.
"The oldest old are very Democratic, and they don't like the stance AARP has taken," said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "But if you look at the coming wave of seniors, they are not monolithic from a partisan perspective. The organization can't just represent the oldest old Democrats, and I think that's what they are getting caught in the cross-hairs of."
Before making their endorsement, AARP officials conducted polls and focus groups of Americans 45 and older. The responses, they said, suggested support for a bill that would help the indigent and encourage employers to continue to provide the drug benefits they already offer.
Still, surveys of people eligible for Medicare, those 65 and older, have repeatedly found what Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, calls "a big expectation gap" between what retirees believe the prescription drug bill offers and the limited coverage it actually affords. But in the end, with Congress willing to spend $400 billion over 10 years, on the first-ever Medicare drug benefit for retirees, AARP decided an imperfect bill was better than no bill at all.
"Well, we represent a constituency that doesn't have that much time to wait," said John Rother, AARP's chief lobbyist. "There was no prospect in the short term that we were going to get a better bill, and there was a real risk that we could end up with a worse bill."
The endorsement was a huge victory for Republicans, but it came at a price: the AARP demanded bigger subsidies for low-income people, and incentives for employers to continue offering drug benefits. On Friday, Senator Don Nickles, the Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was asked what he thought of the endorsement.
"Well," Mr. Nickles replied dryly, "I think it cost a lot."
Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare for the first President Bush, said the cost to Republicans would be well worth it. "It provides some cover politically to members of Congress who may be on the fence," she said.
But AARP's critics say its executive director, William D. Novelli, a former public relations man who took the helm of the organization two years ago, is playing a dangerous game by aligning himself so closely with Republicans.
Mr. Novelli, who wrote a forward to a book by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, defended himself last week against Democratic claims that he was a "closet Republican."
"We intend to mend fences as soon as this is over," Mr. Novelli said of the Democrats on Friday.
The fundamental debate over Medicare is whether the program should be administered privately, as many Republicans prefer, or by the government, the preference of Democrats and the AARP. By promoting a Republican-backed bill, the AARP is assisting a political party whose long-term goals are at odds with its own.
Democrats say they are not worried about what the AARP switch will mean at the polls; they argue that the group's leadership is out of sync with its membership, and say voting against the organization will not hurt them.
"The threat of AARP has always been on two fronts: their ability to mobilize members at a local level, and their Good Housekeeping Seal," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and an opponent of the bill. "This notion that if you vote against it, you're going to have the AARP membership up in arms? I've not gotten a single phone call telling me that I'm wrong."
Mr. Altman, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, says it is too early to tell if the bill will be as unpopular with retirees as Democrats suggest. Should that happen, it would not be the first time. In the late 1980's, Congress, with AARP support, passed a law giving catastrophic health coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. But the program included an income-tax surcharge that enraged some vocal older Americans and was repealed.
The defining moment of that debate came in Chicago, in 1989, when a mob of angry retirees surrounded Representative Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and pounded on his car. The Chicago Tribune published a photograph of an elderly demonstrator sprawled across the hood of the congressman's sedan — an image that Representative Janice D. Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat and opponent of the Medicare bill, brought to the House chamber last week.
"This is a friendly warning," Ms. Schakowsky said she told her colleagues. "If you vote for this bill, I suggest you go get your running shoes, because this is not going to be popular with seniors."
posted by scott 7:36 AM