Posted on 04/06/2014 3:44:29 PM PDT by Libloather
Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year.
The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race.
Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican.
That spells trouble for Democrats, who are already facing a difficult midterm climate. Doug Thornell, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman, said it is imperative to close the gap his party faced in the last midterm cycle.
“Democrats have to perform better with seniors than they did in 2010. They got shellacked with seniors in 2010. I don’t think the goal here is to win, but I definitely think the goal is to narrow the gap,” he said.
After a rough few months with the rocky rollout of ObamaCare, Democrats are more optimistic because of better-than-expected health care enrollment numbers. But Republicans are pledging to continue to hammer Democrats on the law.
Of particular concern to seniors are the proposed 2015 cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program, which may be finalized Monday.
The cuts could hurt most in retiree-heavy states where Democrats face some of their toughest House races, such as Florida and Arizona, as well as New York, Colorado, Minnesota and California — all states with higher than average enrollment in Medicare Advantage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Democrats lost a critical Florida special election last month in which seniors were key in the GOP’s victory.
To try to mitigate potential fallout, a number of vulnerable Democrats have joined Republicans in calling on the administration to keep Medicare Advantage rates flat, thus avoiding cutting benefits for seniors. Rep. John Barrow (Ga.), Sen. Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) are among those making this argument. All three are among Republicans’ top targets in November.
Republicans have already pounced on the issue. One major GOP group, American Action Network, launched a $1 million campaign hitting nine vulnerable senators and House members with television, digital and mail advertising on the Medicare Advantage cuts.
Andrea Bozek, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said more potent attacks will come after the administration announces its final decision on cuts on Monday.
“Whatever that number is, you will see [it] in TV ads across the country, especially during a midterm cycle,” she said.
Democrats counter that Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget gives them a chance to fight back on Medicare, however. They point to the fact that it contains Ryan’s longstanding proposal to partially privatize Medicare through an optional premium support system, which Democrats have charged “ends Medicare as we know it.”
“They are, once again, on Thursday going to vote to end the Medicare guarantee and raise premiums,” said one national Democratic strategist. “That’s regularly a top-testing argument in polling — ending the Medicare guarantee, ending Medicare as you know it.”
But that argument may be tougher to make this time around due to a change to the Ryan budget. The new plan removes the cap on Medicare spending per beneficiary that was included in previous proposals to ensure long-term savings for the program.
With the cap, Democrats were able to claim that if Medicare costs skyrocketed, seniors would be left footing a higher bill because the government would only subsidize so much of those costs. The new budget may give Republicans an escape from that attack.
Thornell counseled Democrats to make sure voters know about moves like that one from Republicans, including the fact that Ryan’s budget actually includes savings from the Medicare Advantage cuts in Obama-Care that Republicans so oppose.
“Democrats have to take the fight to Republicans on the issue. They can’t assume that voters are just going to see through it, and they can’t assume that they are as informed on the ins and outs of Medicare Advantage and some of the other scare tactics from Republicans,” he said.
He points out that Medicare Advantage enrollment rates have actually risen since the passage of the Affordable Care act, surging nearly 10 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to a Kaiser Foundation analysis.
Aside from fighting back on Medicare Advantage, Democrats are hoping to make a broader appeal to seniors by pointing to the benefits they enjoy under ObamaCare, and how Republicans, if they succeeded in repealing the law, would do away with them.
“Democrats are committed to making sure that our health care system works, and we will work to improve the Affordable Care Act — not repealing it and taking us back to the days when insurance companies had free rein to raise rates and deny coverage,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Josh Schwerin. “Republicans’ repeal would end the Medicare guarantee and raise costs on seniors’ prescription drugs by $1,200 a person — immediately.”
Democrats are, in other words, abiding by Thornell’s most urgent piece of advice: “Don’t let yourself get kicked in the face. You’ve gotta go on offense.”
What kind of gobbledygook is this? What is the "Medicare guarantee" embodied in Obamacare? And how would repealing Obamacare "raise costs on seniors' prescription drugs by $1,200 a person - immediately"?
This seems to be a continuation of the barrage of big lies that have been spewed by Washington 'Rats about Obamacare since it was first unveiled to a public that was not too enthusiastic about it from the get-go.
And don't expect this reporterette from "The Hill" to question this Josh Schwerin about his nonsensical statements.
Me?
Ask a democrat that question.
I was just expressing disdain for those who voted in this mess.
It was a bit “TED Nugent” by my tone.
I Guess I’m still mad at my “FDR Democrat” Mom who voted in 08 for Obama. (and all previous dems)
She’s gone now but, before she left, our compassionate Government took all that my Dad had sweated blood to build for her.
The full income of three siblings could not pay for the cost of her health care.
Why? because the real problem with our health care system WAS the ABUNDANCE of Government, lawyers, and immigrants driving the cost up to the moon.
So, now the solution by the democrats, and apparently the GOP, is to just add tenfold more of the same, and even more!
Hooray for big Government.
Yup those BIG bottles of prescription Aspirin without obamascamcare
which prescriptions is this rube talking about??
do they REALLY think were THAT STUPID??..../s
Obama (actually the Dem strategists) are playing the demographic wave.
Every year 2.48m (mostly white, majority R voting) people die and are replaced by 2.52m (mostly minority, heavily D voting) people.
The Death Panels just hasten the process.
Obviously, without Zero on the ballot, they will be less motivated. Of course there are bribes that can be handed out or threats made. And if all else fails, there's always someone else there to "vote" for the no-shows. In fact, they could just as easily put in a big "0" for the GOP vote total in some precincts, as they did in Philadelphia and Cleveland in 2012.
Every time you see MSM stories about a massive "Non-white voting base" enthusiastically rushing to the polls, think fraud and cheating.
That's my best shot at interpreting that gobbledegook.
Oh, no, that would be racist!!!
From what I've seen and read, built into the ACA is a reduction in spending for Medicare! And then, too, you have death panels in the ACA which apply disproportionally to Medicare patients.
Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t know that the ACA death panels applied to Medicare patients.
LYING IS THE NEW NORM FOR DEMOCRATS, SINCE AT LEAST SINCE OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN PROMISES IN 2008.
Habitual lying is a sign of extreme mental illness. That describes the liberal Democrats to a “T” (Typical). Can anyone think of the last time that Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid told the truth?
Our country is suffering from a mass epidemic of Marxist-induced lying, disinformation, omissions and deception. Gee, that sounds just like Saul Alinsky’s tactics. Wonder how that happened?
Just look at Obama’s chief mouthpieces - Carney, Piseky, Ruland, Jarrett, Axelrod (and before that, Gibbs), Susan Rice, etc. Can you name one instance in which they honestly answered a question without so much bobbing and weaving, shucking and jiving, that you had to take Dramimine in order not to keel over in a dizzy faint?
Biden? What can you say about a man whose nickname is “Plugs”? I would prefer to give him a new nickname, “Bidet”. That would be more fitting for a total asshole.
Hillary Clinton. A woman who has never let the truth ever cross her tongue. She can bob and weave better than Gayle Sayers, Nightrain Lane, and Herschel Walker, combined.
P.T. Barnum is so jealous of her and Obama that he’s trying to stage a comeback. He wants to shake their hands for elevating “clowns, freaks, and deception/illusions” to new highs.
Given the Chicago Way of voting often, even if you are dead, he’s got a good chance of resurrecting himself. Nobody in the Democrat Party would notice. In fact, they would welcome him. Would make a great law firm - Barnum, Obama and Clinton. In Yiddish it would be named “Shister, Shister and Goniff”.
Meanwhile, down below, Hitler, Goebbels and Streicher are having fits because if they had Obama Democrats working for them in the 1930’s, they would have won WW2.
If a real psychologist/psychiatrist ever do a study of the Obama mentality/deception tactics regarding those who voted for him, they will have to come to the logical conclusion that he successfull led over half the country into the greatest self-delusion, self-deception mental state in modern history. His staff, workers and general supporters made the “Good Germans” of WW2 seem like amateurs.
What a sad obituary for America - “RIP, USA, Allowed itself to be deceived into destruction.”
2012 proved to me:
It doesn’t matter who votes, it only matters who counts the votes.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I respectfully disagree Hans. In 2012, we had a RINO candidate with a campaign run by spineless RINOs and a national Republican Party that couldn’t organize a one car funeral procession. I think “voter fraud” gets way too much hype. It still happens in Chicago and other places, but, I’ve worked County and District level politics for years. Voter fraud is not easy to pull off unless the “plan” comes down from “high places”. The little old ladies in the polling places, and serving as County Clerks, are NOT rigging elections.
Indeed. Thanks for the ping!
It’s not just Medicare Advantage. New seniors are baby boomers and know when democrats are doing scare stories to manipulate. It’s backfiring... But that’s not their biggest mistake...
Cites please, Mz. Jaffe.
I better apologize, I don’t want you using “certain skill sets” back on me some day.
I see now that your question was not at me, but instead at the government.
The Dummycrats need to find out real soon, that voters did not just fall off a turnip truck.
=============================================================
(EXCERPT WSJ--PEGGY NOONAN) ........you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess....utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and govt administration.......then-Democratic speaker Pelosi blithely, mindlessly said---but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass it to find out what's in it. .... an historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn't understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she'd done.
....for the next three years Democrats would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they'd read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents.......
The White House seems to have understood (but kept the details from loyal lock-stepping Democrats); the WH lied to Americans in a way so specific, it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how. "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period."
Old, white people were never the people O/Care was intended for. Egged on by Nanzi Pelosi, the Democratic-majority passed the Affordable Care Act by an historic straight party-line vote without even reading it. Then Dems got the wake-up call---they had voted $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage.
STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE Remember when Oprah said America can't rest, until all those elderly white racists die? Followed by Obama honoring her w/ the Presidential Medal?
OBAMA FACTORED THAT BACK IN 2008 AS HE
SALIVATED OVER HEALTHCARE OVERHAUL:
O/Care embeds IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) AKA Death Panels.......and healthcare rationing.
IPAB is now the “fifth branch” of govt, to be composed of hand-picked unelected members appointed by Obama:
1) It will make all important health care decisions by authorizing payment or not.
2) It is not funded by Congress and cannot have its budget reviewed or changed.
3) Its membership cannot be changed by future Presidents,
4) It cannot be repealed by Congress, except for a six month window in 2017.
5) Its decisions are not subject to judicial review.
6) It is not authorized by the Constitution, and is therefore immune to Constitutional processes.
================================================
GOPJ wrote the definitive interpretation of who exactly benefits from O/Care.....and its not productive, working class Americans.
Oldsters better know this. Obama is herding seniors onto subsidized federal programs---like cattle slowly boarding the ramp single-file, knowing the bolt is coming, and unable to do a thing about it.
For starters: stupid Democrats voted to eliminate the ASSET TEST, (which usually prevents those with assets to even be considered for Medicaid coverage). Every person herded onto Medicaid signed away their entire estate to the govt. Heirs get nothing---everything goes to the state to re-coup the expenses incurred under Medicaid.
The Democrats aided and abetted the Obama criminals who duped people into a ruinous reverse mortgage scheme......Here's how it works.
The Democrats in league w/ Obama conmen forced seniors WITH ASSETS onto Medicaid---a program specifically structured for the poor.
CAN YOU SAY REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH?
Herding sickly elderly with assets into Medicaid has ominous consequences intriguing to sap-happy leftists. B/c assets, perhaps a home owned free and clear, securities, annuities, investment property, can be seized to pay for govt treatment.
Thus intergenerational transfers of wealth (a longtime left/liberal/progressive bugaboo)----are decimated.
CAN YOU SAY REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH?
================================================= Boobamba's got plans.....secret, nefarious plans for grampa/ma duped into signing up for Medicare/Aid.
The WH BOOB can't get 'em to sign up on the flopola healthcare.guv website---so he's throwing some 400,000 onto MEDICAID------and all the costs of medical care will be charged back.
How can he do that? By slapping federal and state LIENS against signers' homes, and other assets.......the Obamacare con artists eliminated the ASSET TEST, (which would have prevented those with assets to even be considered for Medicaid coverage).
So those who are now told: "Golly gee, my government loves me, Obama says I qualify for subsidized Medicaid care, I'll be well- taken care of"---have been suckered into a REVERSE ASSET LIQUIDATION FEDERAL MONEY GRAB.
And, once in the hands of the Obama/Democrat criminal hordes, all that oldster money is untraceable.
They don't have to figure that out -- they just make up for it with voter fraud (see the recent story on all the double voting in North Carolina. I'm sure that that happens in every state. You'd be surprise at how many people think that they are entitled to vote in 2 states if they have 2 homes and pay 2 sets of property taxes. It makes my blood boil.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.