"Why Are Seniors Changing? (Take A Look At Who They Are…)" (Digby)

[KoKo]

Published on Saturday, August 10, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future
Why Are Seniors Changing? (Take A Look At Who They Are…)
by Digby

David wrote about this Carville-Greenberg polling memo showing that seniors seem to be changing their minds about policy and the GOP. Its summary starts like this:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections…

I think there’s evidence that the Republicans are seeing these numbers too, even if some of their vocal constituents are arguing with them.) The question is why the change? Everyone knows that seniors are a bunch of rightwingers who hate every kind of progress right?

Well, “seniors” change characteristics all the time. Obviously, this is because the older cohort is always dying off and younger people turn into seniors. Every single day. And there is a huge group of “younger” people becoming seniors right now. They are called baby boomers and they have a very different set of beliefs, experiences and political affiliations than those who are dying out.

Now, it’s wrong to assume that boomers are liberals simply because they had a very showy counter-culture in their youths. In fact, there was always a boatload of boomers who were conservative even then. But no matter what, these particular seniors are not their grandparents or parents and never have been. They have lived very different lives and have a whole different set of expectations and experience.

It’s a big mistake for anyone, especially in politics, to simply assume they are a bunch of doddering old white people who are living in the 50s. Neither is it realistic to assume they are modern conservatives. They came up before the Reagan revolution after all. Unlike those of the older cohort who were raised in the depression this is a group that has always had a lot of expectations from government and a belief that it had a responsibility to fulfill them. Even if they hated the usual dark colored suspects, they weren’t raised in a world in which all those feelings had been subsumed in Atwateresque dogwhistles about Big Gummint. And they’ve never needed government more than they do now. I think a great many of them will end up back into the Democratic fold — where seniors have historically been.

I don’t know how much these new numbers are a reflection of that. But the vanguard of the baby boom has been entering the category of Senior Citizen since 2007. And like I said, there are a lot of them. I’d be very surprised if they aren’t t least partly responsible for this change in senior attitudes. And there’s no doubt in my mind that boomers are going to change this cohort in many different ways over the next few decades just as they changed everything else in their (our) lives.

If the GOP is assuming this very active and politically aware demographic is a carbon copy of their own parents that would be a big mistake. They are a very different animal. And these are people, for better or worse, who have always been engaged and are going to be even more so in their elder years. What else have they got to do?

More at....
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/10-1

[enough]

1. One of the most significant changes is that current seniors are now taking care of elderly parents,

or have taken care of them very recently. People in their 50's and 60's are just now waking up to the realities of how Medicare and Medicaid actually work and don't work. They are seeing the reality of the huge cost of care for the elderly, and are coming to terms with the fact that most of them do not have the kind of pensions, savings, and/or home equity, that their parents had.

I remember ten years ago, when I took over many details of my parent's lives, their finances, their medical care, their planning for the future. I realized very quickly that my parents (now deceased) were living in a world that was not going to be there when I got to be their age. Having been public school teachers, they both had very good pensions with fantastic supplemental insurance on top of Medicare. They both had long complicated hospital stays for which they never paid a penny, assuming correctly that their insurance would take care of it. And they thought everybody had this and that everybody always would. I realized then that things were not going to be the same when I got to that age.

[CTyankee]

14. I had your exact experience with my aging mother. When she could no longer live in her house alone

I had to make some fast decisions about assisted living and, since my older brother was disabled and in a nursing home himself (on Medicaid), I was the only one to do this. What a learning curve those 5 years were -- my brother predeceased our mother then she died a year later, at age 94.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. Some of us who are reaching senior status these says have been living and advocating liberal ideas

for over 40 years now. We also raised our kids with these ideals. Many of those in the right realize this and they are desperately trying to hang on by passing some of their most conservative measures using fear and deceit to get their way. I truly believe that we are going to see a shift to the left in the future, hopefully in my lifetime.

[Doctor_J]

3. I will believe this when I see it

at the polls. The current seniors have been listening to hate radio their entire adult lives. Most are Fox news addicts thus ignorant and hateful as a group. They led the charge against hc reform in 2010, at the command of beck and the rest. We will see what happens next year.

[Thinkingabout]

11. As a baby boomer Even though I have listened to hate radio I continue to be a STRONG Democrat.

Why do I listen to hate radio, well, it is a part of my defense plan, I listen to them in order to do my own research and when the RW tell me another lie I can counter them with the truth, it is sorta like the "Please proceed Governor" moment. I get great joy in chopping their legs off. Let me remind you of other things to think about, I was a union member for many years, helped fight for benefits like health care, higher wages and pensions. I realize pensions are going away, realize how important it is to hold Social Security together for those in future years. Wages are not high enough to sock away money for retirement and Social Security will be more important to those who have worked but was unable to save, Social Security is a Democratic venture, Democrats will have to save it. The current GOP will not, we can not vote against ourselves.

[Lugnut]

4. I was born to Democratic parents.

That was in 1945. I'll turn 68 next month and I've always been a Democrat. Same goes for my 70 year old husband.

[JDPriestly]

5. 1943 here. We are liberal.

The Republicans had better watch out. And what is happening in addition to the entry of a more liberal generation into the "senior" category is that we are living longer. A lot of those conservative seniors in their 80s are discovering that their savings did not last nearly as long as they had expected. That is why seniors are so worried about Social Security. We paid our money in and we see our parents who are older than we are needing every last penny of their more ample savings just to survive.

Social Security is more important to us seniors than ever. We don't drive much. Supporting the oil industry and low gas prices are pretty low on our list of personal priorities.

Sorry, Koch Brothers. You should have thought of this. Doesn't take much to figure out that as people age, they use their cars less often and for shorter distances. Same for consumer goods. We care about our kids more than anything in the world. The older we get (most of us) the less more we want to see our children prosper (most important thing in the world for seniors).

[CTyankee]

15. you are oh so right. This garbage about "greedy geezers" is a sham and a LIE!

More "divide and conquer."

DISGUSTING!

[Mr.Bill]

6. I don't even think the GOP

has realized that the people who elected Reagan are largely dead.

[Faygo Kid]

7. The "Silent Generation" is leaving us. The "Greatest Generation" is gone.

It's the Silents who are mostly the Tea Partiers. I'm a Boomer, and good luck trying to turn me into a Koch sucker.

The Xers are a cynical group, and the Millenials are yet to be defined, but they aren't going to take kindly to the reich-wing social issues.

What's the newest name, which has maybe been around since 2002 or so?

[KoKo]

9. DLC? What.....Sorry ..trying to figure it out.

[Thinkingabout]

13. Gotcha

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Yes, the times, they are a changin'...

Republicans think seniors are from the Depression and are used to doing without:



The new crop have completely different values:

[KoKo]

10. Well..for sure we Expected and Worked for Better...as child of

Depression Era Parents and Victorian Aunts and Uncles. My Mother and Father married late in their 30's...so I'm an era forward.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. I've met rich idiots who act like the poor SHOULDN'T know better or they'll EXPECT IT....

That's their goal. See to it the working class out there have ZERO experience with "The Good Life".

Workers are expected to be obedient, respectful and frightened of their betters.

That's why I get pissed when I hear someone say with PRIDE that they are "God fearing" because that is EXACTLY the mindset the rich want of them.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

16. And Im bringing up the rear, baby