Aug 18 2009
The Senior Uprising
Updates Below!
The Liberal Democrats in DC and liberal organizations that have been pushing their far left proposals on government run health care are facing an uprising the likes of which I have never seen before. It is an uprising of the seniors, the soon to be seniors, and their families, and it is spreading like a wild fire:
CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group’s position on health care.
…
“I think that probably the seniors are most upset with cuts in Medicare,” said ASA President Stuart Barton.
The American Seniors Association is flat-out against President Obama’s plan, which calls for $313 billion dollars in Medicare cuts over ten years. The AARP is widely viewed as supporting the President.
I wonder how the AMA and other groups are holding up? The seniors and soon to be seniors represent the largest element of our electorate because they include the baby boomers and all those who are still alive from World War II generation. When you add in their kids and their families facing issues of care and health, the number of people in this group is staggering. And the number who vote regularly must be a strong majority (given how few of the younger generations get around to voting).
And it is this enormous and powerful group of American the liberals picked a losing fight with:
If the Democratic Party’s attempt at health care reform perishes, senior citizens will have done it in, not talk-radio listeners and Glenn Beck acolytes. It’s the skepticism of over-65 Americans that’s dragging support for reform southward. And it’s their opposition to cost-cutting that makes finding the money to pay for it so difficult.
That’s because they’re the ones whose benefits are on the chopping block. At present, Medicare gives its recipients all the benefits of socialized medicine, with few of the drawbacks. Once you hit 65, the system pays and pays, without regard for efficiency or cost-effectiveness.
For liberals trying to find the money to make health insurance universal, these inefficiencies make Medicare an obvious place to wring out savings. But you can’t blame the elderly if “savings†sound a lot like “cuts.†When the president talks about shearing waste from Medicare, and empowering an independent panel to reduce the program’s long-term costs — well, he isn’t envisioning a world where seniors get worse care, but he’s certainly envisioning a world in which they receive less of it.
It’s not just a political peril, it is political suicide. When the liberals decided they would insert themselves into the hard, but loving decisions all seniors and their families face they tried to pry into a very private place in America. It was a arrogant and dumb move. People are fed up with the preachy DC elites telling them how to live their lives. And they sure as hell don’t want DC telling us how to end our lives (good intentions or not).
It was the latest in a series of historically bad liberal blunders, which have reminded Americans why they dumped the Democrats during the Clinton escapades.
Update: In case anyone needs statistical proof of how bad the liberals are blowing this health care topic, there is a new CBS News poll out which is quite illuminating, and which confirms my points above:
Americans’ confidence about their health care future and access to care is dropping, particularly among older people, as debate grows more contentious over President Barack Obama’s health overhaul agenda.
A monthly survey of consumer sentiment on health care issues shows that Americans’ confidence in insurance coverage, affordability and access dropped more than 5 points in July, after having risen slightly in June.
Among seniors eligible for Medicare the drop was even more striking – 10.4 points – suggesting the health care debate is raising alarm bells for older people. The survey was conducted even before coverage of raucous town hall meetings that highlighted public opposition to Mr. Obama’s Democrats’ health overhaul plans.
Seniors are very smart people with lots of experience. When they rise up in opposition everyone should take notice  – especially Democrats.
Update: A very observant piece on how President Obama is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t on health care:
If he fails to deliver health legislation, Obama will prove right those who said he was in over his head. That would make him something of a lame duck after only seven months in office.
But if he does manage to squeeze a bill out of Congress, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. By delivering unwanted changes to unwilling voters on a life-or-death issue, the president would squander the goodwill he earned during the campaign.
As the piece notes, much of this is due to rookie mistakes. President Obama’s inexperience is now overshadowing his gift at speechifying.
[…] link: The Strata-Sphere » The Senior Uprising […]
I can’t get over how the electorate voted the democrats in in the last election. I am still in shock about this. How in the world did they think that these air dreamers could handle anything efficiently? The dems have no common sense. Anyone, for instance, who thinks that puny man has any control over nature has to be as dumb as a box of rocks.
As far as picking a fight with seniors goes, the dems are used to conservatives laying down and letting the dems walk all over them without a peep. This has been a shock to them. The dems are like the children who go further and further just to see how far they can go and what they can get away with without retribution. This time they woke the sleeping giant and they don’t know what to do. Their intimidation methods and name calling isn’t working. They keep saying their opponents are right wing nutjobs but the truth is the anti-obamacares are from all walks of life and all races. What the dems have really accomplished is that more and more people are paying attention to government and are realizing what effect theantics of the president and congress are having on their personal lives and they don’t like it.
I knew it. You don’t tell seniors that we will find 2/3’s of the money for my new plan by cutting the waste from Medicare, and a board in the White House will make those decisions. The reason that seniors feel that the program is not government run is because the needs of seniors have always been acknowledge by congress because of our numbers. Obama can say his predecessor gave the Nation the drug plan and had no way to pay for it. Bad President Bush! I guess he doesn’t remember the conversation during the 2000 election cycle about dog food or drugs. Silly man- child! I wondered when we would hear in the media that seniors would not be happy with Obama’s proposal.
Does Obama remember how Bush was demonized, by the democrats, when he tried to tackle Social Security reform? I guess what goes around comes around. I didn’t see any tears shed by the Dems.
It is hard to pay into a program for 40 years, and then be told we need to monitor your care, especially when seniors have no choice. No private insurance company will insure seniors precisely because of the government’s obligation to take care of them.
When you have no other choices, you watch very carefully what is being taken away.
Further proof of the arrogance, ignorance and naivete of those attempting to govern the country. Trying to preach to seniors about something they are the experts in—health care is front of mind for most seniors and they have the experience to know what works and what doesn’t. And most importantly they have earned the right to not have to take part in the pipe dreams of socialists.
Nice to see Americans standing up to be heard—keep the miscreants on the run and expose all of them, especially the advisors.
Obama is in the process of losing the Seniors. Once they are gone, they won’t come back. To paraphrase a line by one senior I knew … “They have forgotten more than Obama will ever know†… but once they dislike you, they never forget that.
Of course, having Nancy Pelosi, the “face†of the Democratic Party, telling the “Greatest Generation†(and beyond) that they are “un-American†doesn’t really engender any sympathetic ears.
Awesome new – 60 House democrats presented a signed letter today saying that they would never vote for a health bill that did not contain a public option. At the same time, Kent Conrad has said that the Senate will *never* vote for a public option.
Civil war between the Senate and the House, and Obama’s hopes for a health care bill will be the biggest casualty!
What is mind-boggling is that many people appear to be “conservative” in ideology but register as Democrats or staunchly support Obama…oh! Because they 1) believe in Hope and Change. and 2) saw how the Republicans screwed up so bad that they went astray from the conservative principles.
Will the Republican Party ever go back to the principles of conservativsm?
Who knows.
lurker,
The answer is staring you in the face. Being conservative encompasses a broad range of views, not a narrow set of litmus tests.
It includes supporting low taxes and comprehensive immigration reform, a strong national defense and a strong public school system.
It is the far right that went outside the bounds of what was acceptable to the broader conservative America.
Come on, wake up and be an American who supports America’s diversity of conservatism.
The study was about adults not likely voters. Last I saw there were 44 million VAP Voting Age Population unregistered per the census data.
A lot of that has to do with the candidates both shooting for the middle so much that you need a program to know which one is in which party.
There needs to be a wider gap of positions to allow a choice and sticking to your party roots meaning.
Many are so put off by the antics of politics that they never register and say a pox on both houses.
But with the agenda of this crew perhaps it will inspire many to register to take their country back.
You are quite right about the article discussing the lose-lose situation in which Hussein finds himself. But I believe that his arrogance is so breathtaking, he is not truly CONCERNED about negative consequences should the “public option” go down to defeat. New and even more interesting ways of deceiving the American public will be invented; language will be “modified”; Executive Orders will be signed and Black Panthers, SEIU and ACORN members will occupy polling places in 2012. Hussein has never actually “achieved” anything in his life. He has never HAD to. Affirmative action got him into college, his ability to lie made him the choice of thug Chicago politicians and his race and leftist rearing led the MSM to put him in the White House. Hussein can’t imagine failure, as it has never really been an option…or even a possibility! Therefore regardless of how the healthcare debacle should turn out, it will represent no more than a small bump along the superhighway to dictatorship. Be it Soros, the MSM, Rahm or Axelrod, SOMEONE, SOMEHOW will have him smelling like a rose sooner or later. Who could imagine Zeus thinking otherwise?!