A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, sang Mary Poppins in the 1964 classic movie. Democrats seem to have taken that message to heart as they seek to influence senior voters in the upcoming election. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports today in Buying the Senior Vote:
Can our retired readers be bought for $250? Apparently President Obama thinks they can, because two weeks before Election Day he has endorsed sending bonus checks for that amount to the nearly 58 million Americans on Social Security. It’s hard to imagine a more blatant vote-buying exercise, especially with polls showing that seniors have turned sharply against the Democrats this year.
Democrats, who are increasingly finding their careers threatened by Obamacare, are targeting the right group to get the most votes for their money. Seniors are expected to turn out in record numbers this midterm election. A Pew poll shows:
84 percent of seniors who are registered to vote say they will “definitely” vote. That’s 9 percentage points above the previous record, 1994, when the question was first asked. Six in 10 seniors have given the election “a lot” of thought, also a peak. High enthusiasm and engagement generally signal high turnout.
Democrats also understand that seniors aren’t swallowing the new health care law as well as they had hoped. A spoonful of sugar in the form of a $250 check might help the bitter medicine that includes $470.7 billion in cuts to Medicare go down, they seem to think. I have more faith than that in our seniors.
The WSJ article ends with a proposal that would actually help seniors, as well as everyone else still struggling in this economy:
We realize that many seniors are struggling like the rest of the country because of the mediocre economic recovery. With the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates near-zero for nearly two years, retirees who live off their savings are making almost nothing in interest. But what seniors really need is a return to more robust economic growth and more normal interest rates, and that cause won’t be helped by the government adding to its already destructive tax and spend record.