The Democrats and Social Security political suicide

Digby is just a brilliant political writer. In a more sane world, she or Joan McCarter from Daily Kos would be the anchor of Meet the Press instead of an airhead like David Gregory.

In Demagogic Pandering And Technocratic Dreams Hullabaloo 01/23/2011, she takes off from a David Frum interview on how Republicans are successfully pitching their Party to older voters, their only real potential growth constituency for the moment:

Frum doesn't really explain why they are not completely irrational, but I will: they know that sounding irrational doesn't matter. They know they can easily demagogue "entitlements" one day and be the staunch defenders of Medicare the next because they just won over 60 seats doing just that.

The Republicans are not going to abandon their ideology. But they will certainly pander to their base of elderly citizens by accusing the Democrats of destroying social security and medicare even as they destroy them. We know this. It already happened. Now perhaps that wouldn't be a problem if the elderly were not the most reliable voters in the nation (and younger voters the least) or that Democratic ideology is completely bankrupt and empty if they do weaken the safety net out of some short term desire to appease a bunch of spoiled Wall Street princes. But if you actually care about the programs this is a recipe for disaster.

And yes, it would be much tidier if we could get some super-duper politicians and elite insiders in a room to map out a bipartisan plan for peace and prosperity, but sadly, the super-duper people don't have much of a track record recently. [my emphasis in bold]

Tags: democratic party, obama administration, social security

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