The Republicans change, but the bamboozlement remains the same

June 13, 2008

In the latest NBC/WSJ poll, released yesterday, there was a noticeable trend when it came to age groups — the younger the voter, the more likely he/she was to support Barack Obama. The only age group in which John McCain excelled was with those over 65 (who prefer McCain to Obama, 48% to 41%).

How can Obama win older voters over? Perhaps McCain’s position on Social Security might help.

Yesterday afternoon, in response to a question about his position, McCain said, “I’m not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be.” This, of course, contrasted nicely with a comment McCain made after the last presidential election in which told a questioner that “…without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.”

As Kombiz Lavasany put it, “Someone should tell John McCain that if you’re going to misrepresent a position you’ve held, you should probably not have held the opposite position on video.”

Like most of McCain’s reversals, it’s amusing on a certain level to find dozens of examples of Mr. Straight Talk, who emphasizes his consistency, taking both sides of major issues. But when it comes to Social Security, McCain’s incoherence might matter more than most.

A few days ago, publius had an item I agreed with wholeheartedly.

So apparently old white people don’t like Obama so much. You know what they do like? Social Security. You know what they don’t like? Private accounts. And though he’s recently flip-flopped, McCain has supported Bush’s private accounts. He told the WSJ this March: “As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

When the WSJ informed him that his website only favored private accounts as “supplements,” he told the WSJ that he would change the website. (He didn’t, perhaps because McCain wasn’t grasping the policy details at the time).

He’s since flip-flopped, but Obama should still hammer him on this — if for no other reason than to show that McCain doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about…. If I were Obama, I would literally start putting the commercials up in Florida tomorrow. I mean, if only people had had a chance to invest a third of their Social Security benefits in the roaring markets over the past three years — just imagine the returns.

Quite right. I had an item a few weeks ago noting that McCain has been all over the place on Social Security, at times contradicting himself, and at other times contradicting his own campaign’s policy.

But the bottom line includes two key angles. First, McCain looks at Bush’s fiasco of a policy from 2005 and wants to do the exact same thing. And second, he wants to get into a semantics debate over the meaning of the word “privatization” — as McCain sees it, he wants Americans to be able to remove funds from the Social Security system and put them in private accounts. Told that this is the very definition of privatization, McCain denies it (or, at least denies it now, after agreeing a few years ago).

This hasn’t become much of a campaign issue; in fact, it’s pretty much non-existent on the political world’s radar. But keep an eye on Social Security; it just might end up making a difference.

While seniors may feel that privatization is a terrible thing, my guess is that it is also a very low priority, since those already retired would be the least likely victims. In fact, those who have investments would benefit, because this scheme is specifically meant to pump more air into the stock market balloon. It’s the younger generations that should be demanding filibusters and anything else to prevent it.

  • Why isn’t there a DNC clip showing this guy’s legions of flip-flops recorded on tape?

    Just off the top of my head– Social Security, whether Iraq is or isn’t like Korea, whether Iraq is going to be easy, whether he’s George Bush’s biggest supporter in the Senate, whether he’d vote for his own immigration bill, whether he knows anything about economics (bonus clip of him on Russert after the debate, admitting he’d been wrong to say he’d never said it), whether we can afford the Bush tax policy …

    And those are just the ones I know are on tape, off the top of my head.

    Why aren’t they running in every market in every swing state in this country? Let’s define McCain as who he is– a guy who wants to be president, but has no idea why.

  • So much flip=flopping, so little time. My guess is that the Obama camp is knee-capped by not knowing where to begin on all of it. There is so much friggin’ stupidity in McBush’s policies where would one begin? Just for shits-and-giggles, let’s start with torture. What fun…

  • The key for the Dems and for real people, is to conclusively put the nail in the privatization coffin. even if McCain just says “no” (Now), use this issue down ticket to beat the GOP in other races

  • Danp says: While seniors may feel that privatization is a terrible thing, my guess is that it is also a very low priority, since those already retired would be the least likely victims.

    My impression is that seniors would be impacted pretty quickly, because if any kind of privatization was put into place, there would be an immediate decrease in the funds available to be doled out to the seniors, and there would also be a lot of financial planning that would indicate that benefits would need to be “adjusted” (reduced) to free up the funds for investment into those roaring markets publius snarked about.

    I agree that the way to sink this pile of crap idea is to point out the shitty returns of the last few years, and ask the listener if they’d like to gamble their retirement in Vegas or just hand it to the Wall Street fat cats who always get their billions in bonuses no matter what the market does.

  • Danp – (re#1) – I disagree on both sides of your argument.
    First, seniors have seen a lot of dips in the market (like right now), and they also know that diverting current funds from the SS Trust is very likely to threaten the COLA adjustments to their current & future payments.
    Meanwhile, young people have no idea of what actuarys do, they just hear (as we boomers did) that the money won’t be there for them. The theme that “you can’t trust the government” is very pervasive in our culture. On the other hand, the recent lessons (even after Enron, Global Crossings, WorldCom) have not dampened the weird exhortation that government must act more like a business.
    I think that the young people are much more likely to be bamboozled than older ones.

  • I have no doubt Obama will make a big issue of this. Social Security has always been a big cudgel for the Dems, and that was even without all the ammunition McCain has provided.

  • If it hasn’t already been done, we should start compiling a list of all of the instances of John McCain lying now through his (probably false) teeth that are proven by video of him saying the exact opposite. A handy reference to point to on any issue, since on any issue it’s becoming clear that there is video evidence that John McCain is, 9 times out of 10, lying about “always” or “never” supporting something.

  • Wait a minute… we’re free now to make private investments, aren’t we? And if those investments fail, at least we have Social Security.

    If we invest our Social Security and lose, which is a mathematical certain to happen for some unlucky percentage of people, what then?

    Private investments are not guaranteed. That’s the point of Social Security, “Security.”

  • A few years ago, some Democrat had the Senate vote on a resolution that did nothing more than simply affirm each senator’s support, or lack thereof, for Social Security privatization. A surprisingly large number of Republicans put it on record that they supported such proposals. It’d make a great conversation starter in Senate races. I wonder if any of vulnerable Republicans who could be knocked down a peg or two, like Dole, Cornyn, or McConnell, voted in favor of it. My guess is, if they did, they wouldn’t like to be reminded of it on television.

  • McCain’s idea of naming himself “Mr. Straight Talk” is just more of the Bush strategy of statements that are too ridiculous to ridicule. There’s so much cynicism there already, how do you poke fun at it?

    But I agree, we need a long trailer of McCain’s flip flopping quotes. Maybe it could be called “Meet Mr. Straight Talk”.

  • Wait, Obama was the one saying that social security was in trouble and needed fixing. That worries older voters because it is unclear how he might fix it — perhaps by reducing cost of living increases or fiddling with the amount retirees receive, or the amount they are allowed to work without affecting their payments, etc. Obama needs to clarify what he meant by that, if he wants to allay fears of retirees.

    Older people aren’t only concerned about social security. Obama didn’t show much respect for his own grandmother, and when he makes disparaging remarks about older white people, how do expect people in that demographic to react? He needs to treat older white voters as if he truly believed they were something other than bigoted and senile.

    It is difficult for Obama to attack McCain’s age without also attacking that demographic. I’m not sure he is even interested in walking that line. With all the emphasis on the new young voters, the Obama camp has pretty much given the impression they don’t value older voters. It is only natural that the disdain would be reciprocated.

  • RacerX (5):First, seniors have seen a lot of dips in the market (like right now), and they also know that diverting current funds from the SS Trust is very likely to threaten the COLA adjustments to their current & future payments.

    Forcing or encouraging more retirement money into the stock market would raise the prices artificially on stocks. And I can’t imagine congress lowering current payments. As for future, the worst case outcome would be that they would raise the age where people can start receiving SS. True, COLA adjustments might be a problem.

    Buzzmon (6):

    First there is no “lock box”. Money in the SS funds that isn’t needed for SS payments today are used to pay for other government programs. But also no one is talking about investing this money. The “privatization” scheme is to let workers put a percentage of their SS payments directly into the stock market at their own risk. But I agree that the young are more likely to be bamboozled. They are the ones who should be most concerned, however.

    Mary (12) That worries older voters because it is unclear how he might fix it

    Instead of this constant drone of how nobody knows, learn to google.

    http://www.barackobama.com/issues/seniors/

  • As always, Mary’s logic is impenetrable.

    “Obama didn’t show much respect for his own grandmother…”

    This statement alone is absolutely ludicrous. Showing someone respect does not mean ignoring the truth, except to someone like Bush. Those of us older white people who are not bigoted or senile know that there are many others who are both. I can do little more than laugh at the concocted insults people derive whenever the obvious is stated.

    After the W. Va. primary reports came in I said to my wife, “hmmm, sounds like they’re racists.”

    She replied, “The report says it’s ‘uneducated white people'”.

    “Isn’t that what I said?”

  • In fairness, if a large number of people had poured a third of their social security benefits into the “roaring markets” of the past two years, the impact would have been enough to affect the markets and they likely would have remained flat or have dropped much, much less.

    That’s the whole scam, after all: once privatization is a go, the wealthy shift all of their capital into the markets before Social Security benefits can be invested. They ride the wave as money pours into the markets and drives prices up, and then get out once that tide slows. Fairly easy money, if you’ve got the capital to invest.

  • Hey Danp – I’m glad that we agree.
    I’d forgotten about the “Lockbox,” but I do know that the loans from the SS Trust MUST be respected as much as all the loans that have been made by the Saudis, Chinese, & Japanese.
    The problem will come when the U.S. must start redeeming those loans to pay the SS Trust back to cover SS payments not matched by current contributions.
    Was anyone else angry to the point of seeing red when Bush referred to the SS loans as just a stack of papers?

  • Privatization works on the common investment principle of the “Last Fool (or Sucker)”.

    That is, all investments are being bid up more than their logical value because everybody hopes there will be another Fool after them to buy the investment when they want to unload it.

    Making it part of Social Security would work great for those on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer bubble, because there would be more Fools behind them to buy off their investments at inflated prices.

    For me and Obama, in our late forties and at the trailing edge of the Boomer bubble, Privatization is a trap. When we get to retire there would be no new Fools to buy our inflated investments, and they would crash, leaving us with little or nothing to retire on.

    Suddenly, the thought of a President Obama makes me all warm and fuzzy.

  • Mary #12: “perhaps by reducing cost of living increases or fiddling with the amount retirees receive, or the amount they are allowed to work without affecting their payments”

    PERHAPS your guy McCain wants to kill all American babies. McCain really needs to clarify what he meant by that, if he wants to allay fears of American people.

  • It’s not a flip-flop. If you read it objectively McCain said “without privatization” he didn’t see how young people could get the benefit of social security. He did not say “without privatizing social security.” Simply, his comments are entirely consistent with the position of many Republicans to allow “privatization” of a small percentage of the social security benefit to be invested in the stock market. This is very different from the position that the entire system should be privatized. Some are so clouded by their ideals that they cannot see the truth and are only searching for falsehood in others as a way to further their agenda. To me, there is enough truth to support any agenda. What is lacking is any proof that any particular agenda will lead us to the promise land (whatever that is). Unfortunately, so many are too comfortable with our government governing based on a belief rather than a pragmatic approach based on experience and what has worked in the passed. For example, Social Security does work as intended but noone challenges the fact that it cannot be sustained under the current system. Yet, it won’t get fixed because of beliefs grounded on two opposing ideals (government safety net vs free market).

  • I’m sure that what McCain meant by “…without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits” is simply that the government must work hard to keep your Social Security number private. Being a straight-shooter and all, that must be it.

  • Pretty sure that this comment will not be appreciated in this forum but I question the effectiveness of both parties. I cannot name a single major problem that has been resolved regardless of party controlling the oval office or the legislature.
    Health care—we pay twice that of other industrialized countries but have shorter life expectancies. Not much of a plan.
    Social Security—Lets see. I am going to pay benefits from new contributions and replace the surplus with Treasury instruments. Isn’t that a little like funding a 401K, borrowing every cent and wondering why there is no money at retirement? Almost forgot that this problem was solved in the 80’s-maybe not.
    War-On-Drugs—great plan for destabilizing friendly foreign governments, funding organized crime, terrorists and gangs, corrupting law enforcement and overburdening our prisons. Not so good when it comes to dealing with substance abuse.
    Education—consistently at the bottom of the rankings comparing education in the industrialized countries.
    You name the issue and it is still out there.
    As I see it the truth is that our elected officials at all levels find their situation so attractive that they fear the loss of it above all else. This being their priority they are most attentive to whoever supplies the biggest pot of money. The rest of us get the crumbs that fall off the table.
    Oh, never mind. I see most people posting here are so concerned that only the right solution be applied that they will ignore effective solutions.

  • lefty (20): Have you ever heard the word “privatization” used in reference to privtatizing the whole SS system? If McCain is using the logic you suggest, I would call it intentional deception, because that is not how the word has been used in the last three or four years since Bush proposed his program.

  • Lefty (#20) seems to be one of the people that I mentioned that has not a clue about the actuarial work done with Social Security.
    Don’t buy into the lies, Lefty.

  • Another important point,
    Reagan “fixed” social security by raising taxes that the workers pay.
    McSame wants to do the same !!!!
    But I thought McSame is against raising taxes in this economy.

    Also, the Reagan promise was that the initial surpluses would pay for the Boomer bump in retires and pay-outs at the middle of this century. But then Reagan and Bush I used the surpluses to cover the true cost of the Reaganomics Voodoo tax cuts to the wealthy.
    In the 2000 election, Gore proposed putting the SSI surplus in a Lock Box to fund the Boomer bump since the Clinton policies had put the Fed on a balanced budget. And candidate Bush agreed.
    But pResident Bush II immediately declared that there should be a major cut in the income tax because the Fed was running a surplus. It was SSI that was producing the surplus but no Repub ever calls for an SSI cut because there is no benefit for their core supporters, the wealthy top 5%.

    Just to be clear, SSI has been running a surplus. Per CBO, in billions of dollars:
    1988-97 = 38.8 -52.4-58.2-53.5-50.7-46.8-56.8-60.4-66.4-81.3 = 498.9
    1998-07 = 99.4-151.8-163.0-159.0-155.6-151.1-173.5-185.2-186.5 = 1,549.8
    or about 2 Trillion dollars and not one cent in interest.

    But the Repubs and McSame want to keep the income tax cuts of W.
    The Repubs and McLame want to ignore money “borrowed” from SSI.
    The Repubs and McCain want to cut SSI benefits and/or privatize to “fix” SSI.

  • So Mary, care to defend McCain’s “policy”? How is taking money out of social security by privatization likely to help seniors?

    Also please cite even one instance where Obama has “attacked McCain’s age”. Ever.

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