CE Week #7: “Gray Vote No Longer Reliably Red”
In a Florida Retirement Community, Residents Are Uncharacteristically Split
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; A01
SUN CITY CENTER, Fla. — The sign over the woodworking shop says “Sawdust Engineers,” and there was a time when the men now bent over the tools used to put on ties or make sales calls, building their pensions so they could one day leave the rat race for this warm world of unbroken sunshine.
“Retirement is the best!” says Jerry Decker, 73, one of the Sawdust Engineers tinkering in the wood shop at this over-55 retirement community of 19,000 residents outside Tampa.
But the tranquillity of palm trees and wine gatherings that sustained Decker’s dreams all those years in the snow has been upended by the financial crisis. Even here in paradise, nothing is for sure anymore.
“Who isn’t afraid of getting a ‘Dear John’ letter from GM saying your pension is in danger?” he asks. “You look at all these companies and what they are doing. We worked so hard to put them first, and it’s just not right for them to be reneging.”
The other men share the outrage, spitting out the names of corporations and their golden parachutes and lavish indulgences.
“I wasn’t invited to the AIG spa weekend, were you?” one asks aloud. “You didn’t get the manicure?” another asks.
“If we ran a household like they ran their company, you’d be bankrupt in five months.”
The Sawdust Engineers should be an easy sweep for Republican presidential nominee John McCain. All five are Korean War veterans and registered Republicans. George W. Bush nailed every one of their votes. But three weeks before the election, only three of them are supporting McCain.
Sun City Center is in the hard-fought electoral quadrant in Florida known as the I-4 corridor, home to 43 percent of the state’s voters. The Republican Party has always counted on the retirees here to deliver in bulk, but this year a more severe calculation is at play. To win Florida, McCain needs to capture a bigger slice of older voters than President Bush won in 2004 to offset the high numbers of young voters supporting Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.
“I’m ready for a change,” says Ed Bearer, a retired public school teacher from Delaware who recently received a letter saying his wife’s medical expenses may no longer be covered under his pension plan. “McCain turns me off. I can’t explain it,” he says. He’s voting for Obama.
That leaves Jerry Decker. Last week, during the second presidential debate, Decker kept waiting for McCain to come out swinging. “What he should have said was ‘We’re going to prosecute AIG to the fullest extent,’ ” Decker says. Instead, only vague promises to clean up corruption.
It’s easy to see why Decker wants more heat from a candidate when his own steady discipline is compared with the reckless indulgence of Wall Street. For years, Decker brown-bagged his lunch, even when he went over to the corporate tower as a director of human resources for Formica Corp. His wife, Jeannie, was his barber. The Deckers had one son and the family lived fully but frugally: They were the ones on the side of the ski mountain with their lunch and cans of soda packed from home. Jeannie watched the budget, and for more than two decades she gave her husband $25 each Friday for his weekly spending money.
“It wasn’t a sacrifice,” Decker says. “We had a game plan to spend our retirement together.”
But the game plan for many of the couple’s friends at Sun City Center has been jeopardized by the financial meltdown. Decker hears the stories in the wood shop. Guys who took their company’s advice and converted their pensions to 401(k) plans only to watch their holdings diminish by half when the market plunged. Jeannie tells him that some of the women are skipping their weekly trips to the beauty parlor and letting their hair go gray. More people their age are bagging groceries at the nearby Publix supermarket, and foreclosure signs, once unthinkable, are popping up in the trim Bermuda grass.
“I still believe in our country,” Decker says. “But Jeannie and I don’t have time to rebound. When you are 72 and 73, you don’t have time to recoup.”
‘A Nice Legacy for Our Kids?’
The storefronts at the strip plazas serving Sun City Center say it all: pulmonary clinics, laser surgery, Beltone hearing aids, oxygen tank rentals, a Bob Evans and numerous pharmacies. Retirees zip around in golf carts, many of them outlandishly customized, including one that looks like a giant sombrero, complete with fringe. But spare these folks the Florida retiree jokes — they’ve heard them all. Giving a tour of the aquatic facility, information director John Bowker mentions that four seniors have died in the Jacuzzi. “The most common sound around here is an ambulance,” he says.
Once a solid hub of conservative retirees from the Midwest, Sun City Center has in recent years been set upon by newcomers who make for a less cohesive voting group — “liberal Northeasterners,” says Dee Williams, president of the Sun City Center Republican Club since 1991. In other words, blue-staters.
The influx of Democrats and McCain’s tepid style of campaigning have Williams concerned enough to shoot off SOS e-mails to the Florida Republican Party warning that her turf cannot be taken for granted. “McCain is not bringing passion,” says Williams, 80, sitting in her living room of blue sofas. “He has to convey to the public that what we are doing with the bailout, we had to do.”
In her Missouri twang, Williams makes a direct appeal to her candidate: “You better get off your duff and show some fire. Send Sarah [Palin] and her husband to Michigan. If you are going to give up Michigan and you lose Florida, you lose.”
The same morning Jerry Decker and the Sawdust Engineers are tinkering in their wood shop, a group of women called the Weavers are at their looms elsewhere in the activities center expressing ambivalence about McCain.
“He’s flat, he’s old, he doesn’t seem enthused,” says Jane Bolder, 69, a registered independent who twice voted for Bush because of his tax policies. Voting for McCain, she says, would be a no-brainer if he had picked Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman as a running mate instead of Alaska’s Gov. Palin. “I can’t imagine sending Palin, with her cliches, et cetera, to negotiate or meet with leaders of other countries,” she says.
Obama has struggled to capture older white voters, and Bolder epitomizes their hesitance about him. “He has pizazz, but he has a lot of plans to spend a lot of money,” she says. “The health plan is more geared toward government control. He wants to raise capital gains taxes. Where is the money going to come from to pay for health care?”
Outside, the aqua aerobics class is full tilt with women in water wings dancing to Abba’s “Mamma Mia” while golf carts are nosed up to the state-of-the-art gym. The computer room is packed. Bridge starts at 2. To write off this population as a monolithic voting bloc is a mistake: Ages here range from 55 (known as the “babies”) to 95. They TiVo, they download, and most important, they are inveterate consumers of information.
The one common experience that sears the majority here is the Great Depression. The tanked economy has transcended their usual single-issue focus on health care or Social Security. They are worried, even mournful, about the country that is being passed on to their children and grandchildren. The surface anger is directed at reckless corporations and lack of oversight, but the deeper emotions eventually come out.
“Our debt is in the trillions,” Decker says. “Is this a nice legacy for our kids? We’re worried about our granddaughter, the kind of medical care she’ll have. Will there be a Social Security for her? Will there be pensions?”
It’s 4:30 in the afternoon, and the Deckers are having their ritual glass of wine when Jerry leaps up from a chair in the living room and points out the sliding glass door. “Look at that gator!” he shouts. “He’s on the sixth fairway!” A 10-foot alligator is walking toward the lake.
The couple steps outside. “Oh, look, he’s gonna stop and see Betty,” Jeannie says.
The alligator pauses at lake’s edge next to a white bird. “Isn’t that majestic?” Jerry says, in awe.
The Deckers find everything about Sun City Center pretty majestic. They moved here from Delaware in 2005, and it was a long time coming. After they married in 1960, they put a plan together: save as much as possible so they could enjoy retirement. Jeannie was a registered nurse and Jerry worked for various corporations. Now they swim, fish in the Gulf of Mexico, line-dance, hit the Ringling Museum of Art and even ride the log flume at Busch Gardens.
Both voted for Bush but felt somewhat duped when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. “Being an old Army guy, I remember saying to Jeannie, ‘I hope he’s right, but we gotta support him 100 percent,’ ” Decker says. “Turns out the weapons weren’t so mass after all.”
The Deckers favor abortion rights and stem cell research, but restoring financial solvency is what matters most to them.
“McCain has that built-in integrity because of what he went through as a POW,” Jerry says. “But I wish he would have gotten on the bandwagon on the other issues — the golden parachutes — and come out swinging.”
And yet he is not ready to commit to Obama.
“First of all, his presence and rhetoric are marvelous,” Jerry says. “But once you get beyond that, what is there? I’m concerned with his associations in the past, the minister and ACORN.” Decker is referring to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who cursed the nation from the pulpit, and the candidate’s work with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now that critics say pressured banks into lending money to unqualified low-income home buyers.
Meanwhile, a widow friend of the Deckers just learned that her husband’s benefits plan with a Big Three automaker is dropping her medical coverage.
“Doggone it, this was the agreement at the start, that we’ll take care of you,” Jerry says. “You didn’t mind working for 35, 40 years because you say to your wife, ‘Honey, we are gonna get all of these things in retirement.’ ”
The Deckers are better positioned than most. Eighteen months ago, when Jerry noticed the country’s debt shooting up and the glut of overpriced houses, he pulled their money from the stock market and invested in certificates of deposit and long-term annuities, a move that preserved their retirement savings.
Their glass of wine finished, they watch “NASCAR Now” as they do every weekday at 5 and then “Pardon the Interruption.” Jeannie makes a shrimp salad for dinner while the Florida sky turns pink.
By 6:30 the next morning they are headed out for their three-mile walk. The moon bounces off campaign signs in the cool grass. Back home they eat breakfast and Jerry becomes engrossed in an article in the morning paper about Hobson’s choice and the 2008 presidential election. “It means you have a choice between two undesirable options,” Jerry tells Jeannie. “That defines our dilemma perfectly.”
It’s ‘Scary What’s Going On’
As the Deckers clear away their breakfast dishes, Dee Williams is in another part of Sun City Center preparing to canvass for McCain. Armed with printouts of addresses of registered Republicans, the president of the local Republican Club hops in her golf cart and hits the gas.
“If Obama becomes president, I’m scared of the march down the road to socialism,” Williams says. Not that she has been that thrilled with Bush. “He didn’t know what a veto pen was. He didn’t have the guts to stop the spending habits.”
McCain is the only hope. She parks the golf cart in front of a peach-colored house with flamingos carved into the burglar bars. “I just love cul-de-sacs,” Williams says. A woman tentatively opens the door.
“I’m Dee Williams, your precinct chairman,” she says, handing the woman a McCain-Palin packet.
“It’s kinda scary what’s going on,” the woman says.
Williams offers encouragement. “Yes, we have to get out the vote,” she says.
Back in the golf cart, she recounts McCain’s appearance the night before at a campaign stop in Minnesota where he reassured a voter that Obama is not an Arab and that there is no reason to fear him.
“Why didn’t he say, ‘There’s no reason to be scared of him, but be scared of his policies’? ” Williams says. “My daughter Kim called and said, ‘I think this man is going into dementia.’ ”
Williams is disappointed that Palin bypassed Sun City Center on a recent swing through the Tampa Bay area for a rally at a public park in a neighboring county.
“Our people are too old to show up at some park and sit on the ground,” Williams says. “You can’t take our vote for granted. These people here are darned independent.”
She rings the bell of a house with a Jaguar in the garage and flowering jasmine wrapped around a lamppost. The woman who answers the door makes a grave forecast for the Republican Party:
“I’m for these guys, but I don’t think they’ll win.”
Trying to Decide
With his $25 allowance in his wallet, Jerry Decker takes the golf cart up to Home Depot. He whirs along the smooth roads, waving to friends, adjusting his baseball cap. Retirees used to move to Sun City Center and pay cash for their houses. Now mortgages are common; more than two dozen homes are in foreclosure.
When Jerry was a boy in the 1930s, his father told him that the bank had come for their furniture because of a missed payment of $2.50, and the lesson stuck with him: Don’t rely on the government and don’t rely on credit.
What he wants is a commander who will address the country and talk honestly. He and his wife will watch the third and final presidential debate and try to make up their minds. More pieces of the puzzle.
“Jeannie said it best,” Jerry says. “She said, ‘No one has stood up and said: I made a mistake.’ ”
He parks the golf cart outside Home Depot and inside he grabs some weedkiller before catching sight of a display of Eco-Smart light bulbs on sale. He looks at the box and checks the sign. “Six forty-five, that’s a pretty good price,” he says.
At the register, he greets the cashier. “Hello, young lady, can you keep me under $10?”
She smiles. “No, it’s $12.97.”
When he gets home, Jeanne is setting out their Saturday lunch: half a tuna sandwich each and sliced peaches. “Honey, I brought you a present,” he calls, coming through the garage door. “And these were on sale.”
Jeannie studies the light bulbs.
The purchase leaves Jerry with $12.03 for the week, but that’s his business. “I’ll make it,” he says. “Oh, sure.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
From this article it is very clear that Florida is not going with tradition and is still a battle ground state. But even more surprising to me is that the elderly are not going with the republican tradition. For the first time people over 55 are seriously questioning the republican policies, and for various reasons. They have all clearly picked up of the lack of distinction McCain has made between him and Bush. McCain needed to use his punch line from his last debate about him NOT being Bush months ago to make significant progress. But now it is nearly too late and he is losing his most faithful crowd. Most people know that the lowest turnout rate is among young people, a clear disadvantage to the Democratic Party, and that elders are the most likely to vote, and to vote republican. As one of the interviewees said, if McCain doesn’t focus more on Florida and Michigan, he will lose the presidency. There are so many disadvantages for McCain right now with the economy and his party’s relation with Bush, which any additional doubts from his voters such as his running mate, social security, pensions, and health care cannot be left unanswered or un-accommodated.
Connection: This can oddly be connected to selective perception. Although this article focuses on all of the votes that McCain will be losing this election, the 55 and older crowd is still very dedicated to the Republican Party. Even though they mostly agree with McCain’s policies, they deeply question his ability to carry out those policies. But, they still will not hear out Obama’s policies or give them a chance. They agree with McCain on the terms of abortion, the bailout, and other GOP views. For the many that are doubtful of McCain, they have also, ironically, made it very clear that they will never vote democratic, and are probably most likely to stay home this election. They have precise predispositions, causing an inability to see the other side’s views, and are so personally conflicted with the two candidates that they may just decide to stay neutral -sticking to the things they already agree with rather than giving something new a try.
It doesn’t surprise me that the older people of Florida are thinking about voting democrat with all that’s going on. Most people are nature of the times voters and want to vote for the party that they think will benefit them the most. Because the economy is number one on the minds of Americans, the democrats are gaining all kinds of support. The party that helped America face the Great Depression is now looking really nice to those who spent the greater portions of their lives working to earn retirement.
And yet for some of the elderly in Florida, they’re finding it difficult to switch sides and vote democrat. They’re just kind of floating in a sort of political purgatory waiting until one candidate or the other redeems himself in some way. But still, the most prevalent on their minds, so their candidate choice will be largely based on who will ensure their money is protected.
This article relates to the section in our book that deals with voter preferences of certain demographics. In the book, the South has been, for the past few decades a pretty solid republican stronghold. Yet this whole economic issue is starting to plant little blue seeds in a red garden. Pretty soon, if the country continues to head in the direction it’s going, those seeds will sprout, nourished on a lack of economic security and a resentment towards George Bush for whatever reason, into plants of democratic ideologies. This is going on right now in Florida with the old people that actually matter in the eyes of politicians. It goes against all demographics we’re used to. Old people who live in the South should just scream republican. Should, but not necessarily do.
I think that this article is representative of a growing majority of retirement homes throughout the nation. The people in these regions are more liberal in their thinking because they are moving from the “liberal northeast”, working sector of the nation, to the “gray states” (Arizona, Florida etc.) and spreading the Democratic Party’s influence throughout these regions. I agree with the quote “You better get off your duff and show some fire. Send Sarah [Palin] and her husband to Michigan. If you are going to give up Michigan and you lose Florida, you lose.” If the Republican’s don’t get their act together and try to tie up at least one of these bigger battle ground states they stand no chance at winning on November 4th. I think that if the republicans were to have any chance at winning this election they would need to stop the trend of northeastern labor industry retirees moving to the sun belt and liberalizing these regions more than they have ever been. In my opinion it is really a great catastrophe when the seniors, those who have lived through the worst of this nation’s history: the wars, the depression, the corruption and everything else, think that the nation is headed in a downward spiral similar to what they went through.
Connection:
The seniors understand their civic duty to vote to continue the successful democracy in the country, this leads to a higher voter turn out rate. They also know the magnitude of the privilege that universal suffrage provides.
Voters can be unpredictable.
Most, if not all people, are being pulled in a million directions on the issues in this race. An apparent Republican stronghold in Florida, a place containing “43 percent of the state’s voters”, may not be leaning McCain’s way. Bad news for McCain. People, who have voted for President Bush not once but twice, people who are veterans of war, are also people reeling from the downturn in the economy.
The “big ticket” issue of this race, as opposed to the past two, is the economy. In 2000 and 2004, issues that were dominated by the Republicans, such as National Security, were the focal points of those elections. Now, the economy is on the “front burner”. And that is an Obama strong suit. Most people are going to vote for the candidate that best serves their needs right now, and a detrimental need is to fix the economy.
The Iraq “War” is not a huge deal when the Dow is not stable. And besides, since “the weapons weren’t so mass after all”, National Security, probably McCain’s strongest issue, seems to be a non-issue. Since the people are being pulled in so many directions, all of the voters have to decide what the most important issue to them is. And for a two out of five sampling of identified Republican voters to even mention a shift to the Democratic side, shows that the economy is a huge deal right now, and that McCain needs to have some good fortune in the final stretch of this race.
An October Surprise maybe?
Connection:
There are many factors in determining how a person will vote, and people undergo political socialization throughout their lives. The effects of the Great Depression were part of that political socialization for many of these people. They can remember how bad things were when our economic system totally crashed. The main issue in this election, at this point in time, is if our country will fall into “Great Depression Part Two”. So, the elderly voters are influenced by this downturn in the economy, and that influences who they will vote for in this election.
The thing that is really starting to get to me about these derned journalists is that they can never give a supportive and healthy view of McCain. The majority of journalists, being educated under liberal schooling, are democrat spewing liberals. This is so frustrating to have to deal with because the media is these journalists. They show support Obama, either through direct opinion or public polling statistics, through in a couple of punches to McCain, then portray an American public that not only doesn’t support McCain, but sees no hope for him what-so-ever. I’m an avid-rabid McCain supporter and hearing CNN berate relentlessly is the equivalent of nails on the chalkboard.
Decker claims to be a republican, (non-ashamedly admitting to voting for Bush, something most of America doesn’t have the guts to admit), and until recently has been on the fence about McCain. But Decker has finally ended up leaning away from McCain with a “what have you done for me lately?” mentality, an example of retrospective voting. This mind-set drives me insane. What has Obama done for you recently? Sure he has big “plans” for you, Decker, but what actual substance is there to his “change”? You can’t just vote for a candidate just because their way of claiming fortune to the country sounds better and has a better smile. This isn’t a beauty pageant- it’s an election. So get the INFORMATION before you vote.
I thought this article was interesting, to say the least. It was written from the point of view of average Americans and pointed out the flaws in each candidate. It brought up the fact that McCain has been losing support among people that would normally have been his supporters: elderly, white, males. One man was quoted saying that it really was picking the better of two evils. I feel like that is the thinking of a lot of Americans in this election. One woman feared Obama’s policies and another feared McCain’s. Another lady stated that she would have supported McCain if he had not chosen Palin as a running mate. Overall, I got the general sense that McCain is losing ground even among his own party, but many wealthy people are still supporting McCain’s policies and feel that Obama has nothing going for him but his elequence. However, I think that McCain is in even worse shape than this article lets on.
Connection: I think this article reflects the discussion we were having about party blame in class. At the opening of the article the author mentions five retired men who were originally McCain supporters and now only three are. I think this parellels the fact that the economy is bad while a republican is president so McCain is having a hard time.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that the gray vote has started to falter for the Republicans. “The one common experience that sears the majority here is the Great Depression. The tanked economy has transcended their usual single-issue focus on health care or Social Security. They are worried, even mournful, about the country that is being passed on to their children and grandchildren.” Most notably, from the excerpt, was the common experience of the Great Depression. Many times has the current economy been referred to as the worse it’s been since the Great Depression. That’s scary to a lot of people who actually lived through that time period. They still remember how hard it was, and they don’t want to sort of future for their children or grandchildren. It’s human nature to protect against what hardships we faced, from our children. The gray vote is concerned about their own retirements, as well as the next generations’ retirements because they are experiencing first hand just how bad it’s getting. With the decline in the trust in government since the 60’s (page 191 in the book), people are definitely more skeptical about the government. “‘If Obama becomes president, I’m scared of the march down the road to socialism.’” Dee Williams does not trust a big government, and it’s not surprising, going back to government skepticism. The gray vote is definitely showing itself to be more diverse in this election than previous years.
In Response to Cody:
You can’t blame these people for questioning the Republican Party. They have worked their whole lives to be able to live in a retirement community; drive golf carts everywhere, drink a glass of wine a day and just relax. It isn’t fair that what they have worked their whole life to build up is suddenly slipping away because the government and big corporations are irresponsible with the tax payer’s dollars and allow our debt to skyrocket. People tend to judge a situation by recent evidence and what they see is their pension’s slipping away along with a glorious retirement. Cody I agree with you that people should get information before they vote, but it seems to me that this group of elderly people are some of the most informed in the nation. I mean what elderly man (Decker) knows that he should probably take his money out of the stock market and invest it in certificates of deposit because the debt is piling up – just a little over a year before the stock market takes a plunge and this neighbors around him start to lose their houses to foreclosure. He seems rather informed to me. Now I don’t support a certain party with a strong hold like you do Cody, but it is safe to say that the media does seem to like Obama. As for the comparison between the media and the elderly, they are two completely different groups. This journalist may have just been reporting the news how it is, elderly people are starting to question the Republican Party, simply because it may be what they need to do to survive.
In response to Megan:
I agree that it is not one bit surprising that the gray vote has started to falter for the Republicans and that the gray vote is definitely showing itself to be more diverse in this election than previous years. However, I think that the main reason for the gray votes to falter from the Republicans is because they are all worried about their money. The old people care about getting their social security and that is it. After that I don’t think that they would care much about the economy. Although if the economy crashed then they will not have very much to spend their money on. The gray vote has shifted away from the Republican side because it is a Republican who is in the house and the Republican President who everyone things is the cause of the drop in the economy. If Obama is elected and we go into a depression, then the gray vote, if they are still around, will more than likely shift back over to the Republican’s side. They are just interested in the money and follow it were ever it shall go. I honestly do not think that they are that worried about their grandchildren’s children.
I disagree that this article is presenting a majority opinion. How many people do you know that jet around private golf courses right outside their home on personally designed golf cart and right after their 18 holes can jet over to the Home Depot on that same golf cart? I have a great aunt and uncle who live on a golf course near the coast and I definitely would not call their lifestyle average. A lot of the people had been saving for their entire lives so that they could live the lifestyle they wanted during retirement, but it’s a very small percentage of the population at high end retirement communities like this one in Florida.
I do however agree with your observation that this election is putting many people between a rock and a hard place as far as the candidates are concerned. They may fear Obama’s youth but at the same time fear McCain’s age. They may fear McCain’s similarity to Bush but also fear Obama’s difference. It’s a difficult situation for all people choosing to be involved in the election. I think that while it is a lesser of two evils election many people are going to find that Obama is the lesser of these two evils.
I agreed with Madie when she said that this article might not represent the Majority opinion. However, this article probably does represent the majority opinion of Americans that will actually vote. In fact, the people that this article was written about will be the most likely to vote. That is probably why the republicans are in such bad shape because the people who would normally vote for them are wavering. The reasons for this are obviously the poor economy and perhaps the large sums of money Obama has spent. Another reason for this is, I agree with Madie again, because the candidates have put people “between a rock and a hard place.” A lot of these people are pickign Obama as the lesser of two evils. I think that is unfortunate because I think McCain is the lesser of two evils.
In response to matt littrel,
I do think that these people are worried about their grandchildren. They might be old, but their only concerns aren’t just their social security. They made several instances of where they are upset about their health care, their pensions, and the rate of their homes going up while their limited, weekly spending goes down. If only one aspect of their vote was disagreed with, but the many others were met by the republicans, then they would still cast their vote for their party. But, since many of the elderly are now leaning towards the democrats, there obviously has to be more than one issue that is out of line with their concerns, not just social security.
In response to Nicole: I agree with you on this article. It isn’t just a small faction of the country who is sick of President Bush’s policies, but rather the entire nation. The lack of support for his policies is so great, that even the most reliably republican group in America, the elderly, is considering switching parties this election. This was definitely a bad year to be a republican running for the presidential office. The circumstances are all very unfavorable, and now with the economy tumbling, everything is looking bleak for McCain. He definitely should have emphasized the differences between himself and President Bush if he wanted success and support, but I don’t think that will be his downfall. I think that if he loses, which it looks like he is going to, it won’t be because of President Bush, but because of the lack of faith people have in McCain’s ability to fix the economy and help out the struggling middle class. I do not know exactly why, but it seems that most people do not think that McCain will be able to deal with our economy’s problems with any effectiveness. He should start emphasizing what policies he would enact and what things he would do once he got in office to immediately help relieve the economic problems.
In Response to Nicole:
Nicole, I think the 55 and older crowd have noticed much more then “the lack of distinction McCain has made between him and Bush.” As the article said, “they are inveterate consumers of information.” They have been getting information for a long time and they are noticing things other people might not notice. Some of it is beneficial to the republicans, “‘First of all, his [Obama’s] presence and rhetoric are marvelous,” Jerry says. ‘But once you get beyond that, what is there?’” Jane Boulder also points out that Obama has plans to spend a lot of money even though our debt is trillions of dollars.
However, the older crowd doesn’t seem to have as much enthusiasm for McCain, and their doubts are well founded. Nicole, you seemed to narrow it down to the not getting enough break away from Bush. Again I think it is more then that. The older generation notices so much and they have really noticed McCain’s lack of aggression. “She [Williams] recounts McCain’s appearance the night before at a campaign stop in Minnesota where he reassured a voter that Obama is not an Arab and that there is no reason to fear him. ‘Why didn’t he say, ‘There’s no reason to be scared of him, but be scared of his policies’?’” This goes to show you that McCain is not doing as well as his normal voters would like and this will hurt him. Like you said Nicole, if he loses Michigan and Florida, he loses the presidency. This might very well be the outcome.