re: #79 sagehen

This election is about “should Medicare pay for seniors’ medical needs, or should we pass out vouchers to the elderly to go buy insurance in the private market? Should Social Security keep working as is, or would you rather have compulsory stock market investing?”

When you put it this way, it’s hard to see how the Right is going to pull anything even vaguely close to a majority. Even against the black guy.

The Medicare characterization is pretty close to what they are proposing, but not the SS stuff you mention. GWB tried selling the ‘option’ of investing and it went nowhere—without the guarantee of income, that would change the nature of the program. Ryan and Romney have been in favor of more reasonable SS changes like increasing retirement ages over time and slowing the rate of growth of payments for higher income retirees.