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George Nemeth · Obama and the boomers
August 30th, 2008
While a post about baby boomers should probably be over on Optimistic Rebel, I think this article by Lisa Chamberlain fits better here on BFD:
[T]he white baby-boomer’s lack of support for Obama is nothing short of shocking. Charlie Cook – hands down the best political analyst working today, and you won’t see him bloviating on The Countdown with Keith Olberman – revealed the nasty truth back in June.
“It finally dawned on me that white Baby Boomers are the group that is really hurting Barack Obama,” Cook wrote in his National Journal column. “Of all people, the generation that brought us the Vietnam War protests and the Summer of Love is proving to be a very tough nut for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to crack.” Cook pointed out that among whites between 50 to 64, Obama is losing by a whopping 18 points, 51 percent to 33 percent. I don’t know if the numbers have moved much since June, but that was after Hillary “suspended” her campaign.
Cook concludes, “By doing very well among African-Americans and reasonably well among Hispanics, Obama could easily overcome his deficits among whites under 50 and over 65. But losing whites born between 1944 and 1958 — pretty much the lion’s share of the Baby Boomers — by 18 percentage points? Wow. That’s a burden…”
Hillraisers: The New Naderites? | Newgeography.com
Last 5 posts by George Nemeth
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August 30th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Interesting article..but none of us know what is going to happen till first tuesday…carol stanley author of For Kids 59.99 and Over
August 30th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Sorry, Lisa, but that’s only shocking to the willfully obtuse. If it means anything at all to make blanket statements about a cohort group of such giant proportions that it encompasses nearly one-quarter of the population, and I’m not sure it does, you can say that Baby Boomers are now of an age when their maturity level is such that they respect achievement and track record far more than promise and potential. We’ve heard and seen it all by now, doubly so in the political realm. So the bar is naturally much higher for us when it comes to candidates engaging in soaring rhetoric about their visions and possibilities (been there, done that). It’s an old saying, but a meaningful one: in America, candidates run for election in poetry, but must govern in prose. Until now, Obama’s been long on the poetry and more than a little sketchy on the prose. Unless and until that changes (and he made a promising start the other night), we’ll remain proudly skeptical. At least I know I will.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
@Carol Stanley: Sometimes we don’t even know then.
@John Ettorre: Spoken like a true boomer.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
George, those without children, spouses and mortgages have the privilege of living in a manner I’ve come to think of as The Incredible Lightness of Being. I sometimes envy them that, but not always. The rest of us live more in what an anonymous Bush aide once memorably described as “the reality-based community,” where the poetry of campaigns has to connect to the prose of governance. And yes, Lisa, we do care about boring pocketbook issues like taxes, as you no doubt one day will also be forced to.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:38 am
John, I can’t think of one single year in the last 20 when my life has resembled TIL of Being; I find it appalling that you don’t like stats painting all boomers with a broad brush, yet you think it’s okay to do so for another whole group. I agree with you on one thing, and that is that prose has to meet action. I get so tired of people (as you just did) deciding that because I disagree with you that makes me 1)childish or 2)anti-woman or 3)an idiot or the worst, unthinking.
Get over it, it’s time we all sat down and thought about and talked about issues without these useless backhanded swipes at differing opinions.
Yeah I guess you hit a hot button.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:27 am
obama yes!! go go obama
I Think Obama is the Best Candidate…
August 31st, 2008 at 3:15 pm
@John Ettorre: Children, spouses and mortgages? Are you talking about the generation that had fewer children, saw the largest increase in the divorce rate, and $300K McMansions in the Exburbs? Subsequent generations learned that lightness from the boomers, pal.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Among the many ways in which your silly broad generalization collapses under the weight of its lack of internal logic, is this simple fact: both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are members of the Baby Boom generation. Lisa Chamberlain used the tired Baby Boomer critique as a framing tool to sell a book proposal, which to her credit she basically acknowledges in the book. What’s your excuse?
August 31st, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Carole, you’re of course right. And not that it makes a huge difference in this context (but it does made some), but I was thinking of those in their 30s and under when I made that comment. I’m not aware of anyone over, say, 40, who could or would think that life is anything approaching an incredible lightness of being. Wisdom, experience and life’s hard knocks inevitably adds gravity to that former lightness. Which of course was my point.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
The post wasn’t about WHO’s a baby boomer, pal. It’s about the WHO isn’t supporting a baby boomer and why. The only people tired of baby boomer critique are boomers. They act like they never criticized anyone.
August 31st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Life’s easy up to 30, huh, John? Come on.
I lost my father at 22 and became one at 26. I sit here at 32 and I have to think about a pretty harrowing reality for my generation and my son’s because the boomers mortgaged the well-being of future generations. I won’t even count the ways…I will be counting until the next meetup.
I grew up during the 80’s and, let me tell you, it wasn’t “The Incredible Lightness of Being” growing up black in Cleveland. Drug abuse, the loss of lots of public and manufacturing jobs (which disproportionately affected African-Americans) and poor schools (so poor that our superintendent commited suicide) created a harsh environment for kids. Those with money moved. Those with less money sent their kids to private schools. The rest stayed and pressed their luck. I was among them and I was lucky. I had some dedicated teachers who believed in my ability and a family that appreciated me. I didn’t get into legal trouble, addiction to drugs or have kids I couldn’t support. But, had I made some bad choices, which could have been easier than making good ones, I could be dead, in jail or strung out somewhere. I took the right path…
…it was NOT easy..and there are people who had it harder than I who have achieved more than I. It wasn’t cake for them either.
One thing I have learned in my travels and meeting with people in my 32 years is not to trivialize the experiences of others. The comments you made about “The Incredible Lightness of Being” rings on deaf ears here.
August 31st, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I almost forgot to comment on Sen. Obama.
Senator Obama wants to hold the boomers accountable. Boomers don’t like this because, contrary to popular belief, boomers weren’t really against establishment. They were against accountability. I can’t say that about all boomers because I don’t know them all but the ones that have led our country haven’t been the most stand-up guys out there. (I am talking about Clinton AND Bush).
I think that Senator Obama isn’t all about pie in the sky…he is about holding government responsible for what it purports to be about. If government is going to collect our tax money and be involved, they should do things that would improve lives for citizens (schools, roads, renewable energy,etc.). He also asks citizens, especially his fellow black men, to step up and live up to our individual promise and our collective promise as Americans. He wasn’t picking on black men, he was challenging us because he sees more than we have shown in a way that a successful older brother or older uncle would.
Of course, boomers wouldn’t espouse this message. It combines two things that many boomers have failed at…accountability and acting in the interest of something bigger than themselves.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
It’s not surprising to me that people vote their own interests. People in the 50-64 demographic are in their peak saving and earning years, are paying for kids in college, and are planning for retirement. Why should they support a candidate whose political philosophy–and voting record–are based on government taking hard-earned dollars from the people who earned them, and reallocating them by political whim to people who didn’t earn them?
Take Obama’s “tax” program. Anybody who actually researches income tax issues (instead of buying quasi-religious political slogans like “tax cuts for the rich”) should know that under President Bush, the percentage of income taxes paid by high earners is higher than at any time in recent history. Half of Americans pay NO federal income taxes at all. The other 50% of us pay ALL of federal income taxes. The top 5% of earners pay over half of all federal income taxes; that’s right, 5% carry 50% of the burden.
Yet Obama’s tax program would further increase that inequity, by creating what he calls “refundable” tax credits for people who pay no federal income taxes. “Refundable” means that at tax time, the government would write checks to those people. That’s right. Government would take it from the most productive people–high earners–and give it to people who not only haven’t earned it, but haven’t paid ANY income taxes to begin with. That is not a tax credit, or rebate, or whatever propaganda slogan Obama wants to label it: that’s wealth transfer or, more honestly, welfare.
Confronting that reality, it’s no surprise that Boomers don’t support the most left-leaning candidate put forth by the Democrat Party since George McGovern. It’s amusing to me that Boomers–who argued for the enlargement of government and it’s role in our lives–are now finding those chickens coming home to roost.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
How do you add the share this option to your Optimistic Rebel posts? Could you add the option to the BFD posts? As far as the discussion here…let’s just “Stay the Course” and other mindless rhetoric that will only sink the ship faster…
September 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
J,
What’s so wrong with the rich paying taxes? Without this country and without all of the less affluent working for them, they would have no money. It’s the least they can do (and many try lots of chicanery not to do it) to give to those who they stand on to be rich. Profiting without giving in return is the primary characteristic of a parasite.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Derek, there’s nothing wrong with the rich–with everybody–paying taxes. A fair share, not a disproportionate share. Throughout the history of federal income taxes, since they were enacted under Woodrow Wilson, a bedrock principle of the tax system was that everybody, except the poorest, paid something. That way everybody had a stake in keeping tax rates modest.
What we now have is a system in which 50% of people pay nothing. They have no incentive to keep tax rates low. That’s why they are prey to the class warfare of people who hate (envy, really) those who are doing well, and want to confiscate and redistribute their earnings to people who didn’t earn them. That’s just politicians buying votes with somebody else’s money.
Realize that in any given year, the people who are earning the most are not necessarily “the rich.” They are the people who, through hard work, intelligence, education, and good fortune, are earning a lot that particular year so that they have something to put away for the future. Think of employees in high-tech companies cashing in stock options. These are the people we want to reward, not punish, for doing well.
The hereditary rich have their wealth locked up in trust funds and have expensive advisors showing them how to minimize their taxes. They are not the people who bear the brunt of increasing income tax rates, and they’re seldom the people who are producing the entrepreneurial companies and jobs that drive economic growth. If you want to get at the rich, don’t do it through annual income taxes, but through doing away with the tax-free status of trust funds.
The wealthy people I know (and I hope to become one of them) have no problem sharing their fortune with others. They do it by creating jobs, by granting employees stock options, and by making generous donations to college endowments, foundations, and charities. What they rightly object to is government confiscating their money and using it for purposes with which they don’t agree.
The money people earn is their property. We all pay a portion of earnings for the privilege of living in this society, and to support necessary (and only necessary) public services. How would you feel if Congress passed a law that it could take the houses of wealthy people and give them to other people? That’s exactly what a confiscatory and unequal tax system does, only with money instead of houses.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Game theory. At this point the games over–does it matter which team has the ball? No. But, I say, let the other team at least have the ball.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 am
I’m pretty amazed by these posts, since most of the Boomers I know are strongly, vocally, and in some cases even financially supporting Obama.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:00 am
Tend to agree with Carla–I’d question the accuracy of the source material, or the accuracy of the opinions–I don’t think Lisa’s supposition, or Cook’s, hold up, from what I have seen and heard.
Most boomers know not to cooperate with polls, anyway. You don’t give away your position. You don’t tell people how you’re going to vote. That’s a private matter, not something to share broadly, or at all.
Somebody’s trying to drive wedges.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Carla and Tim, you must be traveling in a narrow circle, because many Boomers I know are scared to death that Obama is going to take away what they have been able to accumulate over a lifetime and give it to somebody else who didn’t earn it, all the while couching it as something he is “asking” them to do, but which in fact is compelled. That’s not far from tyranny.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
J: If you want to talk tyranny, let’s talk paying in blood and cash for a war based on lies and a personal vendetta; folks who’ve paid off their mortgages seeing the value of their homes plummet while foreclosures multiply and neighborhoods self-destruct all around them; a 50-year-old diagnosed with cancer whose health insurance is summarily canceled. C’mon. I’m gonna bet that people are smarter than you think.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Carla, would that be the war that is won, resulting in a stabilizing, multi-cultural Iraq with a burgeoning democracy and a major defeat for the forces of evil respresented by Al Qaeda?
As to home prices, you have to look to Congress and their creation and expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the causes of that problem. The stupid decisions leading up to the mortgage crisis have been underway for a couple of decades now, with pretty clear indications of the risks that were being introduced into the system and have now come to fruition. The best suggestion I have heard on this subject is to break up Fannie and Freddie and sell them in pieces to the private sector.
As to the woman you cite, I have no information about which to respond. Insurance is a contract into which parties enter. Contracts can be, and are, canceled all the time for all kinds of reasons. I’ll speculate, without really knowing, that she probably reached the maximum total expenditure covered under the contract, which would have been one of the clauses in the agreement into which she willingly entered when she was healthy. I’ll further speculate that she could have picked a different contract by paying a different premium.
Nowhere is it written that a business is forced to lose money in its contracts.
Our healthcare financing system is broken, I’ll give you that, but because of too much government, not too little.