Be Careful When Playing the Age Card

There is a series of commercials running on the radio in which an announcer gravely informs us "as recently as July, Norm Coleman said that he still favors a partial privatization of social security." It then goes on to say that this runs counter to more recent claims by Coleman that he is against privatization and that merely the mention of the word privatization would result in senior citizens being forced to burn their furniture for heat, sell their gold fillings, and learn the 101 different ways you can prepare Alpo for dinner. Well, not exactly.

But the ad sponsored by the DFL Party of Minnesota is clearly a scare tactic to stampede the vulnerable senior voters into the camp of Paul Wellstone. It really is not all that surprising considering that the Senior Scare has been a favorite of Democrats going way back to the early '80s when it was the cruel and heartless Ronald Reagan who was ready to throw Grandma out into the street. The problem that the Democrats run into today is that this blatant pandering to the senior constituency might backfire and cost them support among other age groups.

Sure we all know that seniors vote in far higher percentages than any other age based demographic groups. But most seniors are also already more politically involved than their junior citizen counterparts and with less than a month to go before the election I would guess that most of them are pretty much locked in on one candidate or another. The DFL ad may cause a couple of previously undecided seniors that Wellstone is their man but I suspect the impact will be minimal.

For those of us from the younger set however the ad may be interpreted positively for Coleman. Despite the recent mauling that the bear market has inflicted on our investments, I believe that most of my generational cohorts ( Personally I hate the Gen X and Gen Y labels. Let's just call ourselves the "not Boomers" and leave it at that) would much rather have the option of investing even a small portion of our social security contributions in the stock market rather than relying on the continuation of the Ponzi scheme that is the current SS system. When I hear that Coleman still supports some sort of privatization my reaction is the complete opposite of what the DFL ad intends. I actually wish that Norm would stick to his guns and push for privatization and I'm betting that a number of other of non-gray hairs agree with me.

According to a Star Tribune editorial Republican pollsters have advised candidates to duck the issue and avoid using the "P" word for fear of incurring the wrath of the senior voters. Obviously the DFL has picked up on the anti-privatization sentiment and is hoping that the ad will drive seniors away from Coleman. And they may have some limited success. But they also may unintentionally attract younger voters to Norm's side of the fence. Playing generational politics can be tricky and the DFL might not like the results they see come November.