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Elders face 'last hurrah' election
By Carl Heintze
"There is no country for old men ... " (or women. for that matter). So wrote William Butler Yeats, the famous Irish-English poet.
Yeats, who among other things believed in fairies and loved women, especially young ones, was down in the dumps because he was getting old, with all that portends. Women tended to treat him with a daughter-like concern when that wasn't exactly what he had in mind.
He was wrong about there being no place for old men and old women to be of value, though. There is a country for old men and old women (or as we like to say, the elderly) and it's right here in the United States.
This is particularly true this year as we face up to another national election. The reason is fairly obvious--those over retirement age are more likely to vote than are their children. In addition, the elderly hold most of the property in the nation, they are the chief recipients of Social Security and more or less own Medicare.
In short, the elderly have the most to gain or lose in the coming election. Those running for office, both locally and nationally, have finally discovered this truth and are bending every effort to get the retirement bunch to vote for them.
It matters not whether the candidate is Republican or Democrat, all of them are trying to assure the white-headed generation that they're on their side. The Republicans have sworn to protect Social Security at all costs. The Democrats are all for making prescription drugs a part of Medicare and of protecting seniors from the depredations of HMOs, suddenly the principal enemies of the old, the sick and the lame.
Curiously enough, many of the generation that grew up in the Depression and voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he was willing to take radical measures to get them back on their economic feet, may not, in 2000, be all that generous to the Democrats.
That's because most old- timers also now are major property owners. Once radical, they're now conservative, or at least they want to conserve what they have for as long as they live.
They don't like any new taxes, as a matter of fact, because they think they're already paying too many. They believe they're entitled to Social Security and Medicare, even if the cost is being borne these days mostly by their kids.
Women of a certain age also hold to a tighter view of sexual morality than do many of their daughters, and have no use for the philandering going on in Washington. Just how that will play out in November also is uncertain, but generally speaking it isn't doing Mr. Gore any good. It's sort of guilt by association.
One could wish that all this might be otherwise. After all, it is the boomer generation which is going to be around much longer than their parents, and it seems logical that they ought to get out the vote, if only to protect themselves from higher and higher Social Security taxes.
But the boomers and the even younger generations following them seem to be disillusioned and cynical about what's happening to the body politic.
Either they think they can't have much influence on what's taking place in the country or they are more interested in what seems to be the American national obsession--making money.
All this is going to change, of course, certainly by the next national election in the new century. By the time another four years has passed many of those who voted this time will be pushing up daisies at the worst, or in a convalescent hospital at the least."
Until then, though, live it up elderly folks. You're in the national driver's seat. You're calling the shots. You've got the power. You can be a Gray Panther. Just don't get too cocky. Remember, this could well be your last hurrah.
Make the most of it.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
