It depends on which seniors you are talking about, the very old and the old, the older ones have been with the Dem party ever since, but may have broken away in 94.  But the old is still with president.  I think that the veterans are more or less coming back than the elderly, they aren't subject to mortality as much.

Well didn't Republicans try to privative social security. Beyond the fact that you need a lawyer to navagate Medicare now. And there grand kids are dying over there.

And we will likely keep those seniors for the long term. It may not come out in time to play a big role in the 2006 mid-terms, but Social Security Solvency will be a political winner for the Democrats.

The message will not primarily be "Social Security is okay so hurrah for FDR", though that message will be in the mix, the real message will be not that Republicans were wrong on this issue but that they were deliberately lying about it. "Lying" is not too strong a word, they have systematically distorted and misprepresented the numbers. You can follow the details of this on the econoblogs, my concern here is with the politics.

Boomers should be furious. Not only have we been the whipping boys for a crisis that has shown to be ficticious, we have been asked to be the ones to take the benefit cuts. Boomers range in age from 42 to 60. Even the youngest Boomers need to be looking at retirement plans, this is imperative for the oldest. When they collectively find out that the Right and the Republican  Party has been using a campaign of fear and deception with the single desire to get Boomers to turn over their retirement security to Wall Street I expect a backlash, one that works to the benefit of the party of FDR.

And the Republicans know it. For the first time in the Bush Administration the Social Security Report did not come out by the statuatory deadline of March 31st. Sure they have an explanation, something about the Public Trustees (who need to sign the Report) needing confirmation by the Senate, but that could be fixed in an instant by a recess appointment. The truth is that these numbers cannot see the light of day without proving they are a set of serial liars on Social Security.

They may be able to finesse this past this election, which is okay by me, this works better in the National context offered by the 2008 cycle anyway. People who have not looked closely at the numbers simply do not believe that they could be so offbase as they are. Surely Privatizers didn't try to swing this swindle with numbers as weak as those? But they did and they are. But the numbers are running against them.

Here is a message that every Boomer needs to take to heart and to the polling booth: The Republican Party is lying to you. Again.

Given Bush's plummeting 'honesty' numbers I really do see using Social Security to back up Iraq as case studies in Republican dishonesty to be an electoral winner.

I think this is a very important post, because it reminds us of the limits of online organizing.  16% of 2004 voters were 65+; they don't know what we're doing, and they not share or care for the combativeness we seek in our leaders.  (17% of voters were 18-29.)

We need to remember that they were once our base, and we need them back too.

The New Deal Dems never left--the folks who are in their 80s and 90s.  The folks born in the '30s and '40s are also moving away from Bush.  Both generations are angry that what they built for their children and grandchildren is being systematically dismantled by the likes of Bush and the GOP.  Don't minimize the importance of the fiscal responsibility issue with these folks.  They understand war, and unlike the self-styled libertarians, they believed in and built a civic culture, a strong and vibrant public sector--schools, highways, water projects etc.  They are more communitarian in many ways than the (more indulged) Boomers.

The Boomers will probably go to their graves being grandiose and ideological, fighting and refighting the '60s over and over.

Watch the under 42s.  If not in 2008, at some point they will turn out the Boomers just the way the generation that fought the Civil War turned out the Transcendental generation in the elections of 1868, 1870 and 1872.

I would hope that if we take both Houses, it'll be Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Someone Else.

Some of the elderly are simply unable to comprehend that the Republican party is not the party of progress.

My 86 year old mother is among them.  She really has no idea what is going on in the world.

Every time I hear the term "Baby Boomers" I reach for my pistol.

Generational political analysis has always seemed lame and pointless to me.  The baby boomers are typically defined as those born between 1946 and the mid 1960's.  In reality that is two generations, not one.  If you were born in 1946 and had a child in 1964 you would both be "Boomers".  Does that make sense?

To put that massive number of people into one category -- the Boomers-- while ignoring class, racial and religious differences is just astoundingly lazy. And yet I have listened to politicians, pundits and political scientists blather on about this crap my entire life.  Yes, I am 55 and pissed off. I am not a Boomer, I am a human being.

How about Speaker "Some other Democrat" and Majority leader Reid.  Pelosi should not be given the top job.