At a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden last week, a maskless Donald Trump appealed directly to a constituency that could determine his political fate in November’s election: America’s seniors.
“This is a big day for seniors,” Trump declared, unveiling a plan to lower the cost of insulin for many Medicare recipients. He touted the achievement as a “breakthrough” and a preview of what he could deliver in a second term.
“Sleepy Joe can’t do this,” Trump said, lacing into his Democratic rival Joe Biden. He added, not too subtly: “I hope the seniors are going to remember it.”
Older voters, America’s largest and most reliable voting bloc, have for years punched above their political weight. Over the past two decades, Republicans maintained an advantage with this constituency, and in 2016 their outsized political influence in key swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin were essential to Trump’s electoral victory. But there are signs that may be changing.
The White House event, staged during the last week of what Trump designated “Older Americans Month”, came as a string of national and battleground state polls show the president’s support declining with older voters, amid his erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
These voters are the most vulnerable to Covid-19, which has already claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week shows Biden leading Trump by 10 points among voters 65 and older.
The president’s troubles with older voters began before the coronavirus spread to the US. But political strategists in both parties say the shortcomings of his response to the virus has only deepened the problem.
“The biggest factor right now is that older Americans are disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Michael Steele, a Republican political strategist. “Their friends are dying and they can’t even go to the funerals.”
In recent weeks, Trump has turned his attention almost entirely from controlling the public health outbreak to reopening the country and restoring the economy. But polling suggests seniors remain deeply concerned about their health, and the potential for a second coronavirus outbreak in the fall. They are also among the most supportive of and the likeliest to abide by precautionary public health measures to control the spread of the virus.
A new analysis by Navigator Research, a progressive polling firm tracking public opinion on Covid-19, found older Americans losing faith in Trump’s handling of the outbreak, increasingly characterizing his performance as “self-absorbed” and neither “serious” nor “presidential”.
In March, voters 55 and older approved of Trump’s response to the pandemic by 17 points, according to the polling memo shared first with the Guardian. Now, these voters narrowly disapprove of his response, a 19-point erosion in just two months.
“For senior voters, there’s this really vivid contrast between a steady leader and an erratic leader, a leader who listens to experts to one who thinks he knows it all,” said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster.
Lake said senior women are particularly uneasy with Trump’s behavior, especially his promotion of unproven medical treatments and his aggressive push to reopen the economy despite warnings from public health experts.
“What some men dismissed as just ‘Trump being Trump,’ senior women really thought was divisive, disrespectful, erratic, and they value all three of those qualities,” Lake said. “In the end, it’s primarily senior women who are moving away from him.”
That erosion was reflected in the recent Quinnipiac poll, which found that women support Biden by 22 points over Trump. By contrast, Trump leads Biden by 11 points among men over 65.
Lake said Biden probably does not have to win older voters to deny Trump a second term. Given how narrowly Trump won in 2016, a marginal dent in his support there could be enough to tilt some battleground states in Biden’s favor.
Michael Gwin, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said: “Older Americans know that Vice-President Biden will provide the strong and compassionate leadership our country needs in a moment of crisis like this, and they know that Biden will always fight to protect the entitlements they’ve spent their entire lives working towards.”
Allies and aides to Trump have publicly downplayed concerns about his deficit with seniors. But the White House has also ramped up efforts to showcase how the administration is benefiting seniors. And in May, Vice-President Mike Pence delivered personal protective equipment to a nursing home in Orlando treating coronavirus cases.
“Just like every American, senior citizens saw what President Trump achieved for America during his first three years in office and they see the president leading the nation during the coronavirus response,” said Sarah Matthews, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign.
Despite the uncertainty enveloping 2020, Nancy LeaMond, the executive vice-president and chief advocacy and engagement officer of the non-partisan AARP, expects older voters will once again play a decisive role in the presidential election.
“They’re going to find a way to vote, even if they’re afraid in the current pandemic,” she said during an online briefing last week.
LeaMond emphasized that seniors are “not a monolith”, nor are they firmly aligned with a political party, noting that while older voters were essential to Trump’s political success, they helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018.
On the policy front, protecting entitlement programs like social security and Medicare were always priorities for older voters, and LeaMond said they are probably even more so amid the pandemic.
As a candidate, Trump was emphatic in his support for such programs, breaking with traditional Republican orthodoxy. But as president, Trump has at various times suggested openness to spending cuts – comments the Biden campaign intends to highlight. The Trump campaign is, in turn, attempting to weaponize Biden’s past comments on social security dating back to 1979.
Even before the coronavirus upended the presidential election, Biden’s strength with his agemates was a threat to Trump. During the primary, Biden won voters over 65 in every state contest except Vermont and New Hampshire.
Democrats say older voters, who helped Biden secure the party’s nomination, view him as an empathetic leader shaped by personal tragedy, and are drawn to his moderate politics and his emphasis on shared American values.
But Trump, 73, has also sought to cast his 77-year-old opponent as “Sleepy Joe”, a doddering older man unfit for the presidency. As part of a recent advertising blitz, Trump’s re-election campaign mocked Biden as “old and out of it” and “geriatric”.
Biden’s campaign believes this strategy could backfire. Some of Trump’s top aides have reportedly warned allies that their aggressive attacks on Biden’s mental fitness could further harm Trump’s standing among senior citizens.
In Florida, a state with a significant retiree population, Biden has for months maintained an edge with the state’s older voters, an electorate that now includes the president.
Trump’s electoral success likely depends on winning Florida, where he defeated Hillary Clinton by just over 1 percentage point in 2016. According to exit polls, he carried voters 65 and older in the state by a 17-point margin.
Democrats say many voters in the state are souring on the president. The coronavirus has hit elderly Floridians hard: more than 80% of those who have died from coronavirus were older than 65, and more than 40% of them can be traced to long-term care facilities.
“Seniors have eyes and ears. They see and hear exactly what Donald Trump has done and are going to be holding him accountable,” said Terrie Rizzo, chair of the Florida Democratic party. “Trump has failed us as seniors and it is now our turn.”
The Biden campaign is attempting to solidify this advantage, which pollsters say could fade as the dynamics of the virus shift. Last week, surrogates hosted a series of events in battleground states with seniors while Biden makes frequent appearances on local television stations, whose audience skew older.
Campaign organizers, along with state party officials, have also been conducting “wellness checks” on older voters during the pandemic. On the calls, they help seniors connect with local services and encourage them to register to vote by mail.
As the death toll continues to rise, the economy spirals and social unrest spreads across the country, Trump’s critics say the disillusionment of seniors with his presidency will be hard to reverse. .
“Older voters have a great deal of experience with presidents and how they handle crises,” said Gary Mitchell, president of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans. “And what they’re seeing right now is a huge disappointment.”
Mitchell noted that the coronavirus has claimed more American lives than were lost in the Korean war and the Vietnam war combined. For the veterans of those conflicts, and the many more whose lives were shaped by them, the scale of loss in such a short period of time is hard to grasp, he said, especially as more is revealed about what could have been done to save American lives.
“It’s just a huge trauma,” he said. “The more people learn, the more and more angry and disappointed they are.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
