Tag Archives for Politics

AARP poll says older women’s vote a “Wild Card” in upcoming election

Pubished in RINewsToday on February 26, 2024.

According to a newly released AARP public opinion poll, women voters age 50 and older are the biggest wild card vote in the upcoming 2024 presidential election, divided almost evenly on their preferred presidential candidate. But these voters express common concerns about their financial wellbeing, political bickering and gridlock, and the overall future direction of the nation.

With woman voters politically split, Democratic and Republican political consultants will most certainly analyze the poll’s findings to the reshape their strategies to win the White House and take control of Congress. The national on-line survey was conducted Jan. 10–21, 2024, polling 2,001 likely women voters age 50 and over and it had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

AARP’s poll findings detailed in “2024 She’s the Difference: The Wildcard of the 2024 Election” released on Feb. 22, indicated that in head-to-head matchup, 43% of women age 50+ respondents said they would vote for Donald Trump in an election today, while 46% said Joe Biden. In a generic Congressional ballot, Republicans and Democrats are tied at 45%, say the researchers.

Conducted with national pollsters Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero, the AARP survey of the 2024 Likely Electorate, shows Biden does particularly well among women 65+, winning this group over Trump by a 7-point margin, while women aged 50-64 are more likely to say they are undecided (15%). However, overall, these voters are dissatisfied with the country’s political leaders, and nearly half (48%) are worried about the upcoming election. They are likely to feel they are not being heard by the country’s political  leaders — 75% say politicians in Washington don’t listen to the views of people like them.

“Women aged 50 and over are one of the most consequential and influential voting groups in this election,” said Nancy LeaMond, AARP Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer in a Feb. 22 statement announcing the release of the survey’s findings detailed in the 10-page report. “Women in this voting bloc are concerned about America’s future, their own financial security, wellbeing, and our nation’s political divisiveness. And yet, they are not a monolithic group. Candidates who want to win in 2024 should pay attention to the concerns they share, and the concerns that differ,” notes LeaMond.

During a press call scheduled after the release of AARP’s poll data, LeaMond reinforced the point that woman were fairly evenly divided by party and ideology, and they tend to fall more in the center than their male counterparts.  She also emphasized that there’s bipartisan support for policies that help family caregivers, and said AARP plans to ask every candidate running for public office: “What’s your position on Social Security? And what’s your position on family caregiving?”

AARP’s survey  found that women voters 50+ have serious worries about their financial security.  When asked to choose the two biggest issues facing the nation  today, cost of living tops their list, with 38% citing it a top issue, followed by immigration (32%), threats to democracy (20%), and political division (16%).

The survey’s findings also indicated that half (51%) say they are not confident they will be better off financially a year from now. Among those currently working, 54% don’t think they will have enough money to retire at the age they would like to.  Finally, almost half (48%) say their own personal financial situation is falling short of what they expected at this point in their lives.

A large percentage of the survey respondents expressed their fears about the future of the nation. Seven-in-ten (70%) think the country is on the wrong track, and nearly half (47%) think America’s best days are behind us, while only 27% say the best days are ahead.

AARP’s survey also found that only 19% think the nation will become more stable in the year ahead, while 46% think it will become less so, citing government dysfunction resulting from political gridlock (63%), the economy (58%), political division and partisanship (55%), crime (55%), and the situation at the southern border (53%) as the top issues driving this instability.

Finally, the poll findings indicate that only 28% of women 50+ expect the economy to improve over the next year, while 42%  expect the economy to get worse.

Many women 50+ respondents feel pulled by a wide range of demands, especially caregiving, and that their personal lives aren’t what they expected at this stage of their life.  A third (32%) respondents say that their overall enjoyment in life falls short of what they expected. Many say they are stressed (34%) and worried (32%) when they were asked about how they feel about their life today.

Over seven-in-ten of the respondents noted they are currently a family caregiver (21%) or have been a caregiver (50%) to a parent, partner/spouse, or adult child. Among current unpaid caregivers, more than a third (36%) are also still working.

Across political affiliations, caregiving was viewed as a key political issue to be addressed inside the Beltway. Women voters overall (82%) and women voters 50+ (84%) overwhelmingly see a need for elected officials to provide more support for seniors and caregivers.

 “Women aged 50 plus are not easy to pin down into a single stereotype,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, founding partner, Echelon Insights. “We know they’re frustrated with the way things are going, don’t believe their voices are being heard, and are worried about the future of the country. Even when they say they feel satisfied with some things in their own lives, they remain very worried about cost of living and our nation’s deep political divisions,” she said.

“While women over 50 might be looking for more ways to stay connected compared to voters overall, they are more likely to be dissatisfied with the amount of time spent with family,” adds Margie Omero, principal at GBAO. “They are less likely to make their voices heard, and are also less likely to feel listened to. Given the size and importance of this group, political leaders should put in the work to stay attuned to these voters’ needs and how to best reach them,” said Margie Omero, principal at GBAO, she said.

Woman’s Political Clout Can Win Elections

According to AARP, women aged 50 and over are one of the largest, most reliable voting blocs. While U.S. Census Bureau data shows they are a little over one-quarter (25.5%) of the voting age population and 28% of registered voters, a study by Pew Research Center found that they casted one-third (33%) of ballots in the 2022 election. 

Political insiders also know they are the largest bloc of swing voters. In 2022, AARP polling showed women 65+ in battleground Congressional districts moved from favoring Republican candidates by 2 points in July 2022, to favoring Democrats by 14 points in November 2022 – a 16-point shift that contributed to the narrowness of the Republican House majority.

According to Wendy J. Schiller, is a Professor of Political Science, Brown University and serves as a political analyst for WJAR10, the local NBC affiliate in Providence and WPRO radio, the gender gap in presidential elections still persists giving Democrats an average 9% advantage over Republicans among all women, but when you break that down, you do see some differences across age and other demographics.  Women of color, especially Black women, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and white women are more evenly divided according to their geography, religion, and marital status.  “In recent years, suburban women voters who used to be more typically Republican have shifted their votes to a slight majority for the Democrats, starting with Obama and continuing through Trump and Biden.   Voters over 65 have the highest turnout at about 72% so winning or losing women in this age category can be crucial to an election outcome,” she says. 

Schiller notes that abortion access is an issue that resonates with women of all ages, and that has become a much larger issue since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  “The immediate reaction among the GOP controlled states was to severely restrict abortion access to 6 weeks, although those efforts have been mitigated by state ballot initiatives in states like Ohio and Kansas.  Now we see with Alabama how far-reaching Dobbs is in terms of things related to defining life; the super majority Republican legislature of Alabama is now scrambling to preserve the right to fertility treatments whose aim is to create life, not end it,” she says.

“And Donald Trump is expected to announce his support for a national ban on abortion after 16 weeks, which is a political move designed to both preserve the right to abortion but also limit it nationally in states where that time frame is longer (20 weeks).  These moves are a clear sign that the GOP knows there may be an electoral cost they will pay for Dobbs in 2024, especially among women,” adds Schiller. 

“The lingering presence of Nikki Haley as a female challenger to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary has clearly irritated him, and we will see what his victory speech in South Carolina does to his standing with women in the next national polls that come out,” says Schiller.  

Women and Aging Issues

Recent polling indicating that women — especially women over 50 — are concerned about their financial future this election year is not surprising,” says Max Richman, President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “We have long advocated for improved retirement security for women,” he says.

“On average, women do not enjoy the same level of retirement security as men, due to historic wage inequality and uncompensated time off caring for family members.  Women also tend to live longer than men, meaning that their retirement income and savings must be stretched over a longer period of time, Richtman notes.

According to Richtman, this election is crucial for women’s retirement security, because the two parties’ approaches to Social Security are so divergent. President Biden has called on Congress to expand and strengthen Social Security.  “Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation to enhance the program, which would boost benefits for all retirees, with special increases for widows and widowers and beneficiaries over 85 years of age,” he says, noting that Democrats have also proposed new caregiver credits that would increase Social Security benefits for those who take time out of the workforce to care for loved ones.

“On the other side of the aisle, Republicans have repeatedly proposed to cut Social Security by raising the retirement age, means testing, and adopting a more miserly COLA formula — all of which would be detrimental to women in retirement. After years of financial inequality, it is time for women to enjoy a level of retirement security on par with men. And this year, the choice for women at the ballot box could not be clearer,” states Richtman.

According to Well-Know Rhode Island political analyst, Joe Fleming, confirms that female voters will be key in this election. In 2020 Biden did extremely well with this group and retain them to win re-election. “There is no question that suburban women will be key, if Biden is to win the suburbs he must have support from these female voters,” says Fleming.

“The issue of abortion plays very well with female voters and does not have a personal impact on female voters over 50 but, I believe it still has a major impact on them. We have seen this in states that had abortion questions on the ballot and in some red state” notes Fleming.

However, Fleming warns that one must keep in mind that the election is many months away and voters opinions change over time. 

American Political Scientist Darrell M.West agrees with Fleming assessment that woman voters will be key in electing the next president. “Women will make up a majority of the electorate in 2024 so will play an outsized role in who wins. Suburban women will be especially crucial because they have been swing voters in recent elections. Whoever wins that group likely will be the next president,” says Darrell West, Senior Fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation of the Governance Studies program at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute.  His research focuses on media, technology, and elections.

To view the full poll findings, visit www.aarp.org/shesthedifference.

To access all of Herb’s articles published by RINewstoday, go to https://rinewstoday.com/herb-weiss/

Age beat writer gives us his most important columns in 2023

Published in Blackstone Valley Call and Times, on January 1, 2024

Over the years, like many of the nation’s news organizations, The Pawtucket Times, created an ‘Age Beat’ column in 2002 that allowed this writer for several years to cover a myriad of aging issues, including Social Security and Medicare, ethics, long-term care, consumer issues, spirituality, pop culture, health care and economics. Ultimately, I would return in July, 2012 to resume writing, also picking up other weekly commentaries.

As an ‘age beat’ journalist for over 44 years, I have penned more than 930 stories covering aging, health care and medical issues. These authored and coauthored pieces have appeared in national, state and trade publications.

In 2023, my articles appeared weekly in 52 issues of the Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call (now combined in one newspaper called the Blackstone Valley Call & Times), and RINewsToday.com, a statewide digital news publication.

As we celebrate the New Year and look forward to 2024, looking back, here are my top five favorite articles published in 2023:

“In the coming years, generations of older Veterans will be leaving us,” – RINewsToday, Nov. 13, 2023  

This commentary published before Veterans Day, had the Department of Veteran Affairs estimate that there will be a couple of hundred World War II veterans, over 1,600 Korean and 14,000 Vietnam veterans still alive in Rhode Island. In the coming years, frailty and health issues will keep these elderly veterans’ from attending Veteran Day celebrations and even at their reunions.     
 
As a generation of Civil War and World War I veterans vanish in 1956 and 2011, this writer urged readers to cherish the surviving older veterans. In the next thirty years, it was stressed that new generations of veterans who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam will pass away and these veterans were urged to share their personal stories and oral histories for the sake of America’s future generations. “They have so much to say, and America’s younger generations have much to learn from them,” noted the commentary. 

This commentary was dedicated to the writer’s father, Second Lt. Frank M. Weiss, who died in December 2003, in Dallas, Texas at 89 years old.

“Passages – Life and Times of Morris Nathanson,” RINewsToday, Oct. 7, 2023

Over two decades, this writer would visit Morris Nathanson on Saturday afternoons sitting in his living room drinking cups of freshly brewed coffee.  We would talk about Pawtucket, world events, and he would reminiscence about his amazing life’s journey from his childhood in Pawtucket, to the international world he lived in later in his life.

My friend, 95-year-old Morris Nathanson, a painter, illustrator and restaurant/hospitality designer died last September. My commentary was written to recognize and honor Morris’s incredible life, detailing his World War II experiences, fighting for civil rights, and his impact on the art and design scene.

Growing up poor during the depression in Pawtucket’s Pleasant View neighborhood, Morris, a spitting image of Mark Twine, or maybe Albert Einstein to me, would ultimately have a major impact on Rhode Island’s art and restaurant design scene. 

Morris brought the strategy of adaptive re-use of underutilized and vacant mills to city and state officials, a concept that he picked up from his years of working in New York City, watching the development and transformation of the industrial mills in SOHO.

Witnessing firsthand man’s biases and prejudices motivated him throughout seventy-five years of his long life to fight for the equal rights of all.  Morris participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaigns in Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  

At age 24, Morris, head of the design team at Paramount, developed and designed the first franchise in American history, Dunkin Donuts. While working with Friedman he also designed restaurants in the pavilions of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York.

When Morris left Paramount Restaurant Supply Co, his most notable design projects locally include Hemenway’s, Ruth Chris Steak House, 22 Bowen, restaurants and bars for the Inn at Castle Hill, Capital Grill, Pizzeria Uno, Joe’s American Bar & Grill, Mills Tavern, Waterman Grill, Red Stripe and for those who still remember, the beloved Ming Garden and McGarry’s Restaurant in downtown Providence.  He also had clients all over the world.

It would take pages to detail all of Morris’s professional accomplishments while serving on state, city and nonprofit organizations throughout his long-life.  Hopefully I whetted your appetite to learn more about his life by reading this commentary. 

“Will Magaziner fulfill call to reestablish House Aging Committee,” RINewsToday, Oct. 9, 2023.

As reported, with Congressman David Cicilline retiring from Congress, no House lawmaker has yet stepped up to reintroduce, H.R. 583, the Rhode Island lawmaker’s resolution to reestablish the House Select Committee on Aging (HSCoA). Without receiving a vote in the House Rules Committee at the end of the 117th Congress, the resolution was considered “dead.” On his way out Cicilline was not successful in passing the legislative baton and finding a new original sponsor.  The Rhode Island Congressman had introduced this resolution in four Congressional sessions.

The HSCoA was a permanent select committee of the U.S. House of representatives between 1974 to 1992.  The committee was initially created with the intent of not crafting legislative proposals, but of conducting investigations and holding hearings to put the Congressional spotlight on aging issues. Its purpose was to push for legislation and other actions, working with standing committees, through regular committee channels.

This writer asks who will ultimately pick up the legislative baton from Cicilline to become Rhode Island’s fiery aging advocate?  Will it be Congressman Seth Magaziner, or the newly elected Congressman Gabe Amo, from Rhode Island’s Congressional District 1 to step to the plate?

The article asks why shouldn’t a Rhode Island Congressman follow in the footsteps of former Rhode Island Congressman John E. Fogarty (dec.) and be the original sponsor of legislation that will have a major impact on national aging policy. The lawmaker would become a hero to America’s seniors.  

“Unique partnership creates Senior Fellows pilot program,” RINewsToday, Dec. 11, 2023

This commentary announced that the success of a pilot Senior Fellows Program, created by Leadership Rhode Island (LRI) and Age-Friendly Rhode Island (AFRI), the organizations are seeking funding to offer another session in the summer of 2024.

The unique initiative prepared 25 Senior Fellows to advocate for improvements that address age-related challenges in Rhode Island. The initial eight-week program was tuition-free. The first crop of Senior Fellows, residents of 13 different cities and towns in Rhode Island, ranged in age from 62 to 83. Nearly half were retired.

The idea to develop a senior advocates program came from Marianne Raimondo, a graduate of LRI’s Core Program, who made the connection between Leadership Rhode Island and James Burke Connell. Connell is the executive director of Age-Friendly Rhode Island, an initiative at Rhode Island College that represents a coalition of public and private agencies, organizations and individuals committed to healthy aging.

Connell proposed the pilot program because, he says, empowering seniors to become advocates, activists and champions of age-friendly thinking and practices “will result in a Rhode Island where older adults thrive and live their best lives.”  He was inspired by similar programs in Maine and New Hampshire.

Age-Friendly RI raised the funds for the pilot program, and relied on LRI’s “talented team” to handle recruiting, participant selection, curriculum planning, and guiding participants in the development of individual community commitments, Connell says.

Most session days were divided into two parts, with half focused on knowledge-building around relevant issues, such as housing, food insecurity, transportation needs, and health care. The other half focused on skill-building, such as writing persuasively, public speaking and network building, to enable the Fellows to develop and eventually execute their own Civic Commitments.

The Fellows took turns describing their Civic Commitments during their final session, held at the RI State House.  The presentations, which included several “poignant and pin-drop moments,” were well received.

“Increased funding must be tied to nursing home mandated minimum staffing“, RINewsToday, September 25, 2023

The commentary announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had issued a proposed rule to establish comprehensive staffing requirements for nursing homes—including, for the first time, national minimum nurse staffing standards. CMS officials said that the requirement would improve both safety and promote high-quality care in the nation’s 18,700 skilled nursing facilities delivering care to 1.2 million residents each day.

National and Rhode Island nursing home trade groups pushed back on the unfunded mandate requiring more staffing especially during a severe labor shortage forcing hundreds of facilities across the nation to close because of lack of workers.

​John E. Gage, President, and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Care Association, reported that six Rhode Island-based facilities have closed since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Three others are currently in receivership. He warns that arbitrary federal staffing mandates will result in more closures, and residents will be displaced from their homes just as they were most recently when Charlesgate Nursing Center in Providence.

James Nyberg, president, and CEO of LeadingAge Rhode Island, with offices in East Providence, sees a staffing ratio mandate as a blunt enforcement tool that does not consider the numerous challenges facing providers, including Medicaid underfunding, lack of workforce, and the diversity of resident needs. Moreover, he charged that fining for being unable to meet a staffing ratio is counterproductive by siphoning off scarce resources that facilities need as they seek to address their workforce and resident care needs.

To review ALL of Herb’s articles published by RINewstoday, go to https://rinewstoday.com/herb-weiss/

Presidential Commission Kicks off Social Security Reform Debate

Published in Pawtucket Times on December 17, 2001

Amid the nation mobilizing for a global fight against terrorism, a sliding economy with a rising unemployment rate, the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security last week released its bipartisan plan to fix the ailing Social Security program.

With elections looming next year, Congress will be forced to turn it attention to politically sticky domestic issue, how to modernize and restore the fiscal soundness of the Social Security program.

Finishing up its seven months of work, the 16-member Presidential Commission, divided evenly among Democrats and Republican, voted unanimously to sent its 165-page final report in draft form to the Bush White House. Two days after the panel released its report, House Republicans threw two bills into the legislative hopper, mirroring several of the recommended approaches.  The Social Security debate has begun.

While the Commission estimates that it will cost at least $2 trillion to revamp Social Security, it does not identify where the funds will come from.

Specifically, three approaches were suggested by the federal panel as a way of bringing reforms to the Social Security program. All involved the creation of voluntary personal accounts with a premise that workers investing in these accounts would ultimately receive higher retirement benefits by their investing in the social market.  Meanwhile, two plans seek provide better retirement benefits by their investing in the stock market.  Meanwhile, two plans seek to provide better benefits to low-income workers. All plans would seek to restore the fiscal stability of Social Security.

Senior advocacy groups are now weighting in on this highly visible and controversial policy issue that will likely become a key election issue next year. “None of the three draft plans put forward by the Commission today achieves the goal set out by the President, closing the gap in the program’s solvency over the next 75 years. None of the plans explain how it will achieve solvency. These plans do not change the fact that private accounts expose future beneficiaries to unnecessary risk and widely varying outcomes in retirement security,” charges Max Richtman, executive director of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Furthermore, with the push to privatization through individual accounts, the Commission does not address the issue of the impact to the existing Social Security program if moderate and higher-wage earners pull their money out of the  system, states Richtman, stressing that the Commission does not see to have considered the potential impact of such an adverse selection on the stability of the program.

“With privatization, the devel is always in the details, and the Commission has failed to provide adequate details,” Richtman adds. ”They have not provided the nuts and boots of how the plans would work and how they would affect real people.”

According to AARP CEO William Novelli, a number of questions remain unanswered by the Commission report, specifically, “the long-term financing of benefit guarantees, particularly if current budget projects and market rates of return prove to be overly optimistic.”

When the Social Security debate begins, Novelli calls for other reform proposals to be considered, such a diversifying the Social Security Trust Funds’ investments by including federally-backed debt instruments, along with raising the wage base for payroll taxes and adding newly hired state and municipal employees to the program.

U.S. Rep. T. Matsu (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee agrees with the concerns of senior advocates. Restoring solvency of the Social Security program by workers investing part of their payroll tax in the stock market is a flawed approach and not the best strategy to  restore the fiscal integrity of the Social Security program, he says.

Privatization of Social Security would either require benefit cuts or a large infusion of federal dollars, warns U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee and sits as a member of the House Aging Caucus.

The Rhode Island Democrat who gives the Commission report a thumbs-down, states, “There is no question that we need to encourage American’s to save more for retirement, but while we do this, we should not throw the ‘baby out with the bath water’ by raising the retirement age, diverting the Social Security Trust Fund into privatization schemes or cutting benefits to seniors.” The four-term Congressman, whose legislative district has a large elderly constituency plans to make Social Security reform a key for his campaign in the upcoming elections next year.

Jeff Neal, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), tells All About Seniors that the senator does not necessary support or oppose some amount of privatization. “No amazingly specific proposal has come forward, been debated or has been thoroughly analyzed yet, Neal says. “Until that happens, it is impossible to determine if it is a good idea or not.”

Neal adds that Sen. Chafee believes that all the Democratic concerns need to be debated and resolved before Congress goes forward with any plan. “Democratic talking points look at the Commission work as a very simplistic level. Social Security is possible, besides the Medicare program, the most complex federal program, and a great deal of debate and input from both sides will be needed to tackle the solvency issue,” he says.

“Rhode Islanders need to step up and take credit for being leaders in the best social reform, notably Medicare,” urges AARP Executive Director Kathleen S. Connell. The late Democratic Congressman John Fogery and Aime J. Forand were the moving forces to create the is key federal program to protect the health and well-being of America’s seniors. “It is up to the current Rhode Island delegation to pick up the torch and lead the efforts to enact meaningful legislation to preserve and protect the Social Security program.”