ORLANDO, Fla. — Maria Rubin is one of the coveted independent voters in this swing state — so independent that she will not say whether she is voting for President Obama or Mitt Romney....
Her attitude speaks directly to one of the biggest challenges facing the Republican ticket this year: countering the Democrats’ longstanding advantage as the party more trusted to deal with Medicare.
In the 2010 congressional races, successful Republicans believed that they had finally found a way to do that, by linking the program’s future to Obama’s unpopular health insurance overhaul and accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare to pay for it....
Initially, polls suggested that the Republican strategy was working. Democrats fretted that Romney would win the retiree-heavy Florida and increase his support nationwide among older voters, who lean Republican anyway.
See: Why Obama Loses Florida
Maybe not now.
David Winston, a Republican pollster, wrote a month ago of ‘‘a structural shift in the issue’’ that left the parties in ‘‘a dead heat’’ and Obama unable to mount an effective response.
But in recent weeks Obama and his campaign have hit back hard, and enlisted President Clinton as well, to make the case that the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare would leave older Americans vulnerable to rising health care costs. Now their counterattack seems to be paying off.
Clinton disgusts me, but....
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted over the last week, found Obama held an advantage over Romney on the question of who would do a better job of handling Medicare. That is consistent with other recent polls and is a shift from just last month, before the parties’ national conventions, when the two men were statistically tied on the issue.
At the heart of the conflict is the proposal backed by Romney and Ryan to change the way Medicare works, in an effort to drive down health care costs and keep the program solvent as the population ages....
Critics say the fixed payments might not keep up with rising insurance costs and could leave older Americans facing cutbacks in care or paying more out of their own pockets. Democrats contend that Medicare’s rising costs can be held down within the existing system.
In the Times/CBS poll, more than three-quarters of voters favored keeping Medicare the way it is rather than switching to a system like the one backed by Romney and Ryan. From the White House on down, Democrats are calling the Republican approach a ‘‘voucher’’ plan, suggesting that it borders on privatizing the system; Republicans prefer the term ‘‘premium support.’’
As that poll result reflects, the Democratic message is resonating with voters like Rubin, who joined other independent and Democratic voters last week to hear Clinton make his pitch for Obama’s reelection in the packed ballroom of a resort hotel here.
“I don’t trust anybody who says ‘voucher,’ ” said Gary Fieldsend, 62, a recently retired employee at a Navy shipyard who was vacationing here with his wife, Pamela, 64. The Fieldsends, from New Hampshire, another swing state, describe themselves as Democratic-leaning independents, and both said they were voting for Obama....
That's odd; I was told New Hampshire was trending Republican.
Also see: Swing State Surprise
It is a paradox of recent politics that despite Democrats’ usual advantage on Medicare, voters 65 and older are the age group least supportive of Obama and his party. His challenge is to depress Romney’s support among older voters by raising doubts about Republicans on Medicare.
Even the Jews?
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