For today’s Democrats, unlike Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, entitlement reform is something to be opposed root and branch. The left wing of the Democratic party is even embracing an expansion of Social Security, even though the program is already on an ineluctable trajectory to be unsustainable. Underlying both stances are both principled beliefs and political calculation, the latter being that opposition to any change in Social Security will make the elderly a dependable Democratic constituency.