The first presidential election to which I was really paying attention was in 2000. I remember the high-stakes debates between
George W. Bush
and
Al Gore
(and the hysterical
satirical version
), the ads, the controversies, and, of course, the saga over dimpled and pregnant chads in Palm Beach County.
One of the common refrains was about Gore’s “lockbox,” into which the vice president planned to put
Social Security
if elected. Bush wanted to reform the program by giving people private accounts. It was a great idea that might have saved Social Security, but Gore mercilessly slammed him for it, and it helped him with the senior citizen vote. In the end, Bush only prevailed in Florida by a hair.
CRIMINOLOGY PROFESSOR CHANGED DATA TO MAKE PEOPLE SEEM RACIST
Fifteen years later, Donald Trump took a page out of Gore’s playbook. In May 2015, he pledged not to do anything about Social Security’s impending insolvency. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” he pledged. “Every other Republican is going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do.”
This stance made him stand out from most Republicans, but it would be hard to argue that it won him the nomination. Republican voters were, at that point, well-versed in the reality that Social Security was unsustainable in its current form and approaching the point of insolvency. It is difficult to believe, given their proven willingness to vote for pro-reform candidates up to that point, that Republican primary voters are going to be that badly put off by the prospect of benefit cuts, a hike in the retirement age, or some combination thereof.
Thanks in part to Trump’s failure to do anything about entitlements, Social Security insolvency is now just a decade away, staring us down in 2033. In that context, can Trump get away with ignoring the problem once again? Can he campaign on Gore’s lockbox again?
I fear we’re about to find out.
It appears that Trump’s preferred attack against his chief Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis (FL), is that he voted to “cut Social Security” multiple times as a member of Congress prior to his election as Florida’s governor in 2018. To watch the two ads below, which a pro-Trump super PAC is
spending $3 million to run
, feels a lot like watching Democratic ads from the early 2000s.
Here is the less serious version of the ad, which features a DeSantis impersonator eating pudding with his hands (I apologize in advance for how gross it is):
And then here is the more serious one:
In the period between the fall of Gore and the rise of Trump, Republicans went from struggling with the senior citizen vote to dominating it. One would think that if there’s any time to sell Social Security reform, this is it, especially when the system is on the verge of failure and desperately needs to be somehow shored up or thoroughly reimagined. By the time I reach retirement age some decades hence, Social Security will definitely be insolvent, paying out a fraction of the benefits promised. In my personal preparations for retirement, I’m not planning on getting anything out of the program. But I’d like to see someone fix it for those with greater need, whether that involves higher retirement ages or means-testing of benefits by net worth.
But don’t count on that if Trump gets the nomination. And honestly, DeSantis probably won’t tackle the problem, either (although I’d like to be pleasantly surprised). Frankly, it is a bit alarming that no one wants to address this very real problem right now, aside from
some especially courageous bipartisan members of the Senate
who will get nowhere for all their efforts.
