Is there another Civil War brewing in the United States over health care? That depends on how much Fox News you watch, and how much of it you believe, and how much you simply laugh at.
According to this piece from the New York Times, President Obama doesn't have too much to worry about, even with town hall meetings across the country filled with shouty angry people, because most of the shouty angry people are old :
...we now have a visual sense of the kind of voter who is militantly opposed to Obama’s health care agenda and, more broadly, to the president himself.
The typical anti-Obama activist tends to be white, male and — perhaps most significant — advanced in age. A poll conducted earlier this month by CNN and Opinion Research showed a rather stark age divide when it came to health care: 57 percent of voters under 50 said they favored the outlines of a Democratic plan, but that number was a full 20 points lower among voters over 65. In three Pew Research Center polls going back to April, senior citizens consistently gave Obama’s job performance lower approval ratings than did than any other age group.
Obama's problems convincing the elderly he has their best interests at heart is nothing new. Most American seniors have never liked him.
It must be hard for older voters not to experience such transitional campaigns, with their implicit indictments of the past, as a rhetorical hand on the back, pushing them not so gently toward the inevitable exit.
The good news for Obama :
...they still enjoy an enviable level of support among voters just breaking into the work force and among those now drifting into middle age. And that means that if reigning Democrats can manage to get health care policy right this time, and maybe even add some fundamental energy reforms, they might still be able to cement more hopeful attitudes about government for generations to come, much as Roosevelt did in his day.Elderly Baby Boomers are going to be an even more nightmarish demographic for future presidents to deal with. Boredom in retirement will kick back in the Baby Boomer activist spirit that was crushed, silenced by the ugly reality of the 1970s.
