I don't think the Obama campaign has made this clear enough:
As it happens, though, not that long ago we had a rare political moment in this country, a moment where the public sat up and took notice of economic policy -- and spoke out and made its voice heard too. When George W. Bush made it to term #2, he decided to try to privatize social security to reward his supporters on Wall Street with a new source of capital, customers, and fees. (Those would be the same people whose firms are now cratering under the weight of the bad debt they recklessly took on while Republican regulators looked the other way). But as it turned out, we Americans were not about to let our elected representatives turn over our social security taxes to Wall Street financiers to gamble with if it meant losing the guaranteed income that has allowed millions upon millions of American seniors to live out their sunset years with at least a basic measure of dignity.
But while ordinary Americans spoke out, John McCain stood with Bush (hugged him awkwardly in public, even), against the American people. In fact, just six months ago, McCain again let slip his fondness for privatization.
I have been scratching my head why this has not been talked about more, especially since Obama has been having trouble winning votes among seniors. There may well be some good reason I'm missing why it hasn't been a top argument thus far.
There is no good reason. I will note that Sherrod Brown, the populist Senator from Ohio, made this point today, and hopefully that's a harbinger of things to come.
"Just imagine if Bush and McCain had had their way and privatized Social Security," said Brown. "People would have seen their private social security accounts just disintegrate the last two days. And imagine what that would mean in rural America, urban America, suburban America and small town America?"
It's one thing to say that McCain's record shows him to be captive to special interests and lobbyists, or that he has considered himself to be the king of deregulation and as a Senator has sought to remove any and all burdens from corporate interests. And it's important to correct the record on this, now that McCain is running away from it. But those are true statements but not visceral ones. Even the familiar line, borrowed from John Kerry's 2004 campaign, that McCain "gave tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas," while potentially effective, doesn't have broad resonance for everyone.
The fact is that from 2001 to today, the stock market has gained, in the best analysis, 1%. And depending on the choice of stocks, an individual portfolio may have incurred significant losses in those years. And this is the system to which George Bush and John McCain want to turn over your retirement savings. Before Social Security it was commonplace to witnesses large numbers of elderly men and women in poverty, struggling to survive. This is the Republican vision of America.
It seems significant.
Update: Turns out the Obama campaign has at least one unreleased ad on this subject playing in Michigan.