Alex Sink said we should "dust off the Simpson-Bowles." No strong stand on Social Security.
That was enough right there to discourage some Democrats from voting. Of course she is a lot better than David Jolly, but that commission wanted to raise the retirement age to 69 by 2075. Long time off, but then she went on to sound like a deficit hawk. Jolly turned it on her very quickly, and it made for some good sound bytes.
Alex Sink's words about dusting off the Simpson Bowles recommendations:
From the Tampa Bay Times:
Alex Sink would cut Medicare funding, raise Social Security taxes?
UPDATE: The Sink campaign pushed back hard on the NRCC attack, calling it a "gross misrepresentation" to say she fully endorses Simpson Bowles. Based on an audio sent to Buzz, here is what Sink acutally said: "My approach is we have got to bring down the trillion dollar deficits. They are not sustainable. The question is how do we go about doing it. I think we go back and at least dust off the Simpson-Bowles. I’m sure I’m not going to agree with everything that was in it, but it was a bipartisan group of people who said ‘this is one path forward.’ Let’s see which aspects of that we have agreement on...."
She would have been better off not mentioning it. Even seniors in Republican districts don't want the retirement age raised.
She could have said that Social Security and Medicare should not be touched.
Here's how the Republicans used it....the irony was that this was originally their idea. They only opposed it because a Democrat said she wanted to see what parts she might like.
From Mother Jones:
GOP Group Attacks Dem for Holding Social Security Position GOPers Promoted
A few days ago, after Sink blasted her Republican opponent, David Jolly, for being a lobbyist who has worked for clients advocating the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, the NRCC struck back. Katie Prill, a spokeswoman for the group, assailed Sink, Florida's former chief financial officer, for supporting the Simpson-Bowles long-term budget plan that was released in late 2010. This centrist blueprint called for raising $1 trillion in revenues via taxes and proposed measures that would squeeze money out of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, including a slow and gradual increase in the retirement age. Prill noted, "Alex Sink supports a plan that raises the retirement age for Social Security recipients, raises Social Security taxes and cuts Medicare, all while making it harder for Pinellas seniors to keep their doctors that they know and love. Sending Alex Sink to Washington guarantees that seniors right here in Pinellas County are in jeopardy of losing the Social Security and Medicare benefits that they have earned and deserve." (The congressional district Sink is vying to represent covers Pinellas County.)
Seniors of both parties remember the careless way the chairs of that commission spoke of the elderly. Here's what the Democratic co-chair said.
Social Security’s Code Words: Erskine Bowles takes the stage
"We’re going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because if you take those off the table, you can’t get there. If we don’t make those choices, America is going to be a second-rate power, and I don’t mean in fifty years. I mean in my lifetime."
Boy does that sound dire, since Bowles already sixty-four; Simpson, for what it’s worth, is seventy-eight. A live-blog on the Web site of the Charlotte Business Journal shared more of Bowles’s thinking. “We’re going to come out of this commission not very popular. Everything is on the table,” he said.
And then there are the words of the infamous Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair.
More on the group that will "reform" Social Security..."enormous unaccountable authority"
Simpson refers to seniors as "old cats."
“These old cats 70 and 80 years old who are not affected in one whiff. People who live in gated communities and drive their Lexus to the Perkins restaurant to get the AARP discount. This is madness.”
Here are some words from Alan Simpson in a recent Newsweek interview:
Try this: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will use up all the taxes—revenue—the government takes in this year. And to do the rest of governing we'll have to borrow, including for massive things like defense, homeland security, education. Those will be paid for by shaking a tin cup in front of the world. And China will probably be throwing more chips in the tin cup than any other country, just waiting patiently for us to expire under the debt. The people who distort the commission and try to scare people into doing nothing, let's say they win the day, and we don't do anything to try to bring down this debt. Well, great. They've got grandchildren, too, and in 40 years they'll be sucking canal water and picking grit with the chickens.
She should not have referred to this commission and its findings. There were so many other important things she could have said.
When Bill Clinton made his last minute rally calls for Alex, there were so many great and powerful issues he could have raised. Instead he said she should be elected because she would work for better cooperation between the two parties. I can't remember if he used the word bipartisan, but that was the point he was making.
That was not a good last-minute rallying call. The low turnout of Democrats probably kept her from winning. But the party and the candidates need to closely examine the reasons for such low turnout. Just blaming the left, which is a popular pastime...is not a solution.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I am inclined to agree. There's a fear of upsetting the right. We have got to get over that. 
TWICE!
I swear southern Dems just can't let go of that fucking Reaganomics, neo-liberal bullshit. They'd rather lose elections than back down from that.
Screaming leftist here. 
Of course, I'm not really a Democrat anymore (far, far to the left of even the most left wing Dem) since I've lost faith entirely in the electoral system to effect changes that benefit the working class. Intellectually, it was easy to see this and argue it for decades, but emotionally it was hard to let go of that "voting" crutch.
Here's more from a couple of days ago...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024652573
Thx for the link and rec.
As always! 
Oh, maybe you meant something else.
Have a nice week-end.
Shocking that cuts to Social Security and Medicare aren't popular.
Democrats adopting Republican ideas lose. Period.
I will vote dem when they deserve it & I'm lucky to have mostly decent dem representation. I look forward to working for a better candidate than Bennet in 2016.
The dems used to be the party of the people, not the corporations, but most of them are on the gravy train, now, too. They throw a few more crumbs to us than the repubs do, but they are on the same train going in the same direction.
In this cartoon, Obama is an icon for the democratic party.
And this is what's been going on for over 30 years.
