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Speaking of senior citizens and how they voted this year, why did they suddenly decide to vote en masse for Republicans? Part of the reason is that everyone voted en masse for Republicans this year. Still, seniors switched in even higher numbers than most groups, despite the fact that the economic turndown actually affects them less than most other age groups. Here’s one explanation:

“I’ve been saying since August 2009, that there was a tsunami — in this case a senior citizen tsunami — headed towards Capitol Hill,” said Jim Martin, chairman of the 60 Plus Association, a conservative campaign group targeted toward older voters. “That tsunami came ashore.”

….“I think that there is a level of fear that has grown with seniors vis-à-vis the Obama health care plan,” said Republican pollster Steve Lombardo. “Anytime that there’s change, I think seniors are going to be more concerned that that change is going to affect them in a negative way.”

Well, yeah. Seniors might very well be concerned that Medicare changes are going to affect them in a negative way. But there’s that pesky passive voice again. Why were seniors concerned about this? No fancy political science is needed here: the answer is tens of millions of dollars spent on demagogic advertising like this. There’s no need to get any more complicated about it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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