… Whether Biden proves more effective than other recent Democrats at attracting older voters around Social Security and Medicare will likely pivot on whether seniors believe the GOP genuinely would cut the programs if given the power to do so, argued Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, who specializes in public attitudes about the social safety net. “If the senior community actually believes that it’s being threatened it really would affect their votes,” he predicted. But, he added, “as long as they are not threatened, the other values of seniors on top issues more and more correspond with Republicans.”

There’s no doubt about the second half of that equation. Polling has consistently found that older Whites, in particular, are more receptive than their younger counterparts to hardline Trump-era GOP messages around crime, immigration and the broader currents of racial and cultural change: for instance, about half of Whites older than 50 agree that discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as bias against minorities, a far higher percentage than among younger Whites, according to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Older Whites are also more likely than younger generations to lack a college degree or to identify as Christians, attributes that generally predict sympathy for GOP cultural and racial arguments.

Through the 21st century, those cultural and racial attitudes among older White voters have consistently trumped any concerns they may hold about the Republican commitment to Social Security and Medicare. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

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