You're still doin' just fine, Ed!

“David Weprin is making phone calls trying to scare seniors. They’re nonsense. Weprin should be ashamed of himself . . . Bob Turner is running for Congress to protect your Medicare and Social Security. If anyone tries to scare you with lies about Bob Turner, tell ’em Ed Koch told them to knock it off!”

——Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, in a robocall on behalf of Republican Bob Turner, who is alarming Democrats by threatening to win Anthony Weiner’s vacant House seat in New York’s 9th Congressional District.  The State Democratic Committee, trying to bolster his opponent, Democrat David Weprin, had sent their own robocalls to senior voters, warning that Turner wanted to “dismantle” Social Security  (Translation: “You won’t get your checks!” This is a lie, as no politician has proposed any Social Security reform that would alter the benefits of any current or soon-to-be recipients of Social Security benefits.)  and end the program “as we know it.”

Koch is a maverick who has opposed his party before, but he doesn’t do it lightly.  The reprehensible Democratic tactic of fear-mongering among senior voters by suggesting that Republicans want to take away their checks is the Left’s equivalent of the Right using “states’ rights” as code for “let’s keep those blacks in their place!” Arguably, it is even more destructive, as the refrain has successfully and cynically blocked needed structural changes in the Social Security program, which is unsustainable “as we know it” and nearing a financial crisis. (A story in today’s Washington Post, for example, begins: “Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.”) Turner wants to overhaul and reform the program (“dismantle” in Dem-speak), which isn’t simply desirable, but unavoidable. Koch is right to point out that this constitutes wanting to save Social Security, not destroy it.

I have no idea whether Turner or Weprin is the better candidate, but there is no question that Weprin’s tactics are dishonest and constitute an impediment to policy reform that has using his credentials to blow the whistle on a traditional Democratic ploy that has moved from offensive to dangerous.