Social Security: A Time for Outrage

Trump’s policies attack his own base — but who will tell them?

Donald Trump is often described as a “populist.” Yet his administration is stuffed with wealthy men who are clueless about how the other 99.99 percent lives, while his policies involve undermining the working class while enabling wealthy tax cheats.

What is true is that many working-class voters supported Trump last year because they believed that he was on their side. And that disconnect between perceptions and reality ought to be at the heart of any discussion of what Democrats should do now.

Right now the central front in the assault on the working class is Social Security, which Elon Musk, unable to admit error, keeps insisting is riddled with fraud. The DOGE-bullied Social Security Administration has already announced that those applying for benefits or trying to change where their benefits are deposited will need to verify their identity either online or in person — a huge, sometimes impossible burden on the elderly, often disabled Americans who need those benefits most. And with staff cuts and massive DOGE disruption, it seems increasingly likely that some benefits just won’t arrive as scheduled.

Oh, and Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security administrator, threatened to shut the whole thing down unless DOGE was given access to personal data.

Not to worry, says Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce secretary. Only “fraudsters” would complain about missing a Social Security check:

Let's say social security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She'd think something got messed up, and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.

There’s so much wrong with that statement that it’s hard to know where to start. But it’s clear that Lutnick — like many affluent people — has no idea how important Social Security is to the finances of most older Americans. According to a Social Security Administration study, half of Americans over 65 get a majority of their income from Social Security; a quarter depend almost entirely on Social Security, which supplies more than 90 percent of their income. I doubt that these people would shrug off a missed check.

Reliance on Social Security isn’t evenly distributed across the population; it’s strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. In particular, it very much depends on education, with less-educated Americans much more reliant on the program than those with more education:

Source: Social Security Administration

But here’s the thing — less educated voters strongly favored Trump in November:

And by putting him over the top they set the stage for demolition of a government program that is the only thing standing between them and dire poverty in their later years.

Now, it’s true that during the campaign Trump claimed that he wouldn’t cut Social Security or Medicare. If you were paying attention, however, you knew that Trump was highly likely to break that promise, that a second Trump administration would be pursuing the Project 2025 agenda and would do all it could to dismantle the social safety net. And let’s not forget (although many voters did) that during his first term Trump came within a whisker of destroying the Affordable Care Act, thereby denying health insurance to millions of Americans. Certainly any pundit who’s surprised by what’s happening now should find another profession.

Oh, and on this as on other issues, above all rule of law and the survival of democracy, the “alarmists” whose warnings were dismissed by the supposedly savvy have been completely vindicated.

In any case, what’s clear is that working-class voters weren’t paying attention; they thought they were voting for lower grocery prices, not an assault on Social Security.

And the fact that so many voters seemed oblivious to clear signs about what Trump would do if he won ought to inform every discussion about how to oppose him.

I generally try not to be one of those people saying “This is what Democrats must do,” for a couple of reasons. One is that I don’t have firm views about what works politically. Another is that all too often “what Democrats must do” just happens to reflect the speaker’s policy preferences rather than a realistic assessment of political effectiveness.

But I can’t help noticing that the inverse correlation between how Americans voted in 2024 and their real interests makes it clear that two of the main factions in the intra-party debate about Democrats’ next moves are talking nonsense.

On one side there are relatively conservative Democrats and Democratic-leaning pundits telling us that the party must move to the center. But when it comes to Social Security, which is really important to most Americans, Democrats — who want to preserve the program — are very much in the center, while Republicans — who want to kill it — are extremists. Yet last November, the voters who have most to lose from this extremism didn’t notice.

On the other side there are progressives who argue that Democrats are in trouble because they abandoned the working class. But even if you think that Democrats have been too friendly toward globalization, or deregulation, or low corporate taxes, the Democratic Party has been far more favorable to workers than the Republicans. The Biden administration was especially pro-worker. But working-class voters didn’t notice.

What all this says is that the priority for Democrats isn’t to pursue whatever you think is a better policy mix. It is to get voters to notice.

This almost certainly requires new leadership, if only to help persuade voters that the party isn’t run by tired careerists. The problem with someone like Chuck Schumer isn’t that he’s too centrist, it’s that he’s a 74-year-old (writes a stripling of 72) whose instinct is to try to deftly navigate his way through a political landscape that demands not careful calculation but vocal, visible outrage, both to motivate the Democratic base and to get other voters’ attention.

And the attack on Social Security is something that should both inspire outrage and offer an opportunity to connect with working-class Americans.

MUSICAL CODA

I’m ordinarily not a fan of music videos as political satire. But this is too good not to share