Few people have worked as hard or as effectively as entertainer Pat Boone to motivate seniors to exercise their rights as citizens on Election Day. Rest assured that Pat and 60 Plus Association Founder and Chairman Jim Martin plan to work even harder in 2020 to educate seniors to the issues in the upcoming election.
We hope you can take a moment to read the latest column by Pat and Jim. It provides a glimpse into what we’re all facing in the weeks and months ahead.
To our friends in the media, you’re invited to republish in print or online the column below with proper attribution to the authors and the 60 Plus Association.
Seniors Resent Politics of Death
by Pat Boone and Jim Martin
When the first COVID-19 death in the United States was reported on February 29, the nation was presented with a public health problem that rapidly escalated to crisis proportions. The health and lives of Americans were placed at risk and the early response to this crisis was one rooted in care, concern and action.
But the response morphed during the intervening weeks into an ugly reflection of the very worst of human traits. Increasingly, the response to this virus has become less about medicine and science, and more about the most brutal style of politics ever witnessed in a free society – the death of senior supporters of President Trump.
It’s no secret that a majority of older Americans vote Republican in presidential elections and have for roughly the past 25 years. It’s also no secret that older people suffer exponentially higher mortality rates due to COVID-19. A study of coronavirus deaths in New York state by researchers at Stanford University shows that two-thirds of all deaths were among people older than 70 and 99.2% of all COVID-19 deaths in the state involved people with at least one underlying health problem. Those same data show a mortality rate of one one-hundredth of one percent for people between 18 and 45 years of age. Clearly, older people with existing health problems are in the cross hairs of this virus.
But liberals are giving a gleeful reception to a study theorizing that COVID-19 could kill tens of thousands of older Trump voters. The Politico reported that, “Researchers on the fatality study said they found the virus could also ravage Republicans across Florida and Georgia.”
The authors of the study, published in the journal Administrative Theory & Praxis, were somewhat more circumspect, but not much. In their projection for Pennsylvania, for example, the study postulated, “Cumulatively, 14,551 more Republicans than Democrats would perish under these projections, a significant change given that Trump carried the Commonwealth by 44,292 votes.”
Just imagine the bodies of dead Trump voters piling up in Miami, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Heck, that’s 65 Electoral Votes in those three states alone; more than enough to swing the election. If morgues started overflowing with dead senior Republicans in Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, states Trump narrowly carried in 2016, it would give Democrats a landslide win this fall.
This study culled a raft of data from past vote tallies, opinion surveys, demographic analyses and elsewhere, but information on coronavirus mortality was drawn from models provided by an organization called CovidActNow. While the study’s information on voting patterns is mostly hard data, the mortality information is simply a guess, the plainspoken word for ‘projection.’
Consider the CovidActNow projection for North Dakota. According to their model, the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is estimated at 41 as of April 30. They claim it will rise more than 17,000% by June 1 if that state lifts its restrictions. Maybe this projection for a 17,000% spike in hospitalizations in North Dakota is accurate. Maybe it’s not. Thus far the mortality models and projections for the U.S. and globally have been wrong, and not by a little, so it might be wise to temper one’s confidence in this estimate.
We ought not be surprised that political analysts will analyze politics. It’s what they do. But the net net is that people of one ideological persuasion are now seeing a political advantage in the deaths of people who might vote for the other guy. This is sick. There is no other word for it.
It’s well established that liberals are itching to implement a socialist agenda in the wake of the Wuhan virus. The New York City Democratic Socialists invite people to, “Please see our People’s Bailout for NY page to see a socialist vision for a response to the COVID-19 crisis.” Rep. James Clyburn, the House Majority Whip, apparently agrees, telling his fellow Democrats they have a “tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
Standing in the way of this is Donald Trump. Many of these same liberals have fervently hoped the president could be politically damaged by an imaginary link to Russia, made up improprieties in Ukraine, impeachment, or a tanking economy. Now, they’re putting their hope and faith in the deaths of older Americans as a means of defeating the president in November.
This. Is. Sick.
Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address sought to appeal to the better angels of our nature in an attempt to avoid civil war. It didn’t work. Nearly 160 years later, liberals and socialists are appealing to the uglier demons of our nature. We cannot allow the politics of death to be successful.
Pat Boone is the national spokesman for the 60 Plus Association, representing five million elderly nationwide. James Martin is the group’s founder and chairman.
