My Fellow Gray Voters . . . .

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both among the oldest Baby Boomers - putting them smack in the middle of the immense group of Americans - 43 percent of us - who are age 50 and older.


The second group of GOP Loyalists that our Presumptive Nominee needs to win over as quickly as possible are Gray Voters age 50 and older.


This is not only an absolutely huuuge group among Republicans (drawing on Trump's turn of phrase), it is a huuuge - and angry and highly Populist - group within the current American electorate.


Gray Americans 50 and older now make up about 43 percent of the U.S. population - or over 2 in 5 of us. Because women still outlive men by several years, Gray American women are already close to half - or 1 in 2 - American females. And because people age 0-17 still cannot vote, Grays will account for close to half - or 1 in 2 - American voters, not only in the 2016 presidential cycle, but also in 2020, 2024, and 2028.


Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who were born a few months apart, are among the very oldest Baby Boomers (people 52-70 in 2016), which places them smack in the middle of that half of the electorate which is Gray.


Trump needs to embrace his Gray-ness and seek as much common ground as possible with his Age Peers - especially since Hillary Clinton and her Limousine Liberal allies have been doing everything possible to harm Mature Americans for at least the past three decades, or ever since Bill Clinton's first day in the presidency.


The Limo-Liberals have placed Mature Americans at a great disadvantage via the devastating roster of economic disasters they've managed to toss in our path: outsourcing, downsizing, the decimation of middle management, housing crises, market crashes, and the hollowing out of both manufacturing and resources industries and of Main Street small business.


Meanwhile, they have seemed to find a sadistic kind of satisfaction in knocking vast numbers of people over 50 onto the garbage heap of American life - our life's savings stolen by predators, our professional legacies forgotten, our dreams and hopes dashed to the point of pure despair.


People over 50 make up the great majority of the long-term unemployed and under-employed. We are responsible for the lowest historical labor participation rates in U.S. history - at Depression-era levels in many parts of the country - while many Grays don't even make it into these abysmal national statistics, because we are self-employed professionals and/or (very) small business owners.


How does Trump win us over? Frankly, he has a head start by not being Hillary Clinton, Darling of Wall Street and Limo-Liberals everywhere. No matter how hard the Democrat-controlled Mainstream Media try to hide it, Grays over 50 are skewing very heavily towards the GOP this cycle. What our Presumptive Nominee needs to do is make sure that pronounced electoral skew is not somehow reversed by negative actions nor lack of positive outreach to his own Age Peers.


Here are a few areas of commonality between Trump's already successful rhetoric and what the one-half of GOP Base Loyalists who also happen to be 50-and-over most want: 


***** Stress self-reliance - but be sure to reset a place for us at the Table of American Life.


Trump needs to empathize with his Age Peers and imaginatively put himself in our place. What if he didn't have his billions of dollars to fall back on? What if he had lost most or all of his life's savings through one or more of the economic cataclysms outlined above? What if he were told, as so many of his Peers have been told, that it simply doesn't matter how well-educated, how intelligent, how talented, how creative, how skilled, how experienced we are - America no longer wants or needs us?


Despite advances in longevity that should give many of us another 30 or 40 or even 50 years of life, we now are meant to sit on our hands, live off meager entitlements - or perhaps in cardboard boxes on street corners selling apples - while we are not only as healthy as ever in body, mind, and spirit, but quite possibly now at the peak of our intellectual powers and ability.


We believe Trump can make hay politically - and help effect profound economic, social, and cultural change - by embracing the Gray Renaissance doctrines we've outlined previously in several articles and presentations.


It is clearly completely within Trump's wheelhouse to stress the need for a sea change in our national mindset towards Mature Americans. Our nation should revive its historical legacy as the land of strong, self-reliant, hard-working, free-thinking individualists, whose main goal in life is to actualize our individualism through productive achievement. 

Mature Americans should be encouraged to realize that the ideal of a lazy retirement without goals or direction - particularly if such a retirement is meant to span 1/3 or more of our lifetimes! - is not an ideal at all: It's a kind of Purgatory, at best, or Hell-on-Earth, at worst.


Our entire national entitlements problem would simply disappear - and quickly - if concrete steps were taken to fully reintegrate and re-employ every American age 50 and over who wants to work, wants to produce, and wants to be a useful and healthy and happy part of an American economy that truly is on its way to sustained Growth and full employment.


***** Emphasize entrepreneurship and small business growth across a much broader business spectrum.


Once upon a time, in those far-off, halcyon days of . . . . maybe 7 or 9 or 11 years ago? it was recognized, as it had been throughout this country's history, that most new-business formation  - or growth of small businesses into bigger businesses - occurred under the capable management of founders and business owners over the age of 40 or 50 or 60 or 70.


These worthy entrepreneurs launched new businesses only after receiving solid educations, developing their talents and skills, and putting in the years of hard work and experience that would finally be rewarded by their becoming bosses and masters or mistresses of their own economic fates.


Do we even remember those days, a few short years later, or have we now been so brainwashed as a nation that we accept the new normal of virtually all venture capital and government economic help going to company founders under the age of 30 - some in their teens! - and a range of businesses pretty much limited to Tech, with a special emphasis on gaming and ephemeral apps, on the one hand, or climate change-oriented companies on the other?


Simply changing this emphasis and again supporting entrepreneurship and small business growth across the entire spectrum of sectors and industries, not just a handful, will automatically bring many more Mature founders and entrepreneurs into the mix again.


Moreover, it is time for a complete and total rethinking, on a national level, about which kinds of businesses are really most important and most useful to our country and our economy.


Many Republicans would argue that the most useful businesses are not those which the current crop of venture capitalists and Wall Street operators can launch as IPO's, resell to investors, and make the most hot money from - but rather those businesses which can truly grow in scope and importance, employing more and more people in a sustained productive capacity, while benefiting their home States and regions plus other States and regions as they continue to expand.


Trump certainly understands this, as a very successful founder and entrepreneur himself, and he can make the cause of Mature and experienced entrepreneurs his own.


***** Emphasize reviving those (Red) States and regions - including rural or less-populated States and regions - which have fallen behind under Obama administration policies.


Once again, do this, and you will automatically help that key part of the Republican Base - half of all 2016 voters - which is age 50 and older.


As free-thinking, self-reliant individualists, many GOP adherents prefer to live and work in parts of the country which are not urban - and it seems as if every deal of every deck has gone against them lately because of the re-centralization and Federal power grab policies of the Limousine Liberals and their Wall Street masters.


Just restoring a much healthier balance between Washington and the States should and will help Mature Americans, as will encouraging the States to revive rural and small town life - making sure "Gray" entrepreneurs, professionals, and workers over 50 are enthusiastically included in those revival plans.


***** Cut way back on immigration for employment purposes. Instead, put Americans back to work in those so-called un-fillable jobs the Limo-Liberals talk about incessantly.

We find it almost physically painful whenever an Obama-ite pundit talks about immigrants being needed, because there are jobs Americans are unqualified to fill. Dear Pundits, give me ten minutes to thumb through my Rolodex, and I'll point out thousands upon thousands - upon thousands - of long-term unemployed or under-employed Gray Americans over 50 who'd be thrilled to death to step into those jobs or be (quickly) retrained for them.


And as an (important) side-issue to the above: There is a plethora of anecdotal evidence that the current adminstration has wasted vast amounts of money on training programs that have had little long-term effect. Could that possibly - just possibly - have something to do with the people you're choosing to train and those who are entrusted with doing the training?

Many of us are thoroughly disgusted with the constant Propaganda from the Limo-Libs: Train ex-felons. Train those poor misunderstood drug addicts and drug dealers and gang members and . . . arsonists? extortionists? serial killers? people just released from Guantanamo Bay?


Meanwhile, I personally know at least 30,000 Grays with Ivy or equivalent degrees, decades of experience, high I.Q.s, and excellent skill sets, hovering on the brink of pure despair - several have committed suicide -  because we can no longer scrape up enough money for frills like food and heat and property taxes and insurance premiums.


If I personally know 30,000 such uber-qualified Mature Americans - and I do - chances are there are 30 or 40 or 50 million of us nationwide - white-collar, blue-collar, no-collar, and professionals alike.


Since we are already so well-educated and experienced and skilled, how much retraining would it actually take to place us in your un-fillable jobs? Five days? Five hours? Five minutes???


And while we are at it, how about hiring us Grays to administer such training programs and do the teaching? A large percentage of us have solid experience as teachers and professors at the high-school, community college, college, university, or even graduate school level.


***** Along these lines, we'd like our Presumptive Nominee and his campaign Team to take a look at our prospective Bring Back the Meritocracy! Project, which we've temporarily put on hold during this historical election year.

 
This Project, still in its conceptual, rather than operational stage, proposes the formation of one or several for-profit Peace Corps-like entities, which would employ the Highly-Educated But Under-Employed to work domestically and around the world on some of the Unmet Needs in infrastructure, finance, healthcare, education, and social services, which every development conference talks about, but no one really does much to alleviate.


Why Peace Corps-like, rather than just expanding the Peace Corps or other existing Federal programs? And why is the term for-profit emphasized? These questions go to the heart of the matter and demonstrate why I think this concept should appeal to Nominee Trump and his Team.


We envision mobilizing the long-term unemployed and under-employed part of our population over age 50 as instant task forces to be sent wherever in the country or in the world they're most needed to solve pressing problems localities cannot solve without additional help.


These task forces will work at the lowest cost possible - but they won't work at no cost. In other words, this Project will not be a form of domestic nor foreign aid, and we hope these entities will become profitable quickly.


The Gray Americans they will employ - and who also will administer these entities - desperately need to start earning their own living again and making their own way through life, without charity nor the pressing need for government entitlements.


In return, the countries or localities which choose to employ these teams of true veterans - in the best sense of the term - will be dealing with people who know what they're doing, people with decades of experience, education, and finely-honed skills.


The Meritocracy Project, as we envision it, would start with Gray alumni of the Ivy League and other top-tier universities and colleges - partly because that's the world we came from and partly because we think it's a good place to begin a national demonstration of the concept, proving that such a Project could be extremely successful.


But we would hope to expand the Project quickly to encompass the entire U.S. population of long-term unemployed and under-employed Grays from all educational backgrounds and in all employment categories.


The Federal government would not be involved in the Project's funding nor administration at all, other than to talk it up as an example of American self-reliance and one way to solve the potentially disastrous entitlements problem this nation faces.


Initial funding - which would be kept to a bare minimum - should come from the Universities which are initially involved and their earmarked endowments and gifts, as well as foundations and perhaps some political think tanks and PACs which approve of the Project's philosophy of self-reliance.

 
Frankly, we think both major Parties and patriotic and intelligent Americans across the political spectrum should support efforts to re-employ or better employ financially suffering Grays.


But GOP adherents should especially applaud efforts of this kind. And we hope that with a Republican back in the White House, projects with the goal of helping financially-beleaguered Grays reclaim their lives and their careers will take off in a very big way.


***** Creative and innovative programs aimed at helping 50-and-over Americans need to become routine and expected, rather than unusual - literally, the order of the day.


If you have any doubt just how skewed our national priorities have become during the dark years of Limousine Liberalism, we suggest you search the databases of your choice and attempt to find programs and projects - supported by any entity whatsoever - aimed at financially-strapped, but otherwise healthy, capable, and highly-motivated Americans over age 50.


You will find next to nothing, because there is next to nothing. More than 2 in 5 Americans over 50, with so many struggling to survive, let alone thrive - and no one at all seems to care!


Many of us believe the RNC, the Republican-oriented think tanks and foundations, and the various GOP PACs should begin a coordinated National Initiative to give people over 50 who desperately want to work and be productive and earn their own keep the opportunity to do so - not just because it is good for the individuals involved, but because it important - in fact, crucial - to our national well-being, both economically and culturally.


Let's put on our thinking caps and create all sorts of projects and programs which will cost very little, but which should have immediate economic and societal benefits, since many of the Mature Americans who'll participate are now at the peak of their powers and will work hard and creatively to prove it, if given the chance to do so.  


So many American Grays want nothing more than to become productive and useful - and respected - again. We want to stay part of this economy and this society for the remainder of our lives, not warehoused nor ignored nor kept on the sidelines, while the world passes us by.


The widespread dissatisfaction - and barely suppressed anger - among the 43 percent of Americans - and 50 percent of voters - who are age 50 and older presents a fantastic opportunity for the Republican Party and for our Presumptive Nominee.


We believe that the Obama administration, the Limousine Liberals, and their Presumptive Nominee Hillary Clinton have all expressed pure contempt and lack of consideration for the plight of Mature Americans.


They have supported the Ponzi-scheme economy, in which the life's savings and jobs and hopes and dreams of Mature Americans have been stolen, only to be redistributed among supposed Democratic constituencies with far less education or skills or experience, who are undeservedly reaping all the benefits of our hard work over so many years.


The Democrats have turned a blind eye to the flagrant abuses and outright criminality of the hot money on Wall Street. And they have precipitated every major financial cataclysm of the past several decades. Let's voice the litany again: outsourcing, downsizing, the decimation of middle management, housing crises, market crashes, and the hollowing out of manufacturing and resources industries, as well as Main Street small business.


Gray Americans are savvy and smart and passionate Americans.


We are sick of the contempt, verging on sadism, with which the Limousine Liberals and their Party-of-choice have treated us.


The Republican Nominee will get our votes this year - again, fully 1 out of 2 votes this electoral cycle - if he meets us halfway, treats us with the respect and consideration we deserve, and shows he is enthusiastic about embracing policies and programs that can harness our talent, creativity, and intelligence for the good of our economy and our nation.



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